Commissioner candidates denounce Facebook post and outburst at Sept. 10 AFL-CIO event

Carolyn White and Andrew Lipian, both running for Lorain County commissioner in November, have denounced a contentious Facebook post they said aimed false or "vile" allegations a man tried to read out loud at Thursday's Lorain County AFL-CIO candidates night. The person has since apologized and White has accepted his apology, she said. A Democrat running to unseat incumbent Commissioner Jeff Riddell, a Republican, White said an "unfortunate incident" at the end of the event at Bricklayers Hall in Amherst Township involved a member of the public reading from a Facebook post that criticized her opponents. White and Riddell are on the ballot. Lipian, an independent, joined the race in July as a write-in candidate. As Thursday night's event came to a close, Lipian supporter and former Lorain County AFL-CIO president Joe Thayer got permission to speak. He then read from a Facebook post White said repeated false allegations about her and her campaign. The post also criticized Lipian, who said in a Facebook post that it repeated "vile accusations and insults" against him. Though she believes the original poster had meant to support her, "I was not having it" when Thayer began to read from it as part of a "shocking ambush," White wrote in a statement posted to her campaign's Facebook page on Saturday. White, who initially misidentified Thayer as Lipian's campaign manager, wrote that she "stood up and shut him down." "Had he done the right thing, he would have asked me directly about it and I would have set him straight, but instead he used the public forum to try and score political points against me," she wrote. White said Monday that false allegations have been circulating that she or her supporters convinced some Lorain County Republicans to register to vote for her as Democrats in the May primary to defeat Brian Baker, a longtime union member and leader. The post Thayer read from also used vulgarities to shame Democrats who, it said, accused White of manipulating Republicans to vote for her. White said Thayer apparently believed she had put the original poster up to making the post to attack Lipian, which she denies. White defeated Baker in a close primary by fewer than 400 votes. She said any allegations she did anything wrong or illegal to win the Democratic primary are false. "I won the race because I worked my butt off to get petitions signed, to make sure I got on the ballot and knocked on doors to make sure people supported me," White said. The post also mentioned race. White, who is Black, said race has nothing to do with her campaign. "The gist of it was supporting me," she said, with the message being "no one should be looking at this as a racial issue." White said she met with Thayer immediately after Thursday's event, demanded a public apology on Facebook, and got what she wanted. In a public Facebook post Thursday, Thayer apologized "for how I approached a very serious allegation against me tonight at the candidates night." "I was informed of some very serious comments made against me and others by an individual who is upset that I'm campaigning against the candidate he supports," he wrote. "I made a choice to address this issue in front of the room instead of in private which was an example of a gut reaction being the wrong reaction. While I hope my emotion on the topic is understandable I am asking that you accept my apology." White said Monday that she accepted Thayer's apology. Lipian said on his campaign's Facebook page that while Thayer supports him, he doesn't work for him. In his own public post, Lipian said Thayer "saw a Facebook post from a malevolent profile with vile accusations and insults for supporting this campaign. Understandably, that upset him." Lipian wrote that that post has since been taken down, "and Joe was speaking in his personal and professional capacity, not as a member of this campaign." Writing that he was "disappointed" with what he witnessed at the end of Thursday's event, Lipian wrote that he hoped everyone could get back to what he called "the spirit of 9/12" — the day after the 9/11 terror attacks when Americans were "united like never before," he wrote. (You can read Lipian's entire statement at facebook.com/share/p/1PLpSWjWBJ.) "Unfortunately, 25 years later we have lost that brother and sisterhood," he wrote, adding that there was a missed opportunity "to have a rational, candid conversation (one at a time) about what healthy disagreements should look like. Each side could have spoken to what they felt needed improved in the other." "Make no mistake, there are acid tongues online, and they're driving us away from our better angels. We shouldn't give them that privilege," Lipian wrote.Lipian said Monday had nothing to add to that statement, seeing it as an issue between Thayer and White. White said she's been getting "a lot of support" from the public and voters with "many people saying they thought I handled myself very well" when her campaign was attacked on Thursday. "They were very upset that was allowed to take place," she said. "It should never have occurred." Contact Dave O'Brien at 440-329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com