Liverpool, NY – Joe Price, the Democratic candidate for Onondaga County sheriff, apologized this morning to those offended by comments he posted on Syracuse.com, and said he is staying in the race. “The events of the past week have been a very difficult ordeal for not only myself, but for my family, my co-workers and my friends. I would...
Sheriff's candidate Joseph Price appears at the Onondaga County Democratic Committee convention last May. Price apologized this morning for comments he posted on Syracuse.com and said he is staying in the race against Republican Kevin Walsh.Liverpool, NY – Joe Price, the Democratic candidate for Onondaga County sheriff, apologized this morning to those offended by comments he posted on Syracuse.com, and said he is staying in the race.
“The events of the past week have been a very difficult ordeal for not only myself, but for my family, my co-workers and my friends. I would like to apologize not only to them, but to anyone that may have taken offense to comments that I did write,” Price said at a news conference at American Legion Post 188 in Liverpool. He did not intend to cause harm by them, he said.
At the same time, he called the events of the past week “nothing more than the politics of personal destruction launched by a group of people who could not win at the ballot box.”
“I am not going to drop out of this race or stop talking about the issues that face the Onondaga County Sheriff’s department, no matter how much the bosses in the Democrat Party want me to,” Price said. Those issues include deaths at the Justice Center Jail, lawsuits filed against the county, the arrests of deputies and the department’s budget.
Price, 43, a jail deputy for 17 years, beat Sgt. Toby Shelley, the Democratic Party’s designee, in a primary Sept. 14. That made him the party’s candidate to take on incumbent Sheriff Kevin Walsh, who defeated Edward J. Bragg the same day to secure the Republican nomination.
Ten days later, a Post-Standard article revealed that comments with racist, sexist and homophobic overtones had been posted on Syracuse.com, the newspaper’s Web affiliate, under a user name used by Price.
In the story, Price acknowledged posting a few complaints about affirmative action and a comment that made a homophobic joke about kids in a school band that he said was a quote from the movie, “Wayne’s World.” Most of his postings were about sports, he said.
But he said then and today that someone else hijacked his user name and posted the most inflammatory comments.
Democratic leaders announced the day the article ran that they would not actively support Price’s candidacy.
Price said he has not discovered who used his account.