David Duke’s Strong Showing in Louisiana Vote

David Duke’s 44% of the vote, which amounted to the majority of the white vote and enabled him to carry 25 of the 64 parishes in Louisiana’s Senate election, is a terrifying reminder that racism is still a powerful political force (Part A, Oct. 7). The fact that there is not an uproar about Duke’s politics, about his using his state legislative office to disseminate neo-Nazi literature in 1989 and about his attempts to legitimize racism as a political platform speak in testimony to how strange Louisiana politics have become.

But wait a minute, just where did this resurgence in racist campaigning begin? Who was that wealthy, anti-choice, white male Republican candidate who ran a campaign with commercials that suggested his opponent was responsible for a black inmate being freed in order to rape a white woman while her husband watched, and went out of his way to make sure everyone knew just exactly what colors the victim and the rapist were?

Maybe the little bunch of Republican hypocrites who scrambled at the last minute to distance themselves and their party from Louisiana state Rep. Duke should concentrate more on keeping the Republican mainstream from moving ideologically closer to the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis instead of using racism when its convenient and then running away from it when it isn’t.

DAVID LAKE

Santa Monica