Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

The Arizona Daily Star ran a piece this morning on David Duke’s endorsement of Randy Graf and the fact that he featured a link to Graf on his website.

Of course, this led to protests by Republicans that just because Duke likes Graf doesn’t make Graf a racist. True ‘dat, but I’d like to know what it is exactly that they think it is about Graf that is so appealing to a self-proclaimed “white nationalist” like Duke.

The other thing that has been fun is reading the tortuous arguments in the Star’s comment section attempting to link Gabrielle Giffords to college Hispanic organization MEChA. I’m not sure what these people think goes on at most campus MEChA meetings (most chapters are not nearly as radical as their national website would have you believe), or if they’ve even set foot on a college campus for that matter. Let’s assume that MEChA is the hotbed of Xicano (yes, with an “x,” makes it more radical) revolution that they say it is. It is hard to imagine Giffords shouting “Viva la Raza” and ditching her “colonized” name for Xocoyotl.

Despite the protestations of Graf’s campaign, he has had connections to the dirty underside of the anti-immigrant movement. Yes, there are plenty of level headed non-racist people (including Hispanics in my own family) who have some serious problems with illegal immigration and policies that they believe encourage it. However, Graf has refused to dissavow some disturbing relationships he has had with racists within the anti-immigration community.

The most distubing one is with the perenial anti-immigrant activist John Tanton, who has been renowned for his anti-Hispanic and anti-Catholic rants. His racism led to mainstream leaders such as Walter Cronkite and Linda Chavez to disassociate themselves from his group FAIR years ago. FAIR contributed to the Graf supported PAN committee in 2004, and they have also raised funds for Graf’s current campaign.

Graf served as a “senior advisor” to the PAN committee and one of his fellow advisors was Dr. Virginia Abernethy, who you may remember got into hot water when she proclaimed that she was not a “white supremacist” but only a “white separatist,” as if that made it better. Protests abounded when her appointment was revealed, even FAIR condemned it. No word from Graf at the time or since as near as I can tell.

Graf’s campaign also seems to have had connections to local racist hot heads like professional candidate Joe Sweeney, who posted numerous “Democrats and Independents for Graf” signs back in 2004, and flag burner Roy Warden. With “traditional Democrat” Bill Johnson out of the race, Russ Dove (a former “border correspondent” for Graf’s old campaign manager Steve Aiken) will no doubt be rearing his head soon at Graf’s events.

Graf’s campaign manager can deride people as “racist crazies” all he wants, but until Graf personally and unequivocally distances himself from these people, those of us on this side of politics will continue to question him about it.