NRCC-Backed Candidates In Mississippi And Louisiana Have Both Flirted With White Supremacist Groups
An intriguing pattern has emerged in two special elections for the House in Louisiana and Mississippi: Both of the candidates backed by the National Republican Congressional Committee have had a bit of a, shall we say, white supremacy issue.
This is not to say that the two are white supremacists -- rather, they have both flirted with organizations and/or people who are known for, at a minimum, dabbling rather heavily in such sentiments.
The Mississippi case is fairly straightforward -- the GOP candidate is a mayor who had once agreed to accept a gift to his city from a white supremacist group, then backed off. The Louisiana example is a lot more complicated, involving attempts to cover up payments connected to the infamous Klansman/Neo-Nazi David Duke.
Both seats were held by the GOP before resignations by incumbents set up the special elections -- and both are heavily contested and have attracted the attention of the national parties, especially the Louisiana contest.
In Mississippi's Second District, Southaven Mayor Greg Davis agreed in 2001 to accept a plaque as a gift from the Council of Conservative Citizens, thanking the town for flying the state flag in the midst of a controversy over the flag's Confederate emblems, according to press reports at the time.
There was a brief public outcry, during which Davis initially defended accepting the gift from the CCC, which is well-known for espousing doctrines of "racial integrity." In the end though, Davis declined the gift. The episode involving the CCC hasn't emerged as an issue in the current campaign -- yet. But Davis won a seriously contested primary, and might just be vulnerable against Prentiss County clerk Travis Childers, the Dem challenger.
In Louisiana's Sixth District, the situation is a whole lot muckier. Former state Rep. Woody Jenkins' 1996 campaign for U.S. Senate paid $82,500 to a phone-banking firm that was tied to none other than Klansman/Neo-Nazi David Duke for the right to use Duke's voter list.
After allegedly contracting with the firm on the basis of Duke's personal recommendation, Jenkins then attempted to conceal the payments when the Duke ties became more and more apparent. Jenkins' defunct Senate campaign later agreed to pay a $3,000 fine for the concealment.
The Duke affair has become a major issue in the Louisiana race. Democrats have hammered Jenkins, and he faced considerable attacks over it within the Republican primary.
The contest is considered a toss-up, and might just end up changing party hands. In a sign of how seriously the cash-strapped NRCC is treating this, they're running an attack ad against Dem candidate Don Cazayoux, wittily calling him "Don Tax You."
It remains to be seen whether taxes are scarier than payments to Neo-Nazis, but we should find out in about three weeks.
Comments (25)
CNN reports that Clinton was booed at the union event today in PA for attacking Obama:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/14/pennsylvania-crowd-jeers-clinton-attacks-on-obama/
April 14, 2008 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link, fluff, but does it really belong here?
April 14, 2008 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, it's not being reported by TPM that Hillary Clinton was booed for going after Obama, so I'm reporting it in the comments.
April 14, 2008 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
No thread for the gallup poll that shows Obama not being hurt by the comments in San Francisco?
April 14, 2008 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
That whole Confederate flag issue in MS was just a debacle. I lived in Oxford while the whole thing unfolded--former Gov. Winters was trying to convince voters to change the flag, and Greg Stewart, white supremicist from Oxford, battled hard to keep the flag. And succeeded.
He was very clever. His campaign was pretty much this: Y'all want a bunch of Yankees telling us what we should be doing down here?
The fact that Yankees couldn't give a s&$t about what people in MS were doing was irrelevant, of course.
I'm not sure that accepting something from the CCC is the mark of death that it would be in, say, national politics.
April 14, 2008 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I lived in Hernando at the time and argued to all who would listen that we needed to keep the flag as a monument of rembrance to our peckerwood past. Lest we forget what a bunch of racists ran the state.
I have since moved to Memphis and made the same argument for keeping the statue of Gen Nathan Bedford Forest where it is. It was erected as a rebuke to the civil rights movement, and we need to leav it there as a reminder that this citie's response to civil rights protests was to erect a monument to the man who founded the KKK.
April 14, 2008 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's the percentage of African American voters in those districts? This might help increase Dem turnout in those races.
April 14, 2008 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know percentages, but I do know that the African-American turnout for the flag vote wasn't as high as it could have been.
I heard, anecdotally, that many people just didn't bother to vote because they didn't think this was that big of a deal.
April 14, 2008 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is clever, but after about 150 years of that, wouldn't y'all think it wouldn't work? Carpetbaggers like George Bush have been coming down here for 150 years telling us that shit and I wish to hell we'd quit falling for it. That's always the prologue to a good ol' ass raping, frankly, pardon me, but it is. Just like jakeleg preachers all over the south. All the hell they are are conmen who've preyed on us down here for at least 150 years.
I've said often enough what my vision about the answer to this problem is - I think I saw the answer in Texas on primary night.
When 4000 people show up in a precinct that routinely sees turnout in the double digits - less than 100 - then something big is happening.
April 14, 2008 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
You would think, after 150 years, that people wouldn't fall for it, but they do, and they did.
I taught at the University of Mississippi at the same time. During this period, Chancellor Khayat and the University instituted a ban on bringing sticks into the football stadium. Sticks? Sticks?
You couldn't fly the giant confederate flags without sticks.
He started receiving death threats. He stuck to his decision, though, and slowly, gradually, reluctantly, fewer and fewer Confederate flags are seen on the campus. By the time I left (2002), it was almost becoming a non-issue. Almost. Greg Stewart (mentioned above) was trying to stir things up, but the students weren't all that interested.
'Course, it helped that the coaches for the football and basketball teams wrote editorials that said "Quit flying the flag, you morons. We're getting killed on recruiting".
Heritage matters. Ole Miss Football matters more.
(Snark only halfhearted).
April 14, 2008 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
HusseinTenaX, you rock!
April 14, 2008 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a Texas Election Judge who four years ago had 5 people at the caucuses for three precincts and this year had nearly 200, I agree with you. The Clinton-Obama race has galvanized Texas politics. It was a mess, but I loved it.
But will it last until November?
When I grew up in East Texas in the 50's the Civil War was still "just over." Then the Civil Rights Movement revived it. That, together with a bunch of northerners who immigrated to Texas in the 60's and 70's created the Texas Republican Party, which was and remains the party of class distinction and racial/class superiority. Blacks were the lowest on the rung, but then came Mexicans, Cajuns (we had a lot in east Texas) and poor Whites. Those are all the enemies of "good people." They teach it to their kids. And there were two kinds of Yankees - Damned Yankees and worse. That's not 150 years. It's three centuries, and it's today.
Don't forget that most of the colonists who came from the U.S. into Texas after 1820 were Southerners coming into Texas with their slaves looking for a place to expand the slave South. One hiccup was that the Mexicans revolted from Spain and intended to outlaw slavery, but Stephan F. Austin was in Mexico city and able to prevent the new Mexican government from actively suppressing slavery in Texas.
Texas was to become a powerful nation based on commercial agriculture operated with slaves who were the cheapest possible labor. The wealth created by slave-operated market-oriented agriculture and cattle raising was the attraction to the mostly Southern immigrants who entered Texas and in less than two decades revolted against the Mexican government.
The Yankees destroyed that entire dream by winning the Civil War and by occupying the South. The Serbs are still fighting because they lost the Battle of Kosovo in 1348. It still sways large groups who don't want to lose the culture. Why should it be strange that the same reaction exists only a century and a half after the loss of the War between the States, also known as the War of Northern Aggression?
April 15, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
The tenuous connections are interesting...too bad it couldn't be a straight forward slam dunk. Like if either one used to be a Klan member, or better yet, a Grand Wizard of the Klan, and maybe if they were on tape using the "n" word repeatedly...by God they wouldn't stand a chance...well unless they were a Democtratic Senator from West "By God" Virginia!
April 14, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I used to know someone from Jackson. I hear ya - it's been a few years, but I couldn't believe how little had changed with some people, like her mother. O lord!
I just don't even want to go into some of the things she said when she came here to visit.
It's so damn crazy because southern culture really and truly is more African American than anything else. It's what give us what charm we have here. Swear to god.
April 14, 2008 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
"NRCC-Backed Candidates In Mississippi And Louisiana Have Both Flirted With White Supremacist Groups"
I am shocked I tell you, shocked. Republicans coddling racists. Truly shocking.
I am as shocked as if you had revealed that Sewer Rats were discovered mating.
April 14, 2008 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is off the race theme, but on the theme of making fun of candidates names. In District 15 in Ohio, long-sitting Republican Pat Tiberi was facing his first real challenge to his seat in '06 from a Democrat named Shamansky. According to Tiberi's commercials, his opponent's policies put the "Sham" in Shamansky.
It's just stupid. But he still won.
April 14, 2008 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lies lies lies! Racism in the G.O.P.? Next you'll be trying to make us believe they're a bunch of sexist,hypocritical,chicken-hawk,f*ck America first,wide-stance,self-hating,closet-queen,,carpet-baggers!
April 14, 2008 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just a note: This is in Mississippi's First Congressional District, not the Second.
April 14, 2008 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
For those of you not from Mississippi please understand, we live in an occupied state of the republican party. The CCC is today’s KKK Lite for the winkers and nodders who control this state’s government. They don’t burn crosses or intimidate black and white supporters of the U.S. Constitutions but they do control the message and voting habits of many of our less astute fellow Mississippians. Look at the republican Straw Boss we have as Governor. Haley Barbour is a Washington republican hack of biblical proportions. If this story irks you than please listen to what Dr. Dean says about running a 50 state strategy. We can beat these bums but we need help in getting the message out and showing our fellow Mississippians that voting republican is against our own best interest. There are some rebels left in Mississippi and they are the ones who can get us out of this political strangle hold we are stuck in. We don’t like being a part of anyone’s southern strategy.
April 14, 2008 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I understand, although I no longer live there. That's why Dean's strategy was--is so important.
Which is less bad: Haley Barbour, or Kirk Fordyce?
And what's Mike Moore up to these days?
April 14, 2008 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're singing my song, baby. I don't either - I'm from Texas and I'm real sick of it.
And I'll just beat this horse to death - I think we can break through that wall - I saw it in Texas on primary night. The voter turnout blew me away utterly.
April 14, 2008 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is not really news . . . Between Nixon, Reagan and baby Bush the 'Southern Strategy' has been well and kicking since the mid-sixties.
Have we forgotten that the basis of caging is determined by comparing the race demographics to zip codes.
If there is a news story here it is in fact that non-Republicans are shocked everytime they are confronted with the standard operating procedures of the Grand Old Pervert and white folk only need apply society.
April 14, 2008 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
No surprises here. For the past few years, organizations like Stormfront have been encouraging members of affiliated hate groups to run in local and state races as a springboard to national office. Two recent examples of hate group "stealth candidates" are Glenn Miller and John Ubele.
April 14, 2008 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Stealth candidates" Glenn Miller and John Ubele - where and what offices?
April 15, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Google the names yourself, hon.
April 15, 2008 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink