In the closing days of an election whose symbolism came packaged in the form of a Confederate Flag as much as anything else, a Mahwah Councilman surfaced clinging to a corner of Dixie in an undated photo that a source said he had seen posted on Facebook.

Councilman George Ervin (pictured above, right) assumed his seat last year upon the resignation of then-freeholder-elect Mary Amoroso.

InsiderNJ reached out to Ervin, a Republican, for an explanation of the photo. He didn’t respond.

Earlier this season, InsiderNJ interviewed Assemblyman Parker Space concerning his decision to post a photo of himself posing in front of a Confederate Flag at a Hank Williams, Jr. concert.

The photo of Ervin arguably comes at an inopportune time for the North Jersey town.

Likening the conduct of Mahwah township officials to 1950s-era “white flight” suburbanites who sought to keep African-Americans from moving into their neighborhoods, state Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino announced just last week that the State filed a Superior Court complaint against the Mahwah Township Council and the Township of Mahwah alleging that, in an effort to stave off a feared influx of Orthodox Jewish persons from outside New Jersey, it approved two unlawfully discriminatory ordinances.

“In addition to being on the wrong side of history, the conduct of Mahwah’s township council is legally wrong, and we intend to hold them accountable for it,” said Attorney General Porrino. “To think that there are local governments here in New Jersey, in 2017, making laws on the basis of some archaic, fear-driven and discriminatory mindset, is deeply disappointing and shocking to many, but it is exactly what we are alleging in this case. Of course, in this case we allege the target of the small-minded bias is not African-Americans, but Orthodox Jews. Nonetheless, the hateful message is the same.”

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