The mayor of a Michigan town was allegedly caught on tape making a series of obscene and racist comments about women and black people — and now a litany of public officials are now urging him to resign.
An exclusive report published Monday by Motor City Muckraker identified Warren Mayor Jim Fouts as the individual making crude statements in four short audio clips, including one in which a man said “blacks do look like chimpanzees” and another that contained him using the n-word.
A third clip purportedly contains the independent mayor claiming that older women are “dried up,” while a fourth allegedly captured him calling them “mean, hateful dried-up c—s.”
Fouts has denied making the statements on Facebook, claiming the audio clips are part of a “tremendous effort” to force him out “by slander, by character assassination, lies and by out right [sic] condemnation of me.”
Fouts did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday.
“This is an attempt to reverse the 2015 election results when I won with 85% of the vote,” Fouts wrote on Facebook. “I won with 81% in 2011. This is despite solid evidence that I did nothing wrong whatsoever. My actions as Mayor have been inclusive and no one can deny that. We are the best run city in the state when it comes to police, fire, and fund balance. I will not resign. I will be here through at least 2019 as the people wanted me to.”
A group of eight public officials released a statement on Tuesday calling on Fouts to step down as mayor of Warren, a city of roughly 130,000 residents just north of Detroit.
“We have listened to the audio tapes with the voice we recognize of Mayor Jim Fouts,” the statement reads. “These comments are hateful. They are racist and disparaging of women. The leader of our state’s third largest city should be a role model for how we treat each other and anyone that harbors these feelings and expresses them is not fit to lead.”
The statement also references the release of recordings last month that allegedly caught Fouts calling people with special needs “dysfunctional human beings.”
“We believe that these comments, and the previous comments about people with disabilities, do not represent the people of the City of Warren,” the statement continued. “Therefore, we believe that it would be best for the people of Warren for Mayor Fouts to resign, and we call on him to do so.”
The group of public officials calling for Fouts to step down included US Rep. Sander Levin; state Sen. Steve Bieda; state Reps. Henry Yanez, John Chirkun and Patrick Green; and Macomb County Commissioners Andrey Duzyj, Veronica Klinefelt and Marv Sauger.
Fouts, meanwhile, claimed on Facebook on Dec. 20 that the “phony tape” was obviously altered. He claimed Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel manufactured the tape in connection with a longstanding feud between the two over what Fouts has said was illegal dumping at a park in Sterling Heights, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Hackel has denied releasing the latest clips, but acknowledged providing reporters with tapes last month purportedly catching Fouts disparaging people with disabilities.
“It is his voice,” Hackel told the newspaper. “It is his conversation. It’s completely unacceptable.”
If the tapes are indeed fake, Fouts needs to pursue felony charges against whoever made them, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan told the Detroit Free Press.
Short of that, “[Fouts] needs to resign because he’s lying,” Duggan told the newspaper.