Controversial Harris County Republican Chair Unexpectedly Resigns

The chairman of the Republican Party in Texas’s Harris County has resigned after months of controversy for his racist Facebook post in which he implied that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a monkey.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Nielsen stepped down after having been “dogged by his social media post that displayed a Martin Luther King Jr. quote next to a banana.”

Nielsen was heavily criticized by fellow Republicans for the post, which came in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers, and he initially said that he would not take over as Harris County GOP chairman before reversing himself shortly afterward.