Racism allegations color Sims-Gregoire contest

TACOMA – Christine Gregoire, the Democratic front-runner to become Washington’s next governor, on Wednesday angrily accused her primary rival, Ron Sims, of instigating an outcry over her membership in an all-white college sorority decades ago.

Sims, the state’s top-ranking black politician, at first refused to distance himself from the suggestion that Gregoire is racist, but later did so in a statement released by his campaign.

“Is Christine Gregoire a racist? Of course not,” he said. “Have I ever inferred that she is? Absolutely not.”

But at the same time, he called her accusations against him baseless and questioned whether pledging an all-white sorority was the mark of someone truly trying to end discrimination.

A group of black leaders called a news conference Tuesday to blister Gregoire for belonging to Kappa Delta sorority at the University of Washington in the late 1960s. They dismissed her assertion that she stayed to fight discrimination from within.

Gregoire, the state’s first female attorney general, hit back Wednesday during a speech before the state Labor Council convention.

“Knock it off, Ron,” Gregoire said. “It’s time for this to stop.”

Gregoire said it was dirty politics and deeply hurtful.

“He knows it’s absolutely preposterous to suggest that I’m in any way, shape or form a racist,” she said.

She said the Sims camp helped publicize her membership in Kappa Delta and raised the specter of racism. She likened Sims and his backers to Vietnam-era Swift boat crewmen who have tried to undermine John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

Sims, the King County executive, addressed the same labor convention Wednesday, but made no reference to the sorority flap. He was gone by the time Gregoire made her remarks and demanded that he repudiate the suggestion that she’s racist. He told reporters later that neither he nor his campaign had anything to do with the matter.

Nevertheless, he declined repeated chances to distance himself from the black leaders’ comments and their call for her to apologize. The NAACP Seattle chapter president, Carl Mack, black pastors and others can speak for themselves, he said half a dozen times.

“We had nothing to do with this story,” Sims said. “We’re not the source of this story. I hope no one alleges that we are.”

The Seattle Times confirmed that neither Sims nor his campaign was the source for the newspaper’s original story on the sorority. One of the Times editors was a sorority sister of Gregoire’s, said political editor Tom Boyer.

Later Wednesday, the Sims campaign released the statement that at least partially distanced Sims from the black leaders’ comments. But he got in some fresh licks, too.

He asked: “Is she proud of her role as a leader of the Kappa Delta sorority? She says she is. She says she was a leader to end discrimination. Was she or wasn’t she? I think that’s the real question at issue here.

“It has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with whether she’s taking credit for something she didn’t do. It’s not an issue of race, it’s an issue of integrity.”

Gregoire told the Times she did not learn of the sorority’s unwritten policy against nonwhite members until just before initiation in 1966. On Wednesday, she defended her decision to join the sorority anyway.

“Thirty-eight years ago, as a 19-year-old college student, I was given two choices. I could cut and run, or I could stand up and fight,” she said. “And I chose to stay and fight against discrimination then and for the rest of my life.”

She took little action during her time as a sister – even though as chapter president in 1969 she had to inform new recruits of the rule. But at the next sorority convention in 1973, as an alumna adviser, she stood alone on the floor of the convention and spoke out against the policy. She was overruled.

Eventually, the rule was abolished.

Gregoire is widely expected to defeat Sims in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary and leads him 3-to-1 in fund raising. Gov. Gary Locke, the country’s first Chinese-American governor and a Gregoire backer, is retiring after two terms.

Gregoire told the audience she has spent a lifetime fighting discrimination – and that Sims knows the truth.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I ever have anticipated anyone suggesting that I’m a racist,” she said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”