From The Courier-Journal, 10/31/03:
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2003/10/31ky/met-front-challenge10300-9196.html
GOP defends vote challenge
Activists call flier to recruit poll workers racially biased
By ANDREW WOLFSON
The Courier-Journal
The chairman of the Jefferson County Republican Party says the
decision to place Election Day challengers in predominantly
African-American precincts has nothing to do with race or alleged
irregularities in past elections.
But a Republican recruiting flier tells a different story, say
civil-rights activists who have seen it.
The flier asserts that in three previous Kentucky races, the NAACP and
the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a black trade-unionist group,
targeted "poor, black voters" and encouraged them to "commit voter
fraud."
The leaflet calls the Washington-based Randolph Institute "the black
militant division of the AFL-CIO."
The flier was written and distributed in July by Republican Mike
Czerwonka, who several GOP leaders say has been the central figure in
recruiting poll workers for the party in Jefferson County.
The leaflet has been posted on two Washington-based Web sites.
Raoul Cunningham, the former voting-empowerment coordinator for the
state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said
that the document shows that the Republicans' decision to place
challengers in West End and Newburg precincts "is clearly racial."
Former state Sen. Georgia Powers said the flier is insulting to the
African-American community by implying "we are dishonest and have no
integrity."
Czerwonka, a construction manager who last year unsuccessfully
challenged state Rep. Paul Bather in the 43rd District, said yesterday
that the assertions in the letter are true and that there is nothing
racist about them.
He said he circulated the letter in July as part of a pitch to recruit
precinct workers from Associated Builders and Contractors of
Kentuckiana and other trade groups.
Former county GOP chairman Bill Stone applauded Czerwonka for his
recruiting work and said the flier "tells it like it is. There is
nothing racist about it."
But officials with the campaign of U.S. Rep. Ernie Fletcher, the
Republican candidate for governor, disavowed the letter, as did the
Jefferson County Republican chairman, Jack Richardson IV.
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Kinda difficult to tell the white sheet Republicans from the other
kind in Kentucky.
Harry
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