Wednesday May 11, 2011
Candidate's 'joke' offends tea partiers
by Ry Rivard
Daily Mail Capitol Reporter


CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The leaders of an Eastern Panhandle Tea Party group
are claiming former state lawmaker and current GOP gubernatorial
candidate Larry Faircloth made a racist and sexist remark about
President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Terry and Larrice Craver, the co-founders of We the People of Hampshire
County, said the group hosted a candidate forum April 29 in Romney that
three GOP candidates attended.

"While Mr. Faircloth was giving his opening comments, he chose to tell a
racist, sexist 'Joke,'" the couple said in a Monday email obtained by
the Daily Mail. "This offended several people, some laughed, most
gasped, and one man stood up and walked out and made the statement
'You're all nothing but a bunch of bigots' on his way out the door."

The Cravers declined to retell the joke in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Faircloth referred to Pelosi as a "bimbo."

"Is she not one?" Faircloth said in a Tuesday evening telephone
interview. "I mean, a lot of people think she is a bimbo; that's why
they replaced Congress with Republicans, and they removed her as
speaker. I don't find that as anything different than a political poke
at her."

He also referred to Obama as a "Sambo," a term many consider racist.

"It was meant to be a joke, and if they took it different, I told the
people there that I apologized," Faircloth said.

He added, "We've been tiptoeing around the president."

Faircloth said he had heard the joke earlier that day from a poll worker.

The Cravers said they first asked Faircloth to make a public apology but
he refused. Finally, they said they sent the email Monday to other tea
party groups across the state.

"I put it out there so other tea parties would know what's going on. I
didn't put it out for publication; I was putting it out for their
knowledge because it goes to the character of the candidate," Terry
Craver said in an interview.

In the email, the Cravers described an attempt to get Faircloth to
apologize.

"Terry told him that his joke offended several people at the forum," the
email, which was written by Larrice Craver, said.

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Ahh, the GOP...the party of inclusion. Good luck in 2012, 2016, 2020...