GOP Nevada AG candidate says her call to hang Black Dem opponent was 'tongue in cheek' -- but not racist

Republican Nevada Attorney General candidate Sigal Chattah is denying that she was trying to be racist when she sent a text message to a former friend saying that her Black Democratic opponent deserved to be hung.

The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that Chattah, who was born in Israel, sent the message last year to a former friend who subsequently leaked it to sabotage her campaign.

“This guy should be hanging from a (expletive) crane,” Chattah wrote of Democratic opponent Aaron Ford. “He’s like the leader of (H)amas – making tons of money while the People in Gaza are starving.”

Chattah tells the Review Journal that her remark about hanging Ford was "tongue in cheek" and that "when I say to my friends, ‘I’m going to hang you from a crane,’ I don’t literally mean I’m going to hang you from a crane."

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Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, the former friend who leaked the message, agrees that Chattah was not trying to be racist when she called for Ford's hanging. That said, she does think the text shows that Chattah is not fit to be Nevada's AG.

"I ran it because I believe that she’s unfit from an emotional standpoint, to understand how to interact in a position of that magnitude of being attorney general," she tells the paper.