I wonder about the strategy Congressman Andy Barr, former Attorney General Daniel Cameron, and millionaire business guy Nate Morris adopted for the Kentucky GOP Senate primary.
Did they take to heart George Wallace’s vow after he lost the 1958 Alabama Democratic gubernatorial primary to Ku Klux Klan-backed John Patterson?
Or is it just a coincidence that their campaigns mirror what the future Heart of Dixie governor and symbol of white resistance to desegregation confided to a top aide after he came up short against Patterson, who won the governorship: "I was out-n——d, and I will never be out-n——d again."
Barr, Cameron, and Morris “have turned the Republican primary campaign into a racialized cage match revolving around convincing White people which candidate hates Black people the most, while genuflecting hardest at the twin altars of Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk. It’s a disgusting spectacle to behold,” recently wrote Louisville Courier-Journal opinion contributor Ricky L. Jones, professor and chair of the Pan-African Studies Department at the University of Louisville.
In his inaugural address as governor in 1963, Wallace declared, "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Wallace twice waged overtly racist presidential campaigns and lost. But given the current state of Kentucky politics, whoever wins the Republican primary will start out as the favorite to win in November.
In his column, Jones focused most of his fire on Cameron, who never missed a chance to tout Trump’s endorsement when he ran for AG in 2019. “Cameron is the type of loyal Black servant who betrayed his brothers to White people and got Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey killed in 1800 and 1822,” Jones wrote.
“He’s the sycophantic big house protector that Nat Turner told his people not to trust in 1831, and Malcolm warned us about over 130 years later. He’s the type of lost whitewashed soul that Harriet Tubman left behind because he has no desire to be free. He is a Black man who hates Black people and takes every opportunity to prove it to his masters. He should be ashamed, but doesn’t have sufficient conscience, self-awareness, or self-love to feel so.”
“Anti-Black moral monsters like Nate Morris and Andy Barr know they will pick up more votes from mean-spirited Republicans if they cast themselves as the candidate who hates Black people the most. Serious Black people know who and what White people like them are. We’ve always had to deal with them, and we rebuke them. The question is, aren’t racists like them doing enough to harm Black men, women and children? Why does Cameron feel like he needs to help them?”
Courier-Journal columnist Joseph Gerth and Northern Kentucky Tribune columnist Bill Straub also wrote about the primary of late, but they zeroed in on Barr, who claims in a new commercial that “It’s not a sin to be White.”
Gerth wrote that “We know this to be true because a) Andy Barr tells us this in his latest commercial — a 30-second spot so full of lies and obsequious behavior that the mere viewing of it might make you vomit; and b) nobody ever said it was.”
Straub, a Kentucky Journalism Hall of Famer, suggested a Wallace-Barr link: "HA! And you people thought George Wallace was dead.
“Don’t panic. The sleazy bigot who served as governor of the sovereign state of Alabama remains six feet under at the Greenwood Cemetery in Montgomery. But his spirit lives on in the person of Garland Hale Barr IV, lovingly known as Andy, the Republican congressman from Lexington who has entered into some sort of Faustian bargain to succeed the retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell.
“Andy has a new 30-second ad out promoting his qualifications for the job that displays his true colors. And that color is White.”
Meanwhile, Gerth wishes “voters could figure out that Barr isn’t trying to help anyone or fix anything. He’s just trying to divide people and get them to blame each other for the country’s problems rather than blame policy makers like him.”
Barr begins the ad by claiming DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the universal far-right bugbear — really means “dumb, evil indoctrination.”
Gerth said the ad is supposed "to get White men hating on African Americans, Hispanics, women, and people with disabilities – and to get White women hating on African Americans, Hispanics and people with disabilities if they don’t realize how much women have benefitted from diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
“There is no one in this country more blessed than the White Male Christian. ... Barr knows all of this. He’s a smart guy.”
Wallace knew what it took to get elected in Jim Crow Alabama when state law disfranchised most Blacks.
When Donald Trump promised to “Make America Great Again,” he aimed for white people to hear “Make America White Again.” He carried 86.1 percent white Kentucky in landslides the three times he ran for president. While his national poll numbers are underwater elsewhere in America, a recent survey has him at 55 percent in Kentucky. Some political observers think the number is too low, especially in rural counties.
According to Gerth, Barr is “willing to pit you against your Black neighbor, your female co-worker, or the Muslim on the next street over because he thinks it can help him win an election.”
Just as willing are Cameron, Morris, and just about every other Republican up and down the ballot.
Straub wrapped up his column with a history lesson.
“The nation has been down similar roads with Republican yahoos before,” he wrote. “In 1990, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-NC, no one’s definition of a civil rights advocate, ran a campaign ad against his Democratic opponent, Harvey Gantt, who, as it happens, was Black.”
Straub recalled a Helms ad that I’m old enough to remember, too. “Titled ‘Hands,' it portrays a pair of White male hands crumbling a job rejection letter, with the narrative, 'You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?' All because Gantt supported the Civil Rights Act of 1990, which Helms, an old school racist, referred to as a ‘racial quota law.’’’
Helms, Straub pointed out, won another term and stayed in the Senate until 2003.
“Being compared to Jesse Helms is not a compliment,” Straub added. But Barr might take it as one.
“In the coda at the end of this infamous ad, Barr declares, ‘I’m Andy Barr and I approve this message to give woke liberals something else to cry about.’’’
Concluded Straub, “Well, I’m dry-eyed right now, but I guess I have to plead guilty to being woke, although after all this time I still have no idea what the hell that means. Regardless, at the end of the day, I’d rather be called woke than a racist.
“I’ll leave that for you to ponder, Andy.”
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