An upstate Democrat mayoral candidate has been blasted as “utterly unfit for public office” after an unearthed video shows him using the N-word.
Miles Burnett, an ex-state Senate and New York City Council staffer who is running for mayor in the upstate City of Binghamton, used the offensive racial slur while quoting song lyrics in the video posted to his Facebook page in 2009.
“Now there he uses the n—– word again. He’s black. It’s just a word for individual,” a cringey, young Burnett says in the clip, which has since been deleted from his account.
Broome County Republican Committee Chairman Benji Federman called for the 33-year-old mayoral hopeful to drop out of the race.
“Miles Burnett’s hateful language and nonstop lies make him utterly unfit for public office. His candidacy should be finished,” Federman told The Post.
“The real question now is whether Democrats and [Working Families Party] have zero tolerance for this behavior — or if they’ll look the other way while Burnett tries to grab the keys to Binghamton City Hall,” he added.
Incumbent Mayor Jared Kraham, a Republican, said Burnett’s age in the video isn’t an excuse.
“This language does not represent who we are as a community or reflect in any way what Binghamton strives to be,” Kraham wrote in a statement.
“My opponent and I are around the same age. All of us make mistakes when we’re young, but we can all agree that the repeated racist language in the video was as unequivocally wrong then as it is now,” he continued.
Burnett apologized for using the slur — but did highlight his age at the time.
“When I was a 14-year-old child, I made a foolish social media post analyzing the lyrics of a song. I apologize for the offensive language I used. I am deeply sorry to all the people I’ve hurt and let down. It was a stupid thing to do and I would not make the same choice today as an adult,” he wrote in a statement posted to Facebook.
“Those words were not appropriate then, and they are not appropriate now. I got into this race to fight for a better Binghamton for everyone and that’s what I will continue to do.”
However, records indicate that Burnett, who was born in 1992, would have been around 17 at the time.
The Binghamton City Democratic Committee fired back at Kraham, accusing him of racism for a line in a 2007 high school blog about disparities in standardized school testing.
“One good thing that standardized tests have done is to tell us that white, suburban, American kids are smarter than black, inner-city, American kids year after year,” Kraham wrote at the time.
“Time and again, the Mayor has been on the wrong side of human rights issues. But Kraham’s condemnation of a young Miles Burnett’s video rings hollow, given his own racist statements and writings from his high school years,” the city Democratic committee wrote in a statement.
A spokesperson for Burnett’s one-time employer, state Sen. Lea Webb (D-Broome), said she was disappointed and urged the candidate to be better.
“The video was deeply offensive and disappointing. We have real needs in the City of Binghamton. It’s important for every person pursuing elected office to treat people with dignity and respect,” she said in a statement.
Webb’s office said Burnett has not been employed there for almost a year.
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