Republican Plays the Antifa Card on Suburban Women of the Chathams – InsiderNJ

Even allowingfor over-the-top campaign rhetoric, it seems pretty hard to associate the suburbanwomen of the Chathams with Antifa.

Peter King is trying.

Chatham Moms for Change, a Modern Hate Group? is the provocative headline on a lengthy letter circulated this week by King, the vice-chair of the Morris County Republican Committee.

In short, Kings missive alleges thatthe Democratic-leaning Chatham Moms group is guilty of vile social media posts, relentlessly and falsely attacking its opponents and stealingand vandalizing campaign signs.

In a chat this afternoon, King said these tactics are designed to intimidate people.

My opinionis that theyre trying to suppress peoples free speech, King said. And that, he added, is how hate groups flourish.

Kings letter is filled with generalizations, but an individual he criticizes by name is Jocelyn Mathiasen, a councilwoman in Chatham Borough. (For the record, there are two Chathams a borough and a township;these are separate municipalities, but the demographics are similar and one school district serves both towns).

King says Mathiasen spends much time engaged in dueling posts with the constituents shes been elected to serve.

Reached by phone this morning, Mathiasen said of Kings letter, I mostly just try to ignore the whole thing, its silly.

Some things here are beyond dispute.

One is that the Chathams have changed politically big time. A Republican bastion a decade or so ago, Democrats are now a majority on the governing bodies of both towns.

More broadly speaking, it was suburban women who keyed much of the success Democrats had in the 2018 midtermelection,both across the nation and locally. In Morris County, they were strongbackers of two large marches in Morristown that year one for womens rights and the other for gun control.

Similar to others, the Chatham Moms group popped up around the time of Donald Trumps election. On its Facebook page, the group describes itself this way:

At itsinception, members of thecommunity felt marginalized and unheard and formed this group. Over the past four years, there have been tensof thousands of moments of supportive messaging, political activism, education and volunteerism. Members at times have vented frustrations with local and national challenges, but the mission and our actions remain the same; to provide a place of support to empower its members to have a voice and make positive change in our community.

King is not impressed by this romantic notion of civic involvement.

He points to posts that he says wish COVID-19 on political opponents, ridicule minorities who support Republicans and label Republicans in the Chathams as racists, homophobes, misogynists and white supremacists.

Of course, its necessaryto ask, Isnt this the normal course of events in anincredibly divisive election? After all, I have heard much GOP rhetoric that labels Democrats as socialists and communists who support mobs running amok in the street.

King argues that in the Chathams, the strident rhetoric has morphed into destructive action.

Turns out that Laura Ali, the chair of the Morris County Republican Committee, lives in Chatham Township. She recently reported to police that signs on her property backing police and the president were stolen.

Kings letter says the signs were defaced with such things as F Pigs, F the NRA. and dumped outside the township police station. The letter also said that the perpetrators screamed vulgar insults at officers. He said many Republicans now fear publicly stating their opinions.

The police confirmed most of this in a Facebook post, adding that the suspects are 3 white females, one of whom may have pink hair.

Pink hair?

She shouldnt be that hard to find. The Chathams have changed, but this is not yet the East Village.

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