HAMPTSTEAD – Warren Budning said he was coming back from a family dinner when he noticed the first bit of graffiti on one of his campaign posters, moustaches he chalked up to mere vandalism. It was only after going deeper into the Montreal suburb of 7,000 people that he realized it was an anti-Semitic smear – the moustaches were accompanied by swastikas and Nazi slogans.
“I mean there’s Holocaust survivors, tons of them, living in this community and they’re waking up seeing swastikas on their lawn,” said Budning’s younger brother Kevin, who was taking signs down Saturday afternoon.
“It’s absolutely disgusting.”
More than 80 per cent of Hampstead’s population is Jewish, and its entire slate of municipal candidates this election – including Budning – are Jewish. Police say that around 60 signs were defaced Friday night. Strangely all of them seem to belong to Budning, while other candidates’ posters were left largely untouched, something Budning chalks up to having a larger poster than other candidates.
“Just the easiest target, I would say,” he said.
Bonnie Feigenbaum is a town councillor who is running for mayor this year and supports Budning. Outraged at the graffiti, she speculates the culprit likely came from outside the town.
“In no way shape or form do I believe that it’s one of our candidates who did this,” she said. “There’s no way a Jew would do this to another Jew. No way at all.”
The posters were defaced a little more than a week before general municipal elections.
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