Richmond Green candidate, Ryan Marciniw, is among a trio of B.C. Green Party candidates who have apologized to their party over unsavoury or offensive posts found on their Twitter or Facebook accounts.
Over the past several weeks, Marciniw, along with James Marshall and Arthur Green, have scrubbed their accounts of questionable content that had been missed by a contractor hired by the party to vet its candidates’ social media content, confirmed Stefan Jonsson, the party’s director of communications, in a Monday interview.
The handful of offending posts, which date back to 2008, include mostly poorly attempted jokes and crackpot conspiracy theories.
When asked whether the candidates still had the support of the party, Jonsson said: “Yes. Because they have all expressed sincere regret and apologized. It would be a very different story if they backpedalled and tried to make excuses.”
Marciniw, the Green party candidate for Richmond North Centre, had tweeted in support of fat shaming (claiming it had led him to slim down) and retweeted a controversial message about the holocaust.
Jonsson said Marciniw understood what he was agreeing with or commenting on “was so insensitive and inappropriate.” He had removed the tweets about a month ago, Jonsson said.
Nearly a decade ago, Marshall, the Green party candidate for Vancouver-West End, posted content that made light of pedophilia and drug abuse. Those posts were deleted Sunday.
“He’ll be the first to say they were in poor taste and inappropriate attempts at humour,” Jonsson said.
Of the posts by Green, the party’s candidate for Fraser-Nicola, Jonsson had this to say: “The party does not condone any 9/11 ‘truther’ theories and he appears to be posing questions about them.” Green’s posts were taken down “a while ago,” Jonsson said.
“They all — independently of one another and independently of this making its way to the surface —- have moved on from these views, and regret what they did,” he said.
It is common for parties to vet their candidates’ social media accounts.
