Election of Ex-Klan Leader in Louisiana Complicates GOP Push to Broaden Party

The election of David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader and recent convert to Republicanism, to the Louisiana Legislature on Saturday could hardly have come at a worse time for the GOP--just as its high command was launching a much heralded effort to broaden the party by reaching out to blacks and other minorities.

In the wake of Duke’s victory, Republican officials here sought to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the erstwhile klan grand wizard--threatening him with a formal motion for censure.

But Democrats questioned how much of the damage could be undone. “This is going to give them fits on an ongoing basis,” predicted Kathy Vick, Democratic national committeewoman from Louisiana.

Cite GOP Conduct

Democrats also contended that the Republicans had themselves at least in part to blame for the present predicament. They cited the GOP’s conduct of the 1988 presidential campaign and the party’s tactics in the Louisiana legislative contest as contributing factors in Duke’s victory.

Duke, 38, squeezed past a fellow Republican, home builder John Treen, 63, to represent a nearly all-white district in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. Duke received 8,459 votes, or 50.7%, to Treen’s 8,232, or 49.3%.

Many Democrats charge that the GOP pandered to racism in the campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Gov. Michael S. Dukakis by stressing the case of Willie Horton, a black convicted killer granted a weekend furlough in Dukakis’ Massachusetts who then brutally assaulted a Maryland woman and her fiance.

The need to erase those memories at a time when the party was trying to reach out to blacks in effect forced the GOP to intervene in the local politics of Louisiana, always a risky venture, according to Michael McCurry, communications director of the Democratic National Committee.

“I feel they were almost obliged to get involved to show that the politics of the Duke campaign were not the politics of the Willie Horton case,” McCurry said. But in the process a local political skirmish was turned into a national cause celebre.

The GOP brought in its biggest names for the battle. Letters with President Bush’s endorsement of Treen were widely distributed in the district. And the voice of former President Ronald Reagan was heard on radio commercials making known his “high regard” for Treen.

But Democratic committeewoman Vick said the national GOP waited until too late to get its case across, and consequently antagonized more voters by creating resentment against outside interference than it made converts. “They got the worst of both possible worlds,” she said.

Duke contends that blacks have nothing to fear from him. At a news conference in New Orleans on Sunday he declared: “I want to break the cycle of poverty that so enchains them.” But the previous night, Republican National Chairman Lee Atwater condemned Duke as a “charlatan” espousing “racial and religious bigotry and intolerance,” and vowed to take steps to disenfranchise him from the party.

Several Louisiana lawmakers said they expect an attempt in the Legislature to refuse to seat Duke by challenging his qualifications, namely his residency in the district.

Calls Question ‘Frivolous’

When asked if he had been a resident of his district for the requisite one year before the election, Duke said: “Absolutely I am. It’s a frivolous question.”

But the Associated Press reported that Metairie attorney Dave Sherman, who said he represented several unsuccessful candidates from the primary, claimed to have irrefutable evidence that Duke failed to move into the district until September. He said he has a statement to that effect from an alleged roommate of Duke and power company records indicating utilities were not turned on in the Metairie condominium until September.

Republican National Committeeman Bryan Wagner of New Orleans told Reuters news service that Duke’s victory “had nothing to do” with his past ties to the racism and violence espoused by the klan. Instead, Wagner attributed Duke’s success to voter concern “over new taxes and other economic problems due to the downfall of the oil industry.

Democrats contended that it will be difficult for the GOP to eliminate the stigma of the klan with its threatening image of burning crosses and white-sheeted night riders from the minds of voters. “They’re going to have to spend a lot of time constantly repudiating this guy,” Vick said.

Atwater Makes Pledge

All this is a particularly bitter pill for GOP Chairman Atwater to swallow. On assuming command of the party apparatus last month, Atwater pledged that the GOP would make “a redoubled political effort to reach out to those Americans who have not historically been part of our coalition--blacks, Hispanics, Asians, disabled Americans.”

And apparently to dramatize his commitment, he gained election to the board of trustees of Washington’s Howard University, long one of the nation’s preeminent black institutions of higher education.

Democrats believe that by appealing to minorities, Republicans are also trying to win over certain white cohorts in the electorate who are disturbed by racism. “They’re trying to show baby boomers and yuppies that the Republicans are cool on race,” said the Democrat McCurry. “But it’s pretty hard to do that with David Duke on your doorstep.”