Mayor booted from office over support for Obama’s refugees
‘We defeated this, and it should be used as a template for the rest of country’
LEO HOHMANN
WND.com
03/09/2017
The people of Rutland, Vermont, have gained a measure of revenge against former President Obama’s forced influx of Syrian refugees, voting out the five-term mayor who helped negotiate the controversial resettlements with a federal contractor.
Rutland is Vermont’s third-largest city but still very small, with a population of 16,500.
The candidacy of Mayor Christopher Louras went down in flames in Tuesday’s election as he was defeated by the refugee program’s most ardent opponent on the board of aldermen. David Allaire won with 52 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Louras.
“That’s not just a win, that’s a drubbing,” said Don Chioffi, an activist who supported the upstart candidate Allaire.
Louras came out last April and “announced,” much to the surprise of his residents, that the city would be taking in up to 100 Syrian refugees in fiscal 2017 along with others from Iraq. The announcement divided the city among those who wanted to welcome the refugees – no questions asked – and those who thought the refugee program was being dictated without any local input and with very little information. Protests and counter-protests were organized, attracting national media attention.
Unfazed by the division it caused in Rutland, a State Department contractor opened an office and started placing Syrians into the community.
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