Erick Salgado, a socially conservative minister and long-shot candidate, told reporters at a Staten Island mayoral forum Monday night that he was the victim of three emailed death threats after the National Organization for Marriage, a group dedicated to fighting the legalization of same-sex marriage, endorsed him last week.

“[The emails] said that I’m a rat and I deserve to die,” Mr. Salgado told Politicker after the forum. “It was because that day I got the official endorsement, the NOM, they mentioned that [in the email].”

Mr. Salgado said the emails arrived from three different people and all criticized his NOM endorsement, though he does not know who sent the threats. He first read the threats, he said, on his cell phone, and they were sent to his official campaign email account.

“It makes me nervous, because of my children, I get nervous,” he said.

(Politicker)