Some have racist content, including an April 2011 email in which Ricketts responded “great laugh” regarding a forwarded joke with a punchline that includes the word n-----. He responded “I like this” to another forwarded message that complains about special days for certain groups, including Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Martin Luther King Day.

The email exchanges were from 2009 through 2013. The Splinter News story did not say how the emails were obtained.

Gov. Ricketts issued a statement Tuesday that echoed his father’s: “My father said he deeply regrets and apologizes for some of the exchanges in his emails. He admitted that he has said things that don’t reflect his value system and that he strongly believes that bigoted ideas are wrong.”

“I also believe bigoted ideas are wrong,” the governor added. “The language and views expressed in those emails do not in any way reflect my views and are not appropriate.”

Gov. Ricketts was not a party to most of the emails. But in a 2010 exchange, he questioned the reliability of the emails being sent by his father. Joe Ricketts had sent son Pete an email chain titled “Americans believe in religious freedom — Muslims don’t.”