Mayor’s malevolent mimic strikes with sick message

Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

It was late on Monday night, November 16, when a male Galway City councillor’s phone rang repeatedly.

When the calls went unanswered, at half past midnight his phone pinged, signalling a WhatsApp had been received.

The message, purporting to be from Mayor Mike Cubbard, disgusted the recipient.

It said: “Please answer your phone, this is an emergency my c*ck has swollen to four or five times its normal size.” The texter left a message suggesting a solution which involved the councillor’s wife.

Mayor Mike hadn’t sent the message. This was just another sinister development and escalation in the ongoing online impersonation of the Independent councillor by a twisted and sick individual with a grudge.

Weeks earlier, Mayor Mike’s malevolent mimic sent a series of WhatsApp texts to a young, good-looking, left-leaning Dublin City Councillor. She, too, was shocked.

The person purporting to be Mayor Mike expressed a desire to see this woman’s breasts “bounce up and down” while they had sex. “What a man gotta do?”, it said.

That’s the PG version; the language used in the actual message was incredibly derogatory and coarse.

It wasn’t the first message sent to this elected representative purporting to be from Mayor Mike.

“I hope that didn’t come across weird,” said one message, and God only knows what ‘that’ referred to.

Another asked her if she was “still interested in taking part?” Again, Mayor Mike shudders to think what sort of sick event this woman was being invited to take part in, in his name. Not nice on his wife or kids to have those kind of messages going around, with his name attached.

The targeting of Mayor Mike began in mid-October. Several Galway City Councillors got messages purporting to be from Cubbard, like this one sent to Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG). “Hi Ed I am just passing on new contact number as I had to have phone repaired thanks.”

Using this ‘new’ number, the person pretending to be Mayor Mike created a WhatsApp group with several councillors, and messaged: “Hi all just think it is good for us to keep in communication with each other as a group can you please add those who I have missed as I do not have access to everyone’s number thanks Mike.”

Jessica Fletcher-like Cllr Owen Hanley (Soc Dem) smelt a rat, and replied: “You’ve missed someone. The mayor.”

He then took a screenshot and alerted the real Mayor Mike to what had happened.

That was October 15, days after Mayor Mike was vocal about right-wing anti-mask protestors. Since then at least two councillors have received sexually explicit messages.

Mayor Mike’s fear is that many more councillors received similar sexual innuendo, believing it to be from him. And he’s right to worry; one screenshot reveals that the impersonator had 68 unopened messages, presumably replies.

The Gardaí are investigating, but we should be worried – an attack on the mayor is an attack on us all, and on local democracy.
For more Bradley Bytes, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.