POLITICS / EX-KLANSMAN TARGETED : Duke a Surprise Unifying Force in Louisiana Politics : A wide range of factions have joined together to oppose the ex-Ku Klux Klan leader’s bid for the U.S. Senate.

In his brief career in national politics, ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke has already achieved a distinction of sorts.

By running for the U.S. Senate, he has managed to unite a wide range of normally warring political factions, from champions of civil rights to progenitors of the Willie Horton campaign commercial, behind a common objective: to crush his Senate candidacy.

Duke, a Republican state representative elected last year, trails incumbent Democratic Sen. J. Bennett Johnston in the competition for votes in the Oct. 6 primary, which is open to candidates of both parties. But polls indicate that he has enough strength to prevent Johnston from getting 50% of the vote, thus forcing him into a two-man runoff.

That is just what two political action committees--the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism and the Republican Challengers Committee--are trying to avert. Because these groups are unaffiliated with either Johnston or the third candidate in the race, Republican Ben Bagert, they are not limited on what they can spend.

Each PAC hopes to raise about $1 million for research, direct mail and television in the fight against Duke. Both contend that although Duke is stressing relatively moderate conservative views now on the campaign trial, at heart he still holds to the extremist beliefs embodied by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan which he has headed as Louisiana State Grand Dragon. The coalition is an amalgam of liberal academics, Democratic regulars and moderate to conservative Republicans.

“What he’s doing is setting people against each other, when we should all be confronting our real problems,” says Dawn Laguens, manager of the coalition’s campaign against Duke.

The Challengers Committee views Duke as a threat to the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

“The last thing the conservative movement needs is to have a caricature of itself in David Duke,” says Floyd Brown, board chairman of the Challengers Committee. “He is trying to develop an empire based on racial hate.”

Brown’s political attack is reminiscent of one that involved him in 1988--only he was the target of such criticism then when he headed another political action committee, one that supported George Bush’s presidential candidacy. That PAC sponsored the controversial commercial that showed a picture of black convict Willie Horton and cited the crimes he committed on weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison. It has been widely criticized for seeking to exploit racist feelings.

“It seems to me ironic that the people who put on the Willie Horton commercial would be complaining about David Duke’s views,” Jim McPherson, Duke’s campaign coordinator said in a telephone interview. “It would appear to me that they put on racist promotion themselves.”

Brown contends that the commercial “had nothing to do with Willie Horton’s race. It had to do with his crimes.”

Neither opposition group plans to tangle with Duke over affirmative action or other civil rights issues which Duke has opposed in the Legislature. Instead, the Louisiana Coalition plans to remind voters of some outlandish schemes Duke has advocated in the past, such as the partitioning of the North American continent into several racial enclaves.

The Republican Challengers group plans to focus on Duke’s background. “We’re saying look at the messenger, not the message,” says Tony Fabrizio, a member of the group’s board.

Meanwhile, though, other Republicans are trying to persuade former Gov. David C. Treen to enter the campaign before this Friday’s deadline. But Treen says: “I’m not considering it.”