The Mastroianni campaign filed a report with Rotterdam police Friday about the letter, with Schenectady County Republican Party Chairman Tom Kennedy saying the campaign also plans to file a complaint with the Postmaster General about the letter.

The letter was postmarked on October 26 and was received at Mastroianni’s campaign office three days later.

The handwritten letter states, “Death to all who secure our border,” with the author also writing that “New Yorkers to Joe Mastroianni are all traitors!”

The letter also says that “Everyone who cares about inflation is one of the greedy goats that Jesus Christ will send to hell!”

The Daily Gazette is withholding the name of the writer of the letter because the individual is the subject of a criminal investigation but has not been charged. The writer is a resident of Schenectady.

In the letter to Mastroianni, the individual wrote that “Every white person in this hemisphere is an illegal alien terrorist, genocidal, land thief, who must be forced to slave labor (for life) on environmental remediation to restore sovereignty to Native American tribes. ! Yes, I am willing to do that.”

The writer is currently employed as a paraprofessional in the Schenectady City School District, the district confirmed Friday.

The district declined to comment further on the matter Friday.

Mastroianni, a Rotterdam city councilman, will face incumbent Democrat Angelo Santabarbara on Tuesday in a race to represent the 111th Assembly District.

The Republican-backed conservative candidate said Friday he was troubled by the language in the Schenectady resident’s letter.

“I didn’t really react or process,” Mastroianni said. “It’s only in the last day or two that it stands out to me. I talked to thousands of people during the election campaign, especially people who are registered with the Democratic Party, and I tried to understand how people think. But that language (in the letter) stayed with me because I didn’t think anyone thought every white person was genocidal. I’m white, but my grandparents weren’t born here.”

Santabarbara denounced the rhetoric in Friday’s letter.

“There is no place in our political discourse for threats of violence of any kind,” Santabarbara said in a statement. “Our campaign strongly condemns such rhetoric, regardless of where it comes from or who it targets.”

Brendan Savage, secretary of the Schenectady City Democratic Committee, noted that Santabarbara received a letter from the same person in 2022 with similar inflammatory language, with the person sending a political flyer back to Santabarbara’s campaign that had been left on the door with handwritten notes from the person scrawled on the placard.

In response to the Santabarabara campaign’s pledge to fight inflation, the individual wrote that “Anyone who cares about the inflation of the economy is a Mammon-worshipping idolater going to hell!”

In a portion of the campaign ad devoted to law enforcement, the person wrote, “Defund all the pigs!”

“This individual, who is a registered member of the Working Families Party, has unfortunately written very angry letters with extremist rhetoric to the Santabarbara campaign in the past,” Savage said in a statement. “That this individual, who by (their) alarming Action(s) shows that (they) may not be completely stable, has now escalated (their) angry letters into threats against any candidate is completely unacceptable.”

Savage said the Democratic Committee kept a photographic record of the sign because it was alarming, but did not report the letter to authorities because they did not believe it rose to the level of a threat.

In a letter to the editor recently published in The Daily Gazette, the person used similar language in reference to ads run by the campaign of U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro, writing that “Everyone who supports Marc Molinaro based on his attack ads is a among the greedy “Goats” whom Jesus Christ will condemn to hell”.

Mastroianni said Friday that he would not like to see the letter writer punished for the missive, saying that instead he would prefer to talk to them to get their point of view.

“Our system is meant to welcome all viewpoints in a respectful way,” Mastroianni said. “I have not heard any of these views that this person has presented so far. If there is an element of people who agree with these things, it’s disconcerting.”

Mastroianni said he was troubled that the letter came from a school district employee.

“It’s extremely concerning if (they’re) around kids in an educational setting,” he said.

Last month, Mastroianni was accused of stealing a Santabarbara mailer from a resident mailbox in Scotland, with footage from the homeowners’ Ring doorbell camera showing Mastroianni taking one of his opponents’ mail from the home’s mailbox.

Kennedy said the letter writer’s missive stood out for its inflammatory rhetoric.

“We get negative messages all the time, but this one stood out because of the racial threats and the death threat about securing the border,” Kennedy said Friday.

Schenectady County Democratic Committee Chairman Frank Salamone denounced the letter to Mastroianni on Friday.

“There is no place in our political discourse for threats of violence of any kind,” Salamone said in a statement.

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