Racist Religious Nut Will Rep GOP in Tennessee
Unabashed Racist Leads Tenn. GOP Primary
32 minutes ago
By WOODY BAIRD, Associated Press Writer
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A Republican write-in candidate was trailing badly Thursday in an attempt to keep an unabashed racist from representing the party in the November election for a congressional seat.
With 48 percent of the primary vote counted, write-in candidate Dennis Bertrand had just 416 votes compared to 4,907, or 92 percent, for James L. Hart, a believer in the discredited, phony science of eugenics. The write-in ballots had to be counted by hand, however, and the going was slow.
In November, the GOP candidate will oppose Rep. John Tanner (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat who has represented the northwest Tennessee district for 15 years.
Hart, 60, vows if elected to work toward keeping "less favored races" from reproducing or immigrating to the United States. In campaign literature, Hart contends that "poverty genes" threaten to turn the United States into "one big Detroit."
He ran four years ago as an independent and drew little attention. But people began to notice this time because he was the only Republican on the ballot.
Since the deadline for getting on the ballot had passed, Bertrand, also a Republican, began a write-in campaign, saying he wanted to protect the party's honor.
"I think his beliefs are not beliefs of any party that I know of," Bertrand said Thursday night. "I knew it was going to be a really long shot, but in good conscience, I had to at least give it an attempt."
Bertrand, a financial analyst and former military officer, was on active duty with the National Guard when the deadline to get on the primary ballot passed.
Hart said he will have lots of time to campaign for the general election since he was forced Wednesday to resign from his job as a real estate salesman because of the attention he drew during the primary.
"They didn't say 'You're fired' in exactly those words, but it was pretty clear what they wanted," Hart said.
While campaigning, Hart sometimes wears a protective vest and carries a .40-caliber pistol, but he said he has run into no trouble.
"When I knock on a door and say white children deserve the same rights as everybody else, the enthusiastic response is truly amazing," he said.
If a black person opens the door, he says he simply drops off campaign literature and leaves. |
