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Mayor from US town steps down after claiming ice fishing would lead to sex work
Mayor of Hudson in Ohio, Craig Shubert, has resigned after making headlines last week for saying that allowing ice fishing would lead to prostitution. — Picture via Facebook John Roberts
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KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 16 — The mayor of a town in Ohio has resigned after making headlines last week for saying that allowing ice fishing would lead to sex work.
Craig Shubert, the mayor of Hudson, which is about 49 kilometres southeast of Cleveland, tendered his resignation from the largely ceremonial post, New York Post reported.
Shubert had last week suggested during a city council meeting that allowing ice fishing at a local park could lead to such work.
“Does someone come back next year and say I want an ice shanty on Hudson Springs Park for X amount of time?” Shubert reportedly said during the meeting.
“And if you then allow ice fishing with shanties, then that leads to another problem. Prostitution. Now you’ve got the police chief and the police department involved.”
Shubert, whose comments went viral and led to him being ridiculed on social media, later issued a clarification, saying that his statements “were made out of concern for our community; what could become of unintended consequences of new legislation, based on my prior television news reporting experience.”
“My attempt to inject a bit of dry humour to make a point about this, in the midst of a cold, snowy February, was grossly misunderstood.”
“When I entered the race for mayor in 2019, my objective was to bring about change,” Shubert said in a statement.
“To shake up city council and our city administration, to return Hudson to its core conservative values, and to focus on the needs of our community; not the wants of a few,” he added.
Shubert, 65, said he had planned to retire, especially after the death of his wife in September.
According to the portal, Shubert has been known to make outlandish statements in the past.
He had previously claimed that a high school creative writing class used a textbook that contained child pornography.
His statements led to threats being made against school board members even though there was no child pornography used in the class.