Desparate Republican resorts to race-baiting in CT

[NewJeffCT]

In the neck & neck house race in the 2nd district of Connecticut, Republican incumbent Rob Simmons holds a narrow lead (48-46) over Democratic challenger James Sullivan http://www.sullivanforcongress.com and Simmons has resorted to RNC led race baiting tactics in a district with few black voters.
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Tight Race Brings Out The Worst In Simmons - Again
October 27, 2004

When the going gets tough, the National Republican Congressional Committee just pours it on. For the third time in five years, the NRCC is dumping its sludge on eastern Connecticut, where polls show a tightening race between 2nd District Rep. Rob Simmons and Democratic challenger James Sullivan (or, as Simmons condescendingly calls him, "Jimmy" Sullivan).
...
Always willing to pitch in, the national GOP has lent a helping shovel to Simmons, just as it did in 2000 when Democrat Sam Gejdenson was buried in an avalanche of muck. Gejdenson was falsely accused of living outside the district in a TV ad featuring a fictitious gated community and of sharing "a dirty little secret" with an attractive blonde pictured in a mailing.
....
Now there's no pretense of outrage or remorse coming from the Simmons camp, whose supporters have rolled out a variation on the "dirty little secret" theme. With 10 days to go to Election Day and a poll showing Sullivan narrowing the gap to 2 percentage points, a flier featuring a young African American woman landed in 2nd District mailboxes.

"Shhhh! Someone doesn't want you to know about secret ...," she whispers. What could it be? "Jim Sullivan, aka, `The Tax Man,' voted to raise property taxes on Connecticut families while he was a member of the Norwich City Council."
...

http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-jacklin1027.artoct27,1,2189340.column?coll=hc-headlines-oped

[leftyandproud]

1. um...

I don't see any "race baiting".

Are you telling me any time someone uses a picture of a black person, it is race baiting?

[xchrom]

2. it's the idea of linking up images and ideas

too many white people use the republican party to hold onto ''soft'' racist ideas -- i.e. african americans live off tax dollars.
simmons doesn't have to make direct race baiting -- he just has to play fast and loose with connect the dots -- and the people he's speaking to -- well they get the idea.

[NewJeffCT]

3. did you read the article?

The flyer that was distributed was a sexy black woman saying that she has a secret about Jim Sullivan? Just that image with those words is racially charged in a district that is full of white blue collar Democrats

[Atman]

4. The flyer was the worst kind of hatred

And typical of the GOP in Connecticut. Mind you, this was the NATIONAL GOP that did this...distribute a flyer of a black woman with a "come-hither" look in a 97% white district. The hope was that people didn't even read the flyer, and just make a connection to something unseemly. They did it before, their tactics are well known here. It is deplorable.

[NewJeffCT]

9. it's not 97% white

3% is African American, but there is a higher percentage of Hispanics in the district than African American, I believe, and I know the Norwich area has seen a huge influx of Chinese over the past 3 years. I'm also pretty sure Glastonbury has a decent sized Asian population (including Indian & Chinese)

However, your point is taken in that just the picture & headline imply something unseemly.

[sofa king]

5. No, it's Indian baiting in 2CT.

Simmons' district is home to two of the wealthiest tribes in the nation, the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans. They are soon to be joined by the Eastern Pequot, if Gale Norton doesn't figure out a way to terminate them.

It's cheap, easy, and effective to bash the local Indians while quietly taking their donations. Simmons gets his Indian cash from the http://congress.org/congressorg/bio/fec/?id=10444&cycle=2003-2004">Continuing a Majority Party Action Committee, as you can see from the donations of former http://opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou=0&txtName=reels+&txtState=%28all+states%29&txtZip=&txtEmploy=&txtCand=&txt2004=Y&txt2002=Y&Order=N">Mashantucket Pequot Chairman Kenny Reels. At the same time Simmons regularly keeps anti-Indian sentiment stoked by promising to find a solution to the "Indian problem," the problem being that Indians exist in Connecticut and the solution being a way to http://indianz.com/News/archives/003651.asp">legislatively make them go away.

However, it would be unfair to Simmons if we did not credit him for being less vile than the Democratic carpetbagger, Indian hater, and http://nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/203973p-176040c.html">bad scholar Jeff Benedict, who split the Democratic vote in 2000 and allowed Simmons into Congress in the first place. A primary argument advanced by Benedict is that because the Mashantucket Pequots cohabitated with escaped slaves, they are somehow no longer "Indian," and no longer entitled to their land, despite the fact that they have continuously occupied their reservation in Connecticut since the late 1600s.

Fuck you, Jeff. Your kind of Democrats skipped the party in 1948, along with Strom Thurmond.

[NewJeffCT]

6. ouch - I read your last line first.

I read your last line first & thought it applied to me and not Jeff Benedict...

Didn't Donald Trump get in trouble a while back when he tried to open a casino in CT and said that some local Indians here didn't look like "indians"?

[sofa king]

7. Yeah. It's a common misconception.

We used to jokingly call it "Mayflower family syndrome." Donald Trump, Jeff Benedict, and the state of Connecticut have all used the argument that because the gene pool has diversified in the tribes, they are now no longer "Indian."

But the federal government doesn't see it that way. If a tribe is made up of people who descend from other tribal members, that's good enough for them. What's far more important to the feds is that the tribe must also have acted as a distinct political and social entity since first contact with Europeans.

When that argument didn't work, they all jumped tracks and claimed that the Mashantuckets had failed to "prove" to Congress in a rigorous fashion that they have continuously existed. (Ironically, Jeff Benedict actually does a pretty good job of outlining their continuous existence in his book.) Then, their cousin tribe just down the street proved their own existence to the BIA, and in so doing effectively did the same for the Mashantuckets. So now the state and Jeff Benedict are claiming that the BIA process is flawed.

But the bottom line is that they're being a bunch of racist-ass sonsabitches, relentlessly target-shifting in an effort to destroy these tribes, which they view as inconvenient. Finally, after being denied citizenship and fighting tooth and nail for a few acres of reservation land for 350 years, these guys are making a good living, and suddenly people don't like it.

Frankly, I find it very Republican of them.

[NewJeffCT]

8. why are they inconvenient?

Just out of curiousity, why are the Indian tribes "inconvenient"?... I get the impression that most people don't have a big problem with the Indians & their casinos. Heck, they give a lot of money to the state each year from their slot revenues and have certainly raised the profile of Southeastern CT...