Former Klansman Raises Money in Bid to Succeed Livingston

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
©New York Times
January 3, 1999

ARLINGTON, Va. – Seeking donations from an audience sympathetic to his view that too many federal policies favor blacks, Jews and other minorities over whites, David Duke arrived in the Washington area Saturday to drum up support for his latest political endeavor.

Duke is the first Republican to declare his candidacy for the House seat being vacated by Rep. Robert Livingston of Louisiana, who announced his intention to resign soon after he was selected to succeed Newt Gingrich as House speaker. Duke brought along a stack of volumes of his new autobiography, "My Awakening," and told a crowd of about 100 here that he would become the first person in Congress "to stand up openly and proudly" to defend the rights of Christian whites.

"I need you to make a sacrifice economically," he said, pitching the autographed books at $35 each, or four for $100. "If we can get just one person in Congress, it will be like opening the floodgates. It could change this country overnight."

Bashing diversity as a destructive force, he concluded his hour-long speech by saying, "If we lose European-Americans, we lose America."

Fears that American culture is overly influenced by blacks and other minorities through immigration policies, and that Jews have taken control of the federal government, have been central themes of Duke's world view for many years.

As a Ku Klux Klan leader in the 1970s, he made his points in white robes and at demonstrations. More recently, he has taken the more genteel path of business suits and electoral politics. He served one term in the Louisiana House of Representatives before losing a 1990 U.S. Senate race to J. Bennett Johnston. He lost the 1991 Louisiana governor's race to Edwin Edwards. In 1996, he finished fourth in a field of nine in an open primary for the Senate seat now held by Mary Landrieu, a Democrat.

After Livingston decided to resign, acknowledging extramarital affairs, Duke, 48, jumped into the race despite immediate condemnation by more mainstream Louisiana Republicans. Referring to the possibility that Duke might succeed Livingston, Rep. Jim McCrery of Shreveport told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans: "Obviously, we'd work to avoid that unpleasantry."

Despite such objections, Duke is popular in many parts of Louisiana, including the district he would represent, which he claims supported him in each of his statewide campaigns. The district is directly north of New Orleans and 85 percent white. "And we weren't even concentrating there," Duke said in an interview before the speech.

He has also developed some support around the country. On Saturday, an attentive crowd paid $10 a person to hear Duke and another advocate of white rights, Edward Fields of Kennesaw, Ga., who spent most of his 30-minute speech blaming Jews and Israel for the ills of the world.

Like Duke, Fields embraced the Republican Party, asserting, "This country has been gutted by Jews who vote Democrat."

Mark Cotterill, the event organizer, said that many in the audience were members of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization that gained widespread attention in recent months when it was disclosed that Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, and Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, one of the most ardent supporters of the impeachment of President Clinton, had appeared as guest speakers at council events.

Both Lott and Barr quickly distanced themselves from the group, denouncing the racial views of many of its members.

Cotterill, who recently resigned as chairman of the national capital region of the council, stressed that the event was not sponsored by the council. He said he stepped down, in part, because the organization regarded Duke and Fields as "too controversial."

Even so, human rights organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League contend that the council is steeped in bigotry, evolving as it did from the White Citizens Councils that once flourished in the South, promoting segregation. The human rights groups also claim that many members of the Council of Conservative Citizens have ties to the Klan, the National Association for the Advancement of White People and other white supremacist organizations.

Among the books on sale here were several published by the National Alliance, a virulent anti-Semitic and anti-black group based in West Virginia and run by William Pierce, author of "The Turner Diaries," a futuristic story of a race war in which whites rid the country of blacks. Authorities in Oklahoma said that Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in which 168 people died, had a copy of the book when he was arrested.