Mallory Simon, CNN, August 23, 2019

A woman running for a city council in Michigan said she wants a “white community as much as possible.”

Jean Cramer’s racist answer came at a forum Thursday to a question about bringing more diversity to Marysville, which is 95% white.

Other candidates gasped at her words, as heard in a recording posted on the website of radio station WPHM.

Asked by the moderator if the community diversity needed to be addressed, perhaps by attracting foreign-born citizens, Cramer said: “My suggestion, recommendation: Keep Marysville a white community as much as possible.”

She continued: “Seriously, in other words no foreign-born, no foreign people because of what, in our past, we’ve experienced it’s better to have … simply American-born. Put it that way and no foreigners. No.”

Cramer, 67, moved to Marysville in 2012, property records show. Marysville is on the border with Canada about 50 miles northeast of Detroit.

She doubled down when the Port Huron Times Herald asked her to respond to criticism from the town’s mayor pro tem, Kathy Hayman, who is from a racially diverse family.

“As long as, how can I put this? What Kathy Hayman doesn’t know is that her family is in the wrong,” she said. “(A) husband and wife need to be the same race. Same thing with kids. That’s how it’s been from the beginning of, how can I say, when God created the heaven and the earth. He created Adam and Eve at the same time. But as far as me being against blacks, no I’m not,” Cramer is reported as saying.

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Other City Council candidates responded with shock during the forum on Thursday evening. They rejected Cramer’s views and suggested all people should be welcome.

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