Winnipeg council candidate asks voters to accept he's grown since he issued hateful tweets

Warning: This story includes offensive images and language.

A Winnipeg city council candidate says he takes full responsibility for posting misogynist, homophobic and antisemitic content to social mediaa decade ago and wants voters to know he has changed.

Omar Kinnarath, a community organizer vying to unseat incumbent councillorCindy Gilroy in central Winnipeg's Daniel McIntyre ward this fall, said he is a better person than he was from 2011 to 2014, when he issuedtweetsincluding derogatory references to women, gay men and Jews.

While those posts have been deleted, screen-captured imagescontinue to circulate viasocial media.

Kinnarath says he takes ownership for his actions, repudiates his own statementsandunderstands the harmhe caused.

"It's not right to speak that way. You know, you do hurt people when you speak that way or express those things, and I'm just tryingto learn from the people around me andbecome better and be more sensitive," he said in an interview earlier this week.

"Ijust want peoplevoters and the general public to realize thatI am a real person. I'm not like the typical politician that tries to hide or shy away from these sorts of things. I do face these things head on."

Kinnarath saidtoxic masculinity contributed to the way he was socialized and he hopes voters in theOct. 26 election give himthe chance to demonstrate that he has learned.

"I know in my work in anti-racism, where people are called out for racism, you always have to give room for them to improve and to become better people and not think that way," he said.

Tara Mann, a former romantic partner who has a child with Kinnarath, says he isindeed a better person. She describedhim as a good father who does good work in the West End, and said it would be a shame if his old tweets preventhim from getting elected.

Tweets presentchallenge: expert

The combination of the volume of his offensive tweets, and how relatively recent they are,present an electoral challenge for Kinnarath, says a reputation management expert.

Sally Housser,thesenior manager of public affairs at the Alberta-based Canadian Strategy Group, said while the general public may be willing to overlook sexist, racist or homophobic statements issued decades ago, few reasonable people would have tolerated some of Kinnarath's tweetsa decade ago.

The council candidate is doing the right thing by accepting responsibility for his actions, she said, but voters will ultimately decide whether or not he has made genuine efforts to educate himself and reach out to people affected by his words.

"It really amounts to, what emotion are you able to leave voters with? Do they believe you to be real or not? And I mean, that's pretty much an unquantifiable factor, but it is the key one," Housser said in an interview.

Kinnarath said he expected to answer for his old Twitter posts during this election because he's had to answer for them for several years.

"Having dealt with this stuff before and feeling the scrutiny ofthe public and the media, I definitely feel like it's preparing me for the scrutiny of public office," he said.

He also saidhe has been the victim of hateful comments himself, and acknowledged they are particularly severe because he is Muslim and a person of colour.

"The things that I said were horrible, that's for sure. But the things said to me in the last sevento eightyears? It's bad," he said, referring to threats of physical violence.

"And those people have no remorse. They have no intention to learn or be better or to understand people."