Stark Admits Using Race to Attack Sullivan Was Wrong : Congress: But lawmaker stops short of formally apologizing in raucous House exchange. He renews his criticism of black Cabinet official.

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Oakland) acknowledged Friday that he was wrong in calling black Cabinet member Louis W. Sullivan a “disgrace to his race,” but he stopped short of making a formal apology for his widely criticized remarks.

Instead, Stark renewed his attack on the secretary of health and human services for promoting Bush Administration policies on abortion and medical care, charging that Sullivan was harming poor people and minorities.

While Democrats cheered, Republicans in the House chamber jeered Stark’s speech. Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.) shouted: “Sit down! That’s not an apology!”

Sullivan, too, was less than satisfied.

“I am deeply offended and am not going to take some half-baked, weak-kneed comments by him made to somebody else as an apology,” Sullivan said in Los Angeles during a meeting at The Times. “He started the fight . . . and he’s got to face up to the fact that he has personally to make amends for that comment.”

The unusually raucous exchange in the House occurred after Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) demanded that Stark apologize for his comments about Sullivan, the only black member of Bush’s Cabinet.

“I find this attack as bizarre as it is deplorable,” Michel said. “To gratuitously drag in Secretary Sullivan’s race in a dispute over policy brings discredit upon this institution.

“No matter how much we may disagree on policy, and no matter how heated our debates may be, no one has a right to bring into question a man’s race, religion or national origin,” Michel said. “I believe this attack is serious enough to demand a full apology from the member involved.”

Stark, taking the floor immediately after Michel, said that the GOP leader was absolutely right.

“To bring in race or religion and personal attributes into a policy debate is wrong,” Stark said. “And to the secretary, I have to say I blew it.

“I should not have brought into the discussion his race, because it obscures the fact that he is carrying on a bankrupt policy for an Administration who inadvertently has been impacting the poor and minorities in this country by denying them decent medical care, by turning away from job training programs that would help those who are mostly minorities . . . .”

At that point, shouts of protest from the Republican side of the aisle almost drowned out Stark’s words. But he continued:

” . . . By discharging people from the military and refusing to provide them the extended benefits they need for unemployment, by denying poor women abortions . . . and I apologize for obscuring that.”

At the close of his remarks, which were nearly drowned out by the uproar in the chamber, Stark implied that Sullivan was doing the bidding of White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu and Richard G. Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“And to be led by the likes of John Sununu and Mr. Darman down the paths of darkness is wrong, and I apologize for obscuring that,” Stark declared.

Speaking a few minutes later, Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) said that Sullivan had been maligned by Stark.

“He (Sullivan) deserves an apology--he did not get one,” Weber said. “Instead, there was a renewed assault.”

Meeting with reporters and members of the editorial board of The Times, Sullivan said that he had heard nothing directly from Stark. He said he would consider Stark not to have apologized until he did so directly.

“I am still angry and insulted,” Sullivan said. “And what I’m most angry about is not his difference in position about how we ought to approach our health care crisis, but really his personal attack, and what I see in that as . . . paternalism and racism.”

Two black Democrats in the House--Craig A. Washington of Texas and Mervyn M. Dymally of Compton--said they considered Stark’s remarks an apology. Both challenged the Republicans who criticized Stark to show their support of minorities by voting for the pending civil rights bill that is opposed by the Administration.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) accused Stark of a “racist attack,” and Rep. Bill Gradison (R-Ohio) said he was outraged by the verbal assault on “one of our nation’s finest public servants.”

Stark, a white liberal whose district is about 10% black and 12% Latino, once tried to join the Congressional Black Caucus, but his application was turned down.