Why Republicans Cant Ditch David Duke -- Eleanor Clift
He was washed up 15 or 20 years ago. But the former KKK leader keeps popping back into the news, on board the Trump train.
ELEANOR CLIFT
08.18.17 1:00 AM ET
Getting David Duke’s endorsement is problematic for any politician. Candidate Donald Trump said he didn’t know who Duke was when the former Klan leader told his followers that voting for anyone else in 2016 “is really treason to your heritage.” Asked about Duke’s presence at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” protest Saturday, President Trump said he didn’t know Duke was there.
Politicians on the right have long had a love-hate relationship with Duke. They don’t like the taint of an official endorsement, but they want his supporters. It’s a microcosm of the right wing’s flirtation with white supremacy, which is now boiling over with confrontations over Confederate symbols.
To win the governor’s race in Louisiana in 1995, Republican Mike Foster secretly purchased Duke’s mailing list for $150,000, a hefty sum for 80,000 names that he could have purchased for a pittance from the state ethics board. “He developed a mailing list that was a powerful list in the ’90s,” says Jeff Crouere, executive director and then-leader of the state GOP in ’97 and ’98. “It wasn’t exactly an above-board transaction, and he was fined by the ethics board. But that was the enduring power of Duke—Foster would not champion David Duke, but he didn’t in any way condemn him.”
Foster won election and re-election with Duke’s tacit backing, and the secret transaction only came to light when Duke told a grand jury investigating him on unrelated fraud charges about the payment. Foster said he kept it quiet because “It ain’t real cool to put out there that you are buying something from David Duke.”
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