Magazine attacks Democrats for racist past

BY MARC CAPUTO

mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

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.''

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.