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Maryland's Steele Slams 'Gutter Racism'
Senatorial candidate Michael Steele’s campaign has blasted as "gutter racism” a blog containing a doctored photo showing Steele in minstrel makeup – part of what the Steele camp believes is a coordinated Democratic attack on the popular Republican. The photo was posted on October 26, the day that Steele, the African-American lieutenant governor of Maryland, announced his candidacy for the Senate from that state. It appeared on the News Blog, a Web site run by African-American writer Steve Gilliard, under the headline "Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house.” And it received attention when Tim Kaine, the Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia, removed his campaign ads from the site in protest, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Story Continues Below Gilliard told the Sun that he considers Steele a traitor to his race because he refused to condemn his political partner, Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr., for holding a fund-raiser at a Baltimore country club that at the time had never admitted a black member. Said Gilliard, who lives in New York City: "I find it wildly humorous that Lt. Gov. Steele calls me, a black man, racist.” But Steele spokesman Leonardo Alcivar said: "Whether it’s coming from African-Americans or others, racism should be called what it is.” He said the minstrel makeup photo was "disgusting” and the "worst kind of gutter racism,” and claimed it was part of a "pattern” of Democratic attacks against Steele. As NewsMax.com reported, Democrats are so fearful that Steele will win in next year’s Senate race that they illegally obtained his credit report in a secret dirt-digging operation last month. Steele has said that during a 2002 campaign debate, Democratic Party supporters pelted him with Oreo cookies – black on the outside, white on the inside.
Derek Walker of the Democratic Party of Maryland conceded that Gilliard’s "rogue attack” was "distasteful, despicable and degrading” but denied it was part of a coordinated effort by Democrats. After Kaine asked that his campaign ad be removed from the News Blog, Gilliard changed his site to read "Tim Kaine is a coward.”
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