2 Bergen Mayors Leave Republican Party Over Trump's Comments

Two high-ranking officials in one of the richest counties in the country have denounced their Republican party affiliation in protest of what they believe were racist comments by the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump.

Hackensack Mayor John Labrosse and Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino have filed a change of party affiliation with the county. They are now independents.

“Hackensack is a very diverse city and we respect all of our residents regardless of their race or heritage. The divisive and racist statements that Trump keeps making are insulting to many of our people and completely unacceptable," the pair said in a joint statement. "We don’t want a young student in one of our schools hearing these things and believing that their own elected officials are supporting these types of statements.”

Trump implied last week that a Latino judge could not be impartial in presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University.

Although Labrosse and Canestrino were registered Republicans, Hackensack officials run in a non-partisan election.

Trump said in a statement Tuesday that it was “unfortunate” that his comments were “misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage."

Trump had accused federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel of being biased because of his Mexican descent. Curiel was born in Indiana.

In an interview with The New York Times last week, Trump said it was clear that he considered Judge Curiel’s heritage an issue: “I’m building the wall, I’m building the wall. I have a Mexican judge. He’s of Mexican heritage. He should have recused himself, not only for that, for other things.”

“We felt at this time, the best thing for us to do is to make a statement so that the citizens of our town are aware that we support the diversity in our community,” Canestrino said.

The pair said there was not one specific comment that influenced their decision, but rather the general tone of the campaign, CBS reported.

Trump has also made controversial statements against women and Muslims.

Workers at Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City accused him of racism dating back to the early 1990s when Trump allegedly described his black casino employees as “lazy,” The Huffington Post reported.

Trump said that the war on terror requires the government conduct “unprecedented surveillance” of America’s Muslims. Trump would also not rule out warrantless searches as part of that surveillance and making a registry of all Muslims in the United States, Yahoo! reported.

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PHOTO: Donald Trump — Wikimedia Commons, used with permission