Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro yesterday forced out his appointee on an Education Department parent council for forwarding an e-mail containing racist jokes.
Molinaro said he spoke yesterday morning with the appointee, Salvatore Ballarino, and “asked him to resign.”
“He agreed, and he has resigned effective today,” Molinaro said.
Mayor Bloomberg applauded the move, saying, “The e-mails he forwarded were deeply offensive.”
Ballarino, 67, did not return a call seeking comment.
On Sunday, when asked about the e-mail, he defended it as “a joke.”
“It wasn’t a racial comment,” he said.
In that e-mail were photos of then-Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain during a presidential debate, with invented dialogue superimposed in writing near their heads. McCain’s “jokes” included references to black people hanging from a tree and equating black babies to excrement.