Cardin Fires Campaign Staffer Ove Racial Comments Against Steele
Congressman is 'deeply offended and disgusted by blog's racial and anti-Semitic overtones'
Rep. Benjamin Cardin has fired a campaign staffer who wrote racially charged comments on an Internet blog against his opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is black, Cardin's campaign confirmed Saturday.
The blog includes a reference to "Devouring the Competition" by eating Oreo cookies, which Steele has said people threw at him during a 2002 debate as a slight directed at his race and political views.
In a statement, Cardin also condemned "anti-Semitic" comments written by the female staffer on her own Internet blog.
"I am deeply offended and disgusted by the blog's racial and anti-Semitic overtones," the 10-term congressman said in the statement. "The staff person responsible was promptly dismissed and will have nothing to do with my campaign."
Melissa Sellers, a Steele spokeswoman, sharply criticized the comments on the blog Saturday.
"It is deeply disturbing to learn that a staff member of ten-term Congressman Ben Cardin would keep a blog chronicling racial prejudices toward Lt. Gov. Steele and others," Sellers said. "This is the kind of attitude and gutter politics that Marylanders are sick of and why they are ready for change."
Oren Shur, a Cardin spokesman, said Saturday that the woman was "a junior staffer" who worked for the campaign about a month. He declined to identify her or elaborate on her duties.
Shur said the woman was fired Friday "as soon as we learned of this."
Some of the comments about Steele on the blog, titled "Road Diaries of the Persuasionatrix," were written in an Aug. 27 posting.
"It's an unfortunate situation when you're running an established, older, white candidate against a dynamic, younger African-American," the staffer wrote. "It's unfortunate, because the racism card hovers constantly, just waiting to be dealt."
In a posting written on Aug. 25, the blog refers to a stack of Oreo cookies "looming in the back of one of the campaign pantries" and how staffers have to "surreptitiously glance around" before eating them.
"The subterfuge would be unnecessary, and snack time would be far less amusing, had an angry citizen not thrown the aforementioned delicious snack food at one of our opponents to comment on his lack of racial loyalty," the blog continues.
Steele, who attended a fundraiser near Centreville for Rep. Wayne Gilchrest on Saturday, called the comments "very shocking."
"That it exists in a national campaign is very disappointing," Steele told The (Easton) Star Democrat.
Steele has said Oreo cookies were thrown in his direction during a 2002 campaign debate in Baltimore. The incident described by Steele surfaced again in November after another blogger depicted him in minstrel makeup, bringing up issues of race during the campaign as the Republican seeks to become Maryland's first black senator.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee recruited Steele to run in 2006 for the Senate seat that will become open with the retirement of Democrat Paul Sarbanes. Steele is the first black person to win statewide office in Maryland.
The Cardin staffer went on to write on her blog that "it would be bad to have the cookies lying around" where people could see them, because of the controversy.
She ends the Aug. 25 entry by writing: "Before I leave, however, I need a picture of all of us holding the forbidden cookies with the caption: "Devouring the Competition."
The blog also contains an Aug. 17 entry in which she asks "Why am I a Sex Object for Old, Jewish Men?" In it, she wrote that while she likes the candidate she is working for, "I do not, however, like some of my candidate's friends."
Cardin is Jewish.
"They are large men with strong, loud voices and Jewish noses," she wrote. "They are also overly friendly."
The writer added: "I'm certainly not one to shy away from physical contact, but when older men I don't know find it ok to squeeze my arm or my shoulder or shake my hand way too long, the toddler me comes out and wants to hide under the restaurant table or in the closet behind the coats."
She continued: "Some of the guys who have been with my candidate for years are like that. They don't mean anything by it; it's just the way they are. I wish that made it less uncomfortable."
