Nevada governor slams county commissioner for 'vile, racist' comment that he only mandated masks because his wife is Asian-American and her family 'owns' face mask company in China
Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak has hit back at a county official who insinuated that he only mandated masks because his wife's family 'owns' a face mask company in China.
Sisolak slammed the comments by Nye County Commissioner Donna Cox as 'vile' and 'blatantly racist.'
In a meeting on August 3, Cox called Covid a 'political virus' and said that the governor had a 'conflict of interest' in mandating masks because of his wife Kathy, who is of Chinese descent but was born in Nevada.
'Well, a few months after he won he married his wife. Now how long he'd known her I have no idea, but she is Chinese. And you put two and two together, they actually said that her family in China own a company that's making a lot of money off of this issue.
'That she's here in the United States promoting and selling all these masks and emergency equipment and everything, and they're all being shipped over from China.'
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak got engaged to his wife Kathy shortly after he was elected in 2018
Nye County Commissioner Donna Cox claimed Kathy was 'making a lot of money off of this' and insinuated that the governor's recent mask mandate was to benefit his wife
Cox said she had a picture of the governor and his wife to 'prove this.'
Gov. Sisolak announced his engagement to Kathy Ong as governor-elect in November 2018. At the time, his campaign said they had met at their gym five years earlier, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
On July 27, the Democratic governor ordered that everyone in counties with high transmission rates, including Nye, wear masks indoors regardless of their vaccination status.
'Is there any better reason in the world to want to do a mask mandate?' Cox added during the meeting, which was attended by throngs of residents protesting the mask mandate, school closures and the use of vaccines.
Nevada averaged 37 cases per 100,000 people on Sunday, up from nine cases per 100,000 on June 10, according to the Mayo Clinic. The number of fatalities has slightly decreased, down to 1.64 percent Sunday from 1.72 percent on June 10.
Cox likened lockdowns and mask mandates to conspiracy theories like the 'New World Order' and 'Agenda 21,' which holds that a 23-year-old United Nations resolution is the blueprint for a coming eco-totalitarian regime, according to The Guardian.
In a tweet Monday, Gov. Sisolak said he was 'furious' after hearing Cox's 'vile, blatantly racist comments.'
Deaths in the US are down as Americans get vaccinated, though efforts are lagging among certain communities
Gov. Sisolak recently instituted a mask mandate for all Nevadans, vaccinated and unvaccinated, in high-risk counties as the Delta variant continues to rip through the country
'Kathy and I, along with so many others, have worked hard to fight back against the anti-Asian racism brought on by misinformation regarding COVID-19, but comments like these only take us backward. They hurt our community, our state, and the ones we love.
'Now is a time we should be coming together to get us through what has been one of the hardest times for our state, not attacking one another.
'I urge every Nevada Republican elected official and candidate to join me in calling out this bigotry.'
Nevada Assemblywoman Rochelle Nguyen backed up the governor and his wife
Nevada Assemblywoman Rochelle Nguyen chimed in, pointing out that Nevada has one of the highest populations of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in the country.
'Hate has no place here,' she said. 'Enough is enough.'
Nevada First Lady Kathy Sisolak was born in the state and graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, according to the governor's website.
She is the co-founder and director of the financial consulting firm, Hobbs, Ong & Associates and previously served as the budget manager for Clark County, Nevada, from 1983 to 1995.