CHARLOTTE AMALIE -— Near the end of last month, Governor Kenneth Mapp told former St. Croix Republican Party chairman Herb Schoenbohm to “go f___ himself” in a social media dispute over what bottled water to drink here.
On Sunday, Mapp again made the territory wonder what alcoholic remedies he’s been mixing when an elderly male constituent asked where he’s currently residing.
“Wit ur mudda (ENGLISH TRANSLATION: with your mother),” the governor replied to the post on Facebook. Sources said Mapp was referring Patrick Deery.
The social media Crucian vs. Thomian confusion started Sunday morning in the Facebook group “What’s Going on St. Thomas?” when Lyn Shoemaker said that Mapp’s former $20,000-per-month villa at Estate Nazareth was violating the generator curfew in effect for the territory.
Some in the Facebook group accused Shoemaker, who runs the Golden Age horse rescue ranch in Smith Bay, of trying to embarrass Mapp because she linked him to his controversial former official residence in St. Thomas.
Shoemaker insisted, though, that her only concern was the improper generator use, and not Mapp’s current digs. Still, he couldn’t resist trying to dig Deery and Shoemaker on Facebook.
“Why ah yo so?(ENGLISH: Why do all of you [white people] act so?)” Mapp asked in the comment thread. “Everyone knows I have not been in that home since May 2015. Just gotta criticize even when u know what u saying ain’t true. Sounds like a screw on the top floor loose. New executive order: free 4″ screwdrivers till noon on Monday.”
Shoemaker replied: “I never said you lived there now!!!” she said. “In fact I specifically stated you were no longer there! Please enforce the law. That generator going 24/7 is a nightmare! Please!”
The Facebook thread in “What’s Going On St. Thomas” was invisible to the V.I. Free Press because publisher John McCarthy was banned from the group after posting a story in October that the pace of hurricane recovery was faster in St. Thomas than on St. Croix.”
(As of today, according to the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA), St. Thomas is 68 percent electrically-connected and St. Croix is about 28 percent connected.) St. Thomas had 90 percent of its electrical grid destroyed by Hurricane Irma on Sept. 6 — St. Croix had 60 percent of its grid damaged by Hurricane Maria on Sept. 19-20.
Asked about the Facebook conflagration on Wednesday, Shoemaker told the Virgin Islands Free Press: “Never did I imagine a simple question regarding a generator curfew would escalate to this! The worst part are all the racial overtones.”
In the dispute from last month with Schoenbohm, Mapp insisted that he never actually cursed because he told his former Republican colleague to go “$%*&#” himself, leaving room for interpretation as to what word he was actually using there.