American history teaches we should expect more from George Washington, the father of a country of immigrants from around the world.

So when Sam Davis, a well-known George Washington impersonator, blamed “all the Indian people” in his town for denying him a second term on the Chesterfield township committee, and then called for a criminal investigation alleging a 117-vote margin was tallied because illegal immigrants voted, many were disappointed.

Balvir Singh, the first Indian-American elected to the county freeholder board, said Tuesday he thought Davis’s claims were racist.

"If you want to be prejudice against a group of people based on their ethnicity that’s the text book definition of a racist,” Singh said.

Singh said Tuesday the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office told him Davis had requested an investigation but they determined it had no merit. Joel Bewley, a spokesman for the prosecutor, said in an email he “cannot discuss the potential existence of an investigation into election results.”

Davis — who was featured in 2013 Star Ledger documentary about George Washington impersonators — was defeated by political newcomer Shreekant Dhopte in the general election in November. Dhopte won in a three candidate race this township of just under 8,000 south of Trenton. Davis allegedly demanded the investigation and rattled off a rant on a recent social media post alleging the election was swung by mail-in ballots from people of Indian descent who were not citizens.

“I know for a fact all the Indian people in Chesterfield voted for him and I also know that they are not United States citizens,” Davis wrote on a Facebook post last week that registered more than 400 comments after a restaurant owner posted a note left by a customer that said ‘Don’t tip immigrants!!!’ “It’s the law that you must be a citizen to vote. If you are not a citizen and voted in an election it is a $15,000 fine...I can’t wait until those people [are] slap with that big fine. That’ll teach them a lesson.”

Efforts to reach Davis for comment Tuesday by phone and through social media were not successful. The comments appeared to have been since deleted.

“He knows these accusations are baseless,” Dhopte said Tuesday. “I think he has lost his mind."

Dhopte, 45, an IT manager for a pharmaceutical company, said Davis had invited him into his home before the election and they both vowed to not run a negative campaign.

“I did not expect him to say anything like this,” Dhopte said. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

Dhopte was born in India and came to America when he was 27 in 2000. He became a citizen in 2012.

He said Davis showed him his George Washington costumes when he invited him in.

“He took me to a room of memorabilia for when he plays George Washington — all the costumes, how proud he was,” Dhopte said. “I thought the guy was a patriot, a nice person.”

Davis is a Republican and Dhopte is a Democrat. Singh, a Democrat and the first Indian-American to serve on the freeholder board, said some people in the Indian community spoke to him about their concerns after Davis posted his comments in a Facebook community group last week.

Singh said he believes the election of Donald Trump, a Republican, as president in 2016 brought a return to bigoted behavior and believes the election in Burlington County — in which Democrats took nearly 60 percent of the vote and swung control of county government from the GOP for the first time since 1975 — signaled a clear message from voters.

Newcomer Andy Kim defeated two-term incumbent GOP U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur, who was one of the president’s biggest supporters in the Congress, in a race that topped the ticket in Burlington County.

“In 2016, expressing hatred of groups of people has become normalized,” Singh said. “I’m astonished we are here in 2019 and this is still happening.”

Chesterfield has a population of just under 8,000. There are about 300 Asian Indians in the township, Dhopte said. Recent census data shows there are more than 1,000 Asian residents.

Three candidates ran for one open seat in November including two Indian candidates. Dhopte won with 1,174 votes, to 1,057 for Davis and 211 for Independent candidate Jignesh Shah.

Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters. ‘Ask Alexa for New Jersey news’