Vernon mayoral candidate takes heat for old 'nazi' comment

Vernon mayoral candidate Darrin Taylor took some heat of his own this week regarding a past social media post about global warming.

The bulk of criticism came from a Facebook post in which he refers to the Vernon Climate Action Group as “hard-left enviro nazis.”

“I’m not a career politician and sometimes in the heat of the battle on social media, some things aren’t worded as eloquently as they could be,” Taylor told the Morning Star. “Obviously it’s not appropriate to refer to people as ‘enviro-nazis’ but there are so many bigger issues facing this community.”

He took this as an opportunity to share his views on the environment and said that although he isn’t a climate change denier, he does believe that shutting down the oil and gas industry would “be paralyzing the community and Western Canada and I’m squarely opposed to that.”

“I’m quite the opposite [of a climate change denier] and am wholeheartedly in favour of common sense being used to implement initiatives to reduce the city’s carbon footprint. But if someone comes out as part of the discussion with an idea that I don’t think makes sense or contributes positively to the argument, I will call them out. Though in the future I’ll call them out more eloquently,” he said. “I’m not a people pleaser. I don’t ride the fence on issues and if elected mayor then that’s what people can expect from me: to call a spade a spade.”

Questions also surfaced around a 2013 tweet where Taylor responds news article about a violent attack on an innocent victim: “Sounds like a good argument for concealed carry.” Taylor has said he is not a gun advocate and the tweet was “just a flippant remark.”

Another tweet from 2012 where he refers to Vernon as a “Hicktown” was also brought into question. In response, the candidate explained that this was in reference to the well-known country song Hicktown by Jason Aldean and was simply meant in good fun.

In conclusion, he said that he hopes people can move on from this controversy and hopes to be elected on Oct. 20.

“It’s time to move on from petty issues but I guess that’s just politics,” he said. “I’m looking forward to talking about issues that are of concern to the people of Vernon and I can’t wait for that.”

Editor’s note: A previous version read that Taylor’s tweets have since been deleted. Although our reporters were not able to locate the twitter posts in question, Taylor insists he did not delete the tweets.