I couldn't get Thomas McNally, the Republican candidate for mayor in Montville, to call me back to talk about some troubling posts he has made on Facebook over the years, labeled as racist by someone who sent them to me anonymously.

I left a couple of telephone messages for McNally on Monday and Tuesday, asking him to talk about his controversial Facebook postings, which have been circulating around town this election season.

He told me in a few email responses that he wasn't going to participate in my "witch hunt" and said he "doesn't have a racist bone" in his body.

He elaborated by talking about his generous work for the poor.

"I have volunteered to deliver food to less fortunate, many of whom are minorities, every month I spend hundreds of dollars out of my pocket to make meals for the New London homeless center again many are minorities," he wrote in one of several emails I received from him Tuesday.

"Because someone on the opposing side sends you an old Facebook post that was a talk to text simple mistake a week before an election and try to spin it to make me a racist and you find it newsworthy to publish is more disgusting," he wrote to me.

The talk to text mistake is an apparent reference to the Facebook comment I mentioned in my request for an interview, in which he commented "someone needs to ax her what she wants" about a WTNH Channel 8 news interview with family members of a black man shot by police.

I couldn't ask him because he wouldn't call me back, but I guess he is suggesting the "ax" in his comment wasn't ridiculing the way she was speaking, but a translation mistake.

I also could not interview him about his other posts that have been circulating, like one in which he commented on a political blog post reporting that black people are voting early.

"Of course don't bite the hand that feeds you," was McNally's response to the post, with a picture of black people in voting booths.

And then there was his reposting of the declaration: "I'm proud to be white. I bet no one passes this on because they are scared of be called a racist."

McNally, apparently, was not scared of that.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with being proud of being white. But why the white chest-thumping in a society long dominated anyway by white men?

To me, it seems dismissive of those who don't enjoy the same privilege and therefore, at the least, unseemly. It's worse than someone boasting they are rich.

Naturally the copies of McNally's Facebook posts sent me directly to his Facebook page, where I found more curious things.

Some posts stood out for me simply because of our obvious political differences, like a repost of a picture of a tuxedoed pre-president Donald Trump, fondling his wife's bare legs, spread across his lap, as she posed, the strap of her evening dress slipping down over her bare shoulder, on a marble slab in a grand, gilded room.

I guess this is what you repost to show you admire your president?

More troubling were repostings from local police departments of pictures of people wanted for petty crimes. The local perpetrators in these postings on McNally's page were all black, at least all the ones I found.

Surely there have been similar ones of white perpetrators on police sites, but I couldn't find any on McNally's Facebook page.

I will take the candidate at his word that he doesn't have a racist bone in his body.

But he should know, in this time of Facebook, that voters are reading and watching and coming to their own conclusions.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com