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Marysville candidate who wanted city as white ‘as possible’ gets 4%

Published  November 7, 2019 11:58am EST
News
FOX 2 Detroit

MARYSVILLE, Mich. (FOX 2) - The Marysville city council candidate who dropped out but made national headlines for wanting to keep her community white "as much as possible" still received 4 percent of the vote. 

Jean Cramer ended her candidacy in Marysville in August, but it was too late to remove her name from the ballot. Lydia Valles from the Elections Bureau said state law states that a candidate can not withdraw his or her name from the ballot past the withdraw date, which was April 26 at 4 p.m.

Cramer finished last among five candidates with 180 votes. According to the Associated Press, she couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday. Her phone line was busy.

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Marysville’s new mayor, Wayne Pyden, says he believes Cramer might have received votes from older residents who heard her pledge to help senior citizens.

At a summer forum, Cramer shocked a crowd at a candidate's forum after she was asked how she felt about diversity, and whether the city should do more to attract foreign-born citizens. 

"My suggestion, recommendation, keep Marysville a white community as much as possible," she said.

"Seriously, in other words, no foreign-born, no foreign people because of what ... in our past we have experienced. It's better to have simply American born, put it that way."

A stunned silence fell over the audience. She was one of five candidates vying for three open seats on the council in the November election.

Cramer doubled-down on her statements when FOX 2's Hilary Golston went to Marysville to see if that's what she really meant.

Golston: "Do you want to keep people who are not white out of Marysville?"

Cramer: "Not necessarily, no. Like I told them before, as long as they're the same kind, I'm fine with that, and keep up their homes and property, no problem."

Golston: "I'm a black person. I'm married to a white man. Are you telling me that I wouldn't be welcome here in Marysville?"

Cramer: "As I've been saying, when it comes to the Holy Bible, it's all one. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and he also created Adam and Eve, the same kind."

Golston: "So you would say that our union is wrong, would be your position?"

Cramer: "I would say so. According to the Bible, yes."

And on immigrants:

Cramer: "As far as foreigners are concerned, I'm questioning that. What they need to do is stay in their own country and work on the problems that they have in their own country before they come here. America's got a lot of problems on its own."

Marysville is a city in St. Clair County, about 55 miles northeast of Detroit. More than 90% of Marysville's 9,700-person population is white.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.