State Senate Candidate MacRae Embroiled In Another TikTok Controversy
Despite living 700 miles away, Zoe Roberson, the sister of Republican state Senate candidate and Bourne resident Kari D. MacRae, does not want to see her sister elected and said as much in a series of videos on TikTok.
Ms. MacRae, in response, has threatened to release sexually compromising videos of Ms. Roberson.
Ms. Roberson’s videos on TikTok, in which she shares her experiences with her sister, have each been viewed hundreds of thousands—in some cases even millions—of times.
In one instance, a voicemail left by Ms. MacRae in which she alleges she has “a big group of investigators” working on her campaign to “find dirt on her opponent” and threatens to expose sexually explicit videos of her sister has gone viral on TikTok, racking up more than 3 million views and sparking discussions online. The voicemail was allegedly left by Ms. MacRae in response to Ms. Roberson’s TikTok videos.
Ms. Roberson, who was raised in Massachusetts but now lives in North Carolina, shared the voicemail in a two-part TikTok video earlier this month.
Ms. MacRae is a member of the Bourne School Committee and a former teacher. She was terminated from her job as a math and business teacher at Hanover High School in 2021 over social media posts that have caused controversy in the Bourne Public Schools over the past 10 months.
In a widely shared video, Ms. MacRae said that with her on Bourne’s school committee, she will make sure that “[children are] not being taught critical race theory, that they’re not being taught that the country was built on racism, so they’re not being taught that they can choose whether or not they want to be a boy or a girl.”
Much like the original controversy surrounding Ms. MacRae, this one too started on TikTok. Ms. Roberson posted a TikTok video on August 11 telling people not to vote for Ms. MacRae in the Massachusetts Senate race. Ms. Roberson made a series of videos on TikTok in which she used anecdotal evidence from her personal and familial experiences with Ms. MacRae in addition to Ms. MacRae’s political stances as phrased in her original video from last year.
“I do not think she should be in the classroom, I do not think she should be in state Senate, I do not think she should be on the school board,” Ms. Roberson said in a post from August 21. “When I openly expressed that, she immediately resorted to trying different dirty tactics to try and get me to take the video down.”
As of this week, Ms. Roberson’s first video from August 11 has more than 1 million views. Between then and August 15, she posted four additional videos. Then, on August 15, Ms. Roberson said she got a call from Ms. MacRae, from whom she said she has been largely estranged since their mother’s death in May 2021.
“She called my work landline first,” Ms. Roberson said. “She said that she was giving me a courtesy call because she was going to send my mother-in-law explicit videos of me and my husband.”
On August 18, Ms. Roberson posted another video in which she shared a voicemail that Ms. MacRae mistakenly left on Ms. Roberson’s husband’s work phone, thinking it was Ms. Roberson’s father-in-law and owner of the plumbing business where she is employed. But Ms. Roberson, the business’s office manager, said she and her husband, David, own the business, having purchased the business with his brother from their parents years ago. In a text, Ms. MacRae told Ms. Roberson that she left a voicemail for “David Sr.,” thinking that it was Ms. Roberson’s father-in-law.
“My husband’s name is David, but that’s not my father-in-law’s name,” Ms. Roberson said. She asked her husband, but he said he did not see any calls. After a few days, Ms. Roberson checked the phone herself.
“The voicemail was there,” she said.
In the voicemail, Ms. MacRae spoke about Ms. Roberson making TikToks at her company’s office, calling the behavior immature. Ms. MacRae also called many of Ms. Roberson’s claims “outlandish,” including Ms. Roberson’s allegation that their late mother caught COVID-19 from a party thrown by Ms. MacRae. Ms. Roberson filmed herself reacting to her sister’s words.
“Why I’m getting you involved in this,” Ms. MacRae is heard saying, “is that my campaign does research and they check my name to see if people are talking about me. I have a big group of investigators that go and try to find dirt on my opponent. Interestingly enough, some of the dirt is now being found on your daughter-in-law. Some sexually explicit videos that are out on some site Pornhub or something, something to do with Snapchat and all kinds of fun stuff.”
Ms. MacRae said she felt that as a business owner, she thought Ms. Roberson’s father-in-law would want to know what is going on at his office and added that Ms. Roberson has made videos about her in-laws as well.
“I just wanted to let you know that you—as a business, a very successful Christian business owner—probably wouldn’t want my campaign to maybe expose some of the stuff that she’s done that we have now and actually have found,” Ms. MacRae said.
“To me, it was just plain as day: [Ms. MacRae was] trying to make threats to try to harm my character, to try to harm my job,” Ms. Roberson said. “I’m very grateful that me and my husband are in a position where we are business owners. She even said it herself, we run a very successful plumbing business in North Carolina. But it’s just crazy to me that if I did work for another company, that she was totally willing to just smear my character.”
Ms. Roberson said she identifies herself as a libertarian while her sister identifies as a conservative. In the wake of the video, Ms. Roberson has gained thousands of followers, with many leaving supportive comments on her videos. Ms. MacRae, on the other hand, no longer has a presence on TikTok and declined requests for comment on this article.
Ms. Roberson said she shared her story and experiences online because she felt compelled to do so. She acknowledged that, as a resident of North Carolina, the Massachusetts Senate election will not affect her, but she said she felt her truth needed to be told.
“I think it is important for people to know that even if somebody looks good behind the camera…politics runs so much deeper than that,” she said. “All she [Ms. MacRae] had to do was make a post or something saying, I don’t agree with what my sister’s saying. If what I was saying was untrue, then that’s what she would’ve done. But everything that I said had validity to it, and that’s why she resorted immediately to blackmail.”
Ms. MacRae also claimed that she has a team of investigators to “find dirt on [her] opponent,” but the validity of this statement is unconfirmed. Ms. MacRae is running against incumbent state Senator Susan L. Moran (D-Falmouth) for the Plymouth and Barnstable District seat, which currently includes Bourne, Falmouth and Sandwich and will include Mashpee after the general election on November 8.