TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/030689/03068900.033

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 67 lines

NATION, Page 29

Kluck! Kluck! Kluck!

An ex-Klansman's win brings the G.O.P. chickens home to roost


    The azaleas are in bloom in Metairie, a neatly landscaped New
Orleans suburb where conservatives vastly outnumber liberals and
the lush estates of the wealthy border the trim wood-and-stucco
bungalows of the middle class. But there was a deeper shade of red
last week on the faces of national Republican leaders over what the
residents of Metairie, who populate Louisiana's 81st legislative
district, had wrought. Some 78% of the district's 21,464 registered
voters, only 52 of whom are black, had turned out to give a vacant
statehouse seat to David Duke, 38, a former grand wizard of the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who recently converted to the G.O.P.
As Duke took his oath of office, his followers cheered from the
gallery and state Republican legislators accepted him into their
caucus.

    That such a notorious white supremacist could run and win under
the G.O.P. banner was especially embarrassing to Lee Atwater,
chairman of the Republican National Committee. Atwater has embarked
on a campaign to broaden his party by attracting more blacks.  He
derided Duke as "a pretender, a charlatan and a political
opportunist" who turned Republican shortly before the special
election primary on Jan. 21. Duke finished first in a
seven-candidate field.

    During the runoff campaign against the second-place finisher,
Republican home builder John Treen, Atwater sent messages from
President Bush and Ronald Reagan urging Duke's defeat. This effort
not only failed but apparently backfired. "We resent outsiders
coming in trying to influence us," explained Guy Hinton, a
third-generation resident of Metairie. Duke, a highly charged
campaigner, defeated the stolid Treen by a mere 227 votes.

    "I feel more comfortable in the Republican Party," Duke
declared, needling his G.O.P. critics. An avowed Nazi in his
college years, Duke entered presidential primaries in a few states
last year as a Democrat but won no delegates. He ran as
presidential candidate of the Populist Party and got only 0.05% of
the vote. Although he claims to have left the Klan in 1979, his
home address serves as the local Klan office. He now heads the
National Association for the Advancement of White People from the
same location. While he professes to believe in "civil rights for
all people," his new organization publishes an anti-Semitic
newspaper (30,000 subscribers) that advocates restricting Jews to
ethnic enclaves.

    The denunciation of Duke by Bush, Reagan and Atwater had an
ironic ring. Ever since the 1960s, strategists have lured white
Southerners to the G.O.P. with thinly disguised racial appeals. The
Reagan Administration opposed extension of the Voting Rights Act,
affirmative-action programs and busing to achieve school
integration. In 1986 the Republican National Committee supported
the purging of voting lists in Louisiana, ostensibly to eliminate
residents who had moved or died but actually, as it conceded in an
internal memo, to reduce black turnouts. Only recently, Reagan
contended that some black civil rights leaders cling to profitable
posts by claiming falsely that blacks are victims of
discrimination.

    The Bush presidential campaign used Willie Horton, a black who
committed a rape while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison, to
unfair but great advantage against Michael Dukakis. Said Ron Brown,
who took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee
three weeks ago: "It is disingenuous for the people who ran the
Willie Horton ads to express shock and dismay over David Duke. The
chickens are coming home to roost."