Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston’s political downfall appears to be playing directly into the hands of former Klansman David Duke, who launched a bid last month for the Republican congressman’s seat.
While prominent Republicans have denounced Duke as an extremist, the Anti-Defamation League is troubled because he has a strong following among white voters in Louisiana.
“Our biggest concern is his effort to mainstream himself,” said Elizabeth Coleman, director of ADL’s civil rights division. She was in San Francisco earlier this month to speak to the Commonwealth Club.
“It’s worrisome to have someone that extreme sugar-coating his views and having success.”
Livingston, who was in line for Speaker, admitted to extramarital affairs in December and announced that he would resign from Congress within six months. The date of the special election for his seat has not yet been announced.
That vacancy will leave an opening for Duke, who claims popularity in the district, according to a recent New York Times report. The district is immediately north of New Orleans and 85 percent white.
Duke has rankled GOP lines since he retired his robes as a Ku Klux Klan leader and campaigned as a Republican, alienating the party’s moderate whites and conservative minorities. In 1989, he won a seat in the Louisiana state House of Representatives from a blue-collar suburb of New Orleans. He has since failed twice in bids for a U.S. Senate seat and once for governor.
ADL has been monitoring Duke’s campaigns because “he is a racist and an anti-Semite,” Coleman said. “We’ve been focused on exposing his ideology. It’s easier for him to mislead when he’s deceptive about his background.”
Although Duke has yet to plunge into full-scale campaigning, his recently released autobiography, “My Awakening,” shows that his racist, anti-Semitic views have not changed, according to Coleman.
She called the 736-page book “a junior league Mein Kampf.” One-fourth of the book is devoted to what Duke calls “the Jewish question.”
“He brings in all sorts of racist ideology,” Coleman said. “He does some Holocaust denial and questions the death camps in a pseudoscientific way.”
While Duke’s speeches are often anti-Semitic and laden with hate, they do not constitute a breach of the law, Coleman said. But hate speech can lead to threats or incite violence, which is why ADL is lobbying for federal legislation to prosecute such criminal acts as hate crimes. Louisiana is one of 13 states that have no hate crime laws.
“The best shot we have in this country in the cause of tolerance is free speech,” Coleman said. “Our job is to tell the world about extremists and counteract them in legal ways.”
Coleman said Duke’s political revival is particularly ominous because it comes at a time of national prosperity.
“Jews and every other minority have to be extremely vigilant. Duke’s attempt for legitimacy — and the religious right in general — [are] something Jews should be worried about,” Coleman said.
“It’s important Jews work with other groups because the ones who hate Jews tend also to hate blacks and gays. We have a lot to be concerned about.”