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Controversy Over White Nationalist GOP Candidate Still White Hot
The 2004 Constitution Party candidate for president Michael Peroutka's current race for County Council in Maryland -- as a Republican -- it is still one of the white hot political stories of the summer.
In recent days, not only did Salon.com publish Paul Rosenberg's groundbreaking story about how Peroutka epitomizes the problem of race in the Republican Party, but The Baltimore Sun and the news site Maryland Reporter have already advanced it. The Sun followed-up on Salon's disclosure of a new PAC -- StopPeroutka.com. Maryland Reporter further reported the names of the leading Democrats behind the innovative anti-Peroutka site. The news site also ran a column about how the GOP has "a Peroutka problem." |
It turns out that the Democrats behind StopPertouka.com are Anne Arundel County Council member Jamie Benoit and Dan Clements, a prominent lawyer who is a former president of the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association and active in Democratic political campaigns.
Maryland Reporter columnist Barry Rascovar writes:
Just what the Maryland Republican Party didn't need -- a theocratic, paleo-conservative candidate who has renounced the General Assembly as ungodly and is deeply involved in a group advocating a white, Christian nation of the South.
Worst of all for the Maryland GOP, this 61-year-old, Bible-spouting secessionist with a bizarre view of government is the favorite to win the November election in Anne Arundel County's Broadneck Peninsula-Severna Park-Arnold councilmanic district.
His name is Michael Peroutka, a smooth-talking, debt-collection attorney. He ran for president of the United States in 2004 on the Constitution Party ballot line. He got 150,000 votes out of 122,000,000 cast (0.1 percent).
Yet in June, he shocked the GOP establishment by winning Anne Arundel's District 5 council primary by a razor-thin 38 votes.
The Republican nominee for governor, Larry Hogan Jr., disassociated himself from Peroutka. So did the GOP's nominee for county executive, Del. Steve Schuh. Annapolis Del. Herb McMillan isn't supporting Peroutka, either, because his views "are the exact opposite of the Republican Party."
Like the slick lawyer he is, Peroutka is trying to sweet-talk Council District 5 voters into believing he's an ordinary conservative who rails against the misnamed "rain tax," abhors all taxes and demands drastically limited government.
It's a con. |
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