DeMaio pulls job offer over offensive tweets

Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio quickly rescinded a job offer to a prospective campaign worker Saturday after learning the person had made several disparaging Twitter postings regarding Jews, women and blacks in the recent past.

On Saturday morning, DeMaio retweeted a Blaise Hahs posting that read, “Beyond stoked that I’ll be a regional political director for Carl DeMaio’s congressional campaign.”

By Saturday afternoon, the campaign said that Hahs would not be part of the campaign. DeMaio and his campaign later said Hahs would have held a low-level post, one of more than 300 precinct canvassers who also hold the title of regional political director.

“After learning of this individual’s clearly offensive and inappropriate tweets, the offer of employment was rescinded,” DeMaio spokesman Dave McCulloch said.

The campaign said Hahs had not yet started work.

Hahs’ Twitter account where those remarks appeared in 2013 and 2014 postings had been deleted by Saturday afternoon. But before it was, several people had captured the offensive remarks, which included referring to women as “bitches,” the posting of a picture of a monkey in reference to Kim Kardashian and Kayne West’s baby and cursing Jews.

DeMaio’s election opponent, Democratic Rep. Scott Peters took to Twitter after the unsavory Hahs’ tweets emerged to praise his own campaign staff as “kind and professional.”

McCulloch said efforts to “smear Carl with what a college student tweets before he started his employment shows how desperate Scott Peters is to distract voters from his record.”

Peters’ spokesman Alex Roth said the Republican challenger should take responsibility for the hire.

“What does this say about his judgment and how he would run a congressional office?” Roth said.