Frost: Perry Wouldn’t Be Candidate Today Without “Appealing to White Prejudice” 20 Years Ago

Lauren Samet — October 17, 2011 – 2:57 pm | Civil Rights | GOP Presidential Candidates 2012 | Republicans Comments (0) Add a comment

Recently the media has given a great deal of attention to the racially insensitive words that once appeared on a rock at the entrance to Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s hunting camp. However, former Representative and current NJDC Executive Committee member Martin Frost explained that “all [this] media hoopla…misses the point about Perry and racism.” In an editorial he wrote for Politico, Frost drew readers’ attention instead to a “race-baiting” television ad Perry ran during his 1990 campaign for agriculture commissioner.

An article from The New York Times recalls the details of Perry’s 1990 TV ad: 

The 30-second attack ad prominently features Mr. Perry’s Democratic opponent in that race, the incumbent Jim Hightower, posing triumphantly with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Their hands are clasped above their heads, and the two men are smiling.

These words flash on the screen: ‘Does Hightower share your values?’ Then, under the photo of the two men: ‘Jesse Jackson’s chairman.’ (Mr. Hightower had endorsed Mr. Jackson for president in 1988 but was not his Texas campaign chairman.)

Mr. Perry’s aides said then and insist now that the ad was designed only to tie Mr. Hightower to a well-known liberal, but at the time it prompted a furor among black lawmakers. They compared it to the 1988 Willie Horton ad, which used pictures of a menacing-looking criminal, a black man who had been furloughed from prison when Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee, was the governor of Massachusetts.

‘The whole point was: there I am with a black man,’ Mr. Hightower recalled in an interview last week. ‘It was an overt play to the racist vote.’

In his Politico piece, Frost rejected any denial by the Perry campaign of his appeal to racist sentiments in Texas through this ad:

Those of us who were veterans of Southern politics of that era immediately understood what Perry was saying with the ‘share your values’ line. This was racism pure and simple, circa 20 years ago in the South.

I was first elected to Congress in 1978 and served throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. No one had to explain the significance of that ad to me.

Perry’s defense team has been quick to respond to the controversy about the words on the rock, and to this television ad, by saying that Perry can’t be a racist because he appointed many African-Americans to high positions when he became governor 11 years later.

But the passage of time does not make Perry’s conduct in his first major campaign excusable. Maybe he doesn’t have any racist bones in his body - as one of his black supporters has suggested.

However, there is a cardinal rule in politics - when you put your name on an ad, you own it. You can’t blame your campaign operative (Rove) for an ad that you may now regret.

Perry is running for the highest office in the land. Certainly his current views should be carefully scrutinized. But no one should forget that he would not be a candidate for president had he not traveled the Atwater-Rove path of appealing to white prejudice against African-Americans in our not-too-distant past.

To view Martin Frost’s editorial, click here. Click here to view The New York Times article.

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