A Minnesota House candidate’s new campaign ad has folks shaking their heads in disbelief.
Kyle Greene, an organic farmer running for a state House seat in Minnesota’s rural District 18A, set the Internet abuzz after using a racial slur in a campaign video he released earlier this month. Greene’s comments came at the end of the ad when he asks voters to support him in the upcoming election.
“I want to be your state representative, I want to be your public servant and I want to be your N-word,” Greene says in a video posted on his campaign website and Facebook page.
“I’m not asking for you to vote for me as your leader,” he adds, “I’m asking for you to vote for me as your public servant.”
The video has been viewed more than 50,000 times, garner plenty of reactions from folks across the web.
In an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Greene said he used the N-word because he wanted voters to focus on “the real issues at hand.”
“We need to unify as a society, and we need to stop dealing with trivial matters,” the independent candidate told the newspaper. “The word … is part of the American history, regardless of the race. It’s part of my history being African-American, white and Cherokee Indian.”
The Tribune reported that Greene decided to run for public office out of concern that incumbent Rep. Dean Urdhal (R) would continue turning a blind eye to judicial corruption.
“‘We the people’ means that if your elected officials aren’t doing the job they’re elected to do, YOU have the power to vote them out and elect the official who WILL fight for the people,” Greene says on his website. “This is where Kyle Greene comes in.”
The candidate’s ad has sparked mixed reactions from viewers.
“I ain’t even gunna lie—if I lived there… I’d vote for him, because he either has huge balls, he’s serious and he’s about to go gangster, or he’s hilarious,” one Facebook user wrote.
” I understand the role of a public servant,” another person wrote, “however, using ‘servant’ and ‘n*****’ in the same sentence is wrong. That word should never be used.”
Watch more in the video below.
https://www.facebook.com/GreeneForStateDistrict18A/videos/2131389773588639/
