LANSING -- The finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, who also was Michigan's former GOP chairman, was captured on video telling a tea party meeting that voters in Detroit get picked up at pool halls and barbershops and bused "from precinct to precinct where they vote multiple times."
Ron Weiser also said at the Aug. 9 meeting in Milford that someone not from Detroit would not want to go to the polls there at 6:30 a.m. "without a side arm."
The video of Weiser's comments, recorded by a Democratic operative shadowing GOP congressional candidate Kerry Bentivolio to a meeting where Weiser also spoke, was given to the Free Press and posted on YouTube by the Michigan Democratic Party. Weiser emphatically said Friday that he meant no offense to Detroit and was speaking about past, not current, campaigns. But his comments immediately drew sharp criticism from a civil rights activist and a Detroit lawmaker.
The controversy drew comparisons to a surreptitiously recorded video of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney telling people at a Florida campaign fund-raiser last May that he couldn't rely on the support of 47% of the country because they rely on government handouts and likely would support President Barack Obama.
Romney was accused of racism and classism. Now, Weiser is drawing similar objections from critics who say he disrespected and stereotyped Detroit because of its large African-American and low-income population.
In a phone interview Friday evening with the Free Press, Weiser, an Ann Arbor businessman who was running for a seat on the University of Michigan Board of Regents when he appeared at the tea party gathering, initially said he didn't recall making the comments and didn't think he would have used that kind of language. He later acknowledged making the remarks.
Top Republican official Ron Weiser's comments about Detroit on videotape are causing a stir | Politics/Election 2012 | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
No comments:
Post a Comment