Fla GOP Magazine Uses KKK to Attract Blacks, Falsely Claims MLK Jr. Was a Republican

Mag pushes racial buttons: A Republican magazine aimed at blacks takes Democrats to task for the party's racist past. Democrats are hitting back.

BY MARC CAPUTO, Miami Herald

Sat, May. 10, 2008

TALLAHASSEE -- For a sign of Florida Republicans' all-out effort to attract black voters, look no farther than the glossy full-colored The Black Republican magazine that launches broadsides like these:

The KKK was the ''terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.'' Democrats, in addition to waging ''war on God,'' are still mired in sex and financial scandals.

That's all tucked in the back of the Sarasota-based National Black Republican Association's 60-page mag, the first half of which touts Republican Gov. Charlie Crist's civil rights record and the Republican Party of Florida's minority outreach efforts that the association has helped coordinate.

The strident comments and images -- replete with a Ku Klux Klan rally snapshot that notes ''every person in this photo was a Democrat'' -- has outraged Democrats and caught the Republican Party of Florida flat-footed as well.

''Oh my gosh,'' party spokeswoman Erin Van Sickle said when told of the magazine's content, which she described as ``inflammatory.''

Though the magazine lists the party as a financial sponsor, Van Sickle said the GOP ''had no editorial control'' and that party chairman Jim Greer ``is disappointed in some of the content.''

Van Sickle is listed as a contributing writer, but she said that's because she helped supply the content and photographs concerning Greer, Crist and the party.

The black Republican association's chairwoman, Frances Rice, said her group operated independently of the party and is aggressive about its viewpoint because it wants to ''wake up'' black voters and ``shed the light of truth on the racist past and failed socialism of the Democratic Party.''

But Democrats suspect Republicans knew more about the magazine's content than they're admitting. Democrats got wind of the publication, dated Fall 2007, at a black voter event Tuesday in Tallahassee where Republicans were passing out the magazine.

''Shame on Chairman Greer and the Republicans,'' said Jacksonville Democratic Sen. Tony Hill. ``They should be about bringing people together, not demagoguery about the KKK. That's not going to win African Americans today, and Barack Obama is showing that.''

The publication comes out as Republicans, under Gov. Crist, have reached out to Hispanic and black voters. Crist and the GOP Legislature this year changed racially offensive lyrics in the state's song and also issued an apology for slavery on the state's behalf -- something Rice says the Democratic Party should do as well.

Crist was nicknamed Florida's first black governor because of his support for issues important to blacks. His 2006 Democratic opponent had once opposed compensating two wrongfully convicted black men, a fact that helped Crist garner about 18 percent of the black vote in Florida -- the highest of any Republican in recent history, according to exit polls. An estimated 90 percent of black Floridians traditionally vote Democratic.

If Republicans could get 25 percent of the black vote nationwide, according to Rice's magazine, the party would win Congress and the White House. But to do that, Rice said, she wants black voters to know the Democrats' history of ``slavery, secession, segregation and socialism.''

Rice said black voters tend to be religious and aren't as receptive to the secularism underpinning the Democratic Party -- hence the ''Democrats Wage War on God'' article. She said the magazine features articles from top black thinkers and conservatives to hold black leaders accountable.

As for listing the ''Top 10 Democratic Sex Scandals,'' Rice said her publication sought to ''balance'' the news media's coverage of Republican woes. Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski quickly rattled off the names of Republicans caught in sex scandals: ``There's no Mark Foley, no Larry Craig, no David Vitter. Where's Bob Allen? He's the guy who said he was afraid of black guys and that's why he offered a police officer $20 to perform a sex act.''

One of the articles in the magazine says Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Rice contends she knew Martin Luther King Jr.'s family and ''there's no way they were Democrats'' in the 1960s, a time when racist southern Democrats were fire-hosing black protesters and trying to keep them out of public schools. Her association, established in 2005, aired political ads concerning King's political leanings in 2006 political radio ads in Florida, Maryland Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Democrats counter that King was nonpartisan. Hill and other Democrats say they don't dispute the central facts about the Democratic Party's role in pushing slavery, seceding from the Union and precipitating the Civil War. And they acknowledged that those pictured in the old KKK snapshot were likely Democrats, but said that was many decades ago.

But Democrats say the magazine omits the fact that many Southern Democrats joined the GOP after the 1960s civil rights movement.

'You could change the caption to say, `All of these people are now Republicans,' because the Democratic Party no longer suited their racist Southern strategy,'' said Dan Gelber, a Democratic state legislator from Miami Beach.

Added Hill: ``A lot of Southerners say they didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left them. Well, that happened with black people: The Republican Party left us.''

You can download a full PDF of the magazine at:
http://www.fladems.com/page/-/documents/TBR_Fall_2007.pdf