Paul denies connection to controversial newsletters

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul denied any connection to racist, homophobic and conspiratorial writings that appeared in newsletters carrying his name in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s.

In a brief interview Thursday evening before his Spokane campaign rally, Paul said he didn’t know about the statements at the time, and he attributed them to “bad editing.”

He didn’t denounce the comments then, ask to have the writer fired or demand his name be removed from the publication because, he said, “I didn’t know about them until many years later.”

Appearing in newsletters such as the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report, the comments described the creation of a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. as “our annual Hate Whitey Day” and contended that the Los Angeles riots stopped because “it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.” They were reported last month in the New Republic magazine, which put copies of the newsletters on its Web site.

While the newsletters carry Paul’s name, the writings aren’t under his byline, and Paul said they weren’t written by him. When the magazine story was first published, he said he takes “moral responsibility for not paying closer attention” to publications that carry his name.

“I have a reputation on this issue that is very loud and clear, because I understand how racism comes about,” he said Thursday. “It is something that comes through collectivism and not libertarianism. You see people in groups and that’s very bad.

“And of course Martin Luther King was fantastic at understanding this. He said we should never see people by the color of their skin, only by their character, and that’s the way I operate.”

The worst racism today is in the courts that handle drug cases, Paul said. “In the courts, if you happen to be a minority and you’re from the inner city, those individuals don’t get a fair shake. They can get put in prison and they’re three or four times more likely (to get) longer sentences than if you happen to be not a minority and you live in the suburbs.”

Other statements in newsletters carrying his name complain of the signing of federal hate crimes legislation that covers attacks on gays and lesbians; suggest that AIDS patients are such a threat for spreading the disease that they should not be allowed to eat in restaurants; and contend that gay men in San Francisco lead lives “centered on new sexual partners” and “enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.”

Another newsletter refers to anti-government militias as “an encouraging sign that the end of government as we know it may be near.”

Those are not his opinions, Paul insisted Thursday. When they have been mentioned in his past congressional campaigns, voters who know him don’t believe they reflect his views, he said.

“Nobody in my district ever believed I would have been a participant in that,” he said.