Governor Mapp Says Sorry To Virgin Islanders; Refuses To Apologize To Sen. Millin Young

ST. CROIX — As promised, Governor Kenneth Mapp, during a press conference to announce new cabinet members and salary increases to seven government departments and agencies today, took some time to address the tension between himself and Senator Millin Young, after calling the three-term senator a “setty fowl,” jackass, confounded liar and crazy.

As he did during an interview last Friday with The Consortium, the chief executive went into detail explaining what had happened, and also revealed that he and Mrs. Millin Young are family. But he refused to apologize to the senator; and instead argued that her behavior was one that demanded a tough response.

“The simple answer is no,” the governor said when asked if he would say sorry. “The senator has as much as an obligation to carry herself appropriately in her office. You’re a sitting senator, and you took it upon yourself, knowing the facts to be completely to the contrary, that you’re going to accuse two officials of the government in involving themselves in criminal activity, to somehow exact some official action on your part. You should know better. That is unacceptable.”

The governor then apologized: “I know that a number of persons in the Virgin Islands community are annoyed at my choice of language and to them I apologize for getting very close to using profane language,” he said at Government House today.

“I’m making my apology to those persons in the community, and I don’t really want to repeat all the words in terms of some of the choice language that I used,” the governor continued, stating that some of the language used in response to Millin Young’s accusation came as a result of adopting the territory’s culture. The governor is originally from New York.

“And the reality is,” he continued, “for those of you who don’t know, I was raised on a farm. We raised chickens and ducks, and pigs and cows, sheep and goats — and just like people, animals have personalities. And the claim by some that somehow this is sexism, I don’t know how you make that claim. But if you complain and you make a lot of noise about things that aren’t important and things that you know are not true, and you just carry on, then those terms that are relevant to our history and our culture — my grandmother raised me well and I will utter a few of them.

Later, the governor lamented that an entire generation had missed some of the terms that he grew up with, and said a relearning of the culture was in order to reacquaint the lost phrases. And he said that during his political career, the women in politics that he knew were tough and did not take cover under the shield of sexism; motioning to the many women in his administration — to include the two announced today as Communications Director and Chief Labor Negotiator (Natalie Nelson Tang How) as proof that he is not a sexist.