Duke Victory Spurs ‘Clone’ Candidates : Civil rights activists fear that race-based messages are being given a platform.

When David Duke, a former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, won a seat in the Louisiana state House as a Republican in 1989, he had a vision of more candidacies like his own.

“My election, my winning it with my controversial background, has made it OK for other candidates and other public officials to address the issues that I’ve addressed,” Duke said.

Duke won campaigning against affirmative action for minorities, welfare programs and taxes to pay for them. And since his victory, his prophecy has materialized.

Several Duke “clone” candidates have emerged in the South, to the consternation of civil rights organizations and the national Republican Party.

Among them:

--Ralph Forbes, campaign manager for Duke’s 1988 presidential bid on the Populist Party ticket. A white separatist and former American Nazi leader, he won 46% of the vote last year in the Arkansas GOP primary for lieutenant governor but was beaten in the runoff by a black man.

--Jack Nugent, a self-described “pro-white” candidate who last year failed in a run for a U.S. congressional seat from Tennessee, losing a three-way GOP primary race.

--Keith Rush, a longtime New Orleans radio personality, who is running this year for the Jefferson County, La., Parish Council. Duke has endorsed Rush, who in turn says he is “proud to be running with” Duke, who is running for governor. In a campaign flyer titled “Who is this racist,” Rush states 13 beliefs, focusing on patriotism, religion and the “obscene” welfare system. “This racist believes that ‘real’ racism thrives on affirmative action programs,” it says.

The messages of these candidates resonate with white voters who believe that minorities on welfare cause taxes to rise and that minorities unfairly get jobs that whites should have.

Forbes and Nugent’s losses are small consolation to civil rights leaders, who contend that the candidacies are symptomatic of rising racism.

“Even though many of them lose, they will win by losing,” said Daniel Levitas, director of the Center for Democratic Renewal, which monitors racism. “They will get a platform for their message and legitimize what ought to be an illegitimate message.”

The national GOP has disowned Duke, fearing that a former leader of the KKK is not the image it wants as it attempts to build local party strength in the South.

But several civil rights activists contend that President Bush is nevertheless borrowing some of Duke’s message, citing Bush’s opposition to new congressional legislation that reaffirms the general concept of affirmative action. Bush has denounced the legislation as a “quota bill,” although its authors contend that race-specific quotas would not be allowed.

Bush and Duke are “singing a duet,” said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “One is singing with the frogs and alligators down on the bayou, and the other is with the symphony on the Potomac. But they . . . both use ‘quotas’ as a code word to scare whites.”

Republican Party officials deny that they are borrowing anything from Duke. But for years the GOP has targeted the white voters in the South who think government has intervened too much to help minorities.

Susan Howell, director of the Survey Research Center at the University of New Orleans, said her research shows that candidates with similar messages to Duke’s “can do well in other areas of the country.”

The problem for the GOP is that candidates such as Duke, who sport past KKK and white supremacist affiliations, can undermine claims that the party is not seeking to play racial politics.

Forbes contends that Duke and Bush and he have the same message. Recalling the 1988 ads for Bush that raised fears about black criminals getting furloughed from prison to kill and rape whites, Forbes said: “That was the campaign I had for David Duke.”

Forbes said he plans to run again, saying there are “probably a lot of offices in Arkansas that I can win.”

Staff researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.