Rep. won't demand his photo removal from racist site

Oct 17, 2003
Barbour Says He Won't Ask to Have Photo Removed From Pro-Racism Web Site
By Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press Writer

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Republican gubernatorial nominee Haley Barbour said he will not ask the Council of Conservative Citizens to remove his picture from a group Web site that promotes white supremecist and anti-Semetic causes.

Barbour, 55, said some views on the St. Louis-based group's Web site are "indefensible," but he does not want to tell any group it cannot use his picture or statements.

"Once you get into that, you spend your time doing nothing else," Barbour said Thursday. "I don't care who has my picture. My picture's in the public domain. It gets published in newspapers every day."

In the photo on the national CCC Web site, Barbour and several other casually dressed people are shown at a political rally this past summer in rural Carroll County.

CCC field director Bill Lord, who was the rally's emcee, said the event was sponsored by the Carrolton Masonic Lodge and the Black Hawk Bus Association and included speeches by some black candidates. He said the CCC held a separate barbecue the same day as the rally, which traditionally attracts a broad spectrum of candidates, Democratic and Republican.

Lord said the CCC does not endorse candidates and the Barbour picture was posted because the "Web master was just seeking some publicity for our organization."

The CCC site also features Confederate flags, has links to articles such as "In defense of racism" and offers books on why the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. doesn't deserve a national holiday and why Germany should be cleared of the "blood libel of the 'Holocaust.'"

Eugene Bryant, president of the Mississippi NAACP, said Barbour should demand that the picture be removed.

"If you cannot say what's right and do what's right and tell people when they're wrong, then we really don't need a governor like that," Bryant said.

Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, is challenging Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in the Nov. 4 general election.

Barbour has often said during the campaign that he is trying to win support from black voters, who are about 37 percent of Mississippi's population. He said he is not worried about how that effort could be affected by having his picture on the CCC Web site.

"I'm not worried about anything other than the press or some other campaign trying to pretend that it's something it's not," Barbour said.

Asked Thursday about the picture, Musgrove did not directly criticize his opponent, saying, "I believe our strength as a state is our diversity, and to me as a governor, you've got to be governor for everybody."

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., was criticized in 1999 for speaking at CCC meetings though he said at the time he was not a group member.

Jim Nicholson, then Republican National Committee chairman, asked fellow Republicans who were CCC members to quit because "it appears that this group does hold racist views."
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On the Net:
Council of Conservative Citizens: http://www.cofcc.org

This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAC5DOIWLD.html