Last week’s forum for Washoe Board of County Commission candidates generated a wide-ranging discussion, but a comment by a candidate after the event has since drawn some controversy.
Incumbent Commissioner Kitty Jung was asked at the forum about a comment she made at a progressive leadership summit regarding suicide.
Challenging Jung at the forum was University of Nevada, Reno student Emily Spalding, whom Jung accused after the event of being “a plant” for her opponent, Austin Grush.
“I brought up something that Kitty Jung had said at the progressive summit about the 23andMe test and that there would be a lot of suicides from the results,” Spalding told Don Dike-Anukam (ThisisReno’s conservative columnist) after the forum.
The statement was referring to 23andMe’s genetic and DNA testing, which shows most people are of mixed race.
“There’s nobody who’s 100-percent anything,” Jung explained, implying that if white supremicists found out they are not purely white, they would commit suicide after doing a 23andMe test.
Spalding said suicide is not a joke.
“She seemed more defensive than empathetic,” she added.
“You’re not motivated by some external factor?” Dike-Anukam asked Spalding.
“I needed to say it,” she responded. “It’s been something that’s been on my mind since the progressive summit, and I needed her to know that it was inappropriate and that she shouldn’t be making jokes about it.”
Jung, however, said the question “felt like an ambush, but I can’t say for sure. It felt like a gotcha question.
“That’s a campaign technique,” she reiterated. “I stand by what I said. I didn’t mean to make light of suicide.”
Jung’s opponent, Austin Grush, said he doesn’t know Spalding, has never met her, and that she was not asking the question on behalf of his campaign.
Spalding said Jung should do her research on suicide before she talks.
Jung apologized for the comment and said she did not mean to make light of suicide.
“I was trying to be flippant,” Jung explained. “There is no pure race and no superior race.”
Don Dike-Anukam contributed to this story.
