Farhanna Balgahoom Sayegh, the wife of Paterson mayoral candidate Andre Sayegh, engaged the flier controversy today with a letter to Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.

The letter is reprinted here:

My husband, Andre Sayegh, is a candidate for mayor in the election scheduled for tomorrow, May 8.

I am reaching out to you today to express my grave concern over the disgraceful, and possibly criminal tactics being used in this election. I am specifically referring to a racist, homophobic flyer that was distributed to households in Paterson in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The language on the flyer contains racial epithets to describe African Americans and Latinos, and includes shameful and hateful attacks against both our Muslim and LGBT communities. It is divisive and vile, and this hate mail was designed to falsely insinuate to voters that this language was coming from Andre.

I am attaching the flyer because I cannot bring myself to write the words that appear on it. You will see that the flyer claims to have been paid for by the “Progressive Values Committee,” a political PAC that has publicly stated it was created to support Andre Sayegh. This hate mail, and this reprehensible language, is not something that my family, my husband or my community would ever condone. Andre has focused his public service on the message of “One Paterson,” an effort to unite all the diverse ethnic, cultural and religious communities of Paterson.

I understand that my husband’s campaign submitted the flyer to the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office as soon as it became aware of it. I also saw social media posts that show an image of someone at a mailbox distributing this hate mail (also attached).

It is very disturbing that these tactics are becoming more commonplace, as we saw in similar incidents in Hoboken and Edison during last November’s elections. These types of hate crimes negatively impact the very fiber of our communities, and as a community, we should explore all recourse available to us under the law to condemn and discourage this behavior.

We believe that the distribution of this hate mail may constitute a crime, and that identifying the individual in the attached picture will help us identify the person or persons responsible for producing this flyer. I hope you will consider investigating this matter. In Paterson, as in all our communities, it is important that we set an example so as to discourage these tactics in the future.

Please have someone from your office contact me as soon as possible.