Two Fairfield Republican members seeking reelection to the Representative Town Meeting are under fire for controversial comments they posted on social media.
Hannah Gale shared an image of two side-by-side swastikas from different years back in August. She also retweeted an alleged health pass card from Nazi Germany and compared it to the time period now with vaccine mandates.
Gale tells News 12 she retweeted the image because it "hit a nerve" and was shocked by it, but later deleted it and issued an apology three days later.
She says that she's Jewish herself and her intention wasn't to offend anyone.
Gale also says she feels like in the long run, it was politically motivated for Democrats to draw attention to her tweets.
First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick tells News 12, "I absolutely condemn the use of Nazi symbols in any context and have shared my entire disappointment with Ms. Gale's highly offensive retweet."
RTM member Tameisha Powell-Dunmore is also under scrutiny after a Democratic candidate sent News 12 her private posts from Facebook, one of them saying actors were hired by "Antifa and BLM to bring fear to our capitol and endangered people" during the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
In a statement to News 12, Powell-Dunmore says, "Fairfield Democrat's discretion of my views is dishonest. None of my social media posts state that I support insurrections." She also says that the Democrats are angry with her for resigning from the party.
Fairfield Democrats tell News 12 Gale resigned from her position in their party on her own earlier this year and after learning of Powell-Dunmore's post after the insurrection, they asked her to resign.
"Tameisha Powell-Dunmore is an independent thinking Black woman whose views are being exploited during this campaign season by the Fairfield Democrats who are unhappy that her resignation from the RTM Democrat caucus led to an evenly split RTM," says Kupchick in a statement to News 12.