Racist views spark anger

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/cdh/20020228/lo/racist_views_spark_anger_1.html

Kane County Republicans and neighbors sought distance Wednesday from Scott Sutterlin, the state Senate candidate from Geneva who said this week he thinks white and black people should remain separate.

Sutterlin, along with Ken Toftoy of Yorkville, is running against Aurora Republican Chris Lauzen for the state Senate in the March 19 primary. Lauzen represents the 25th District, which covers all of Kane County west of the Fox River, as well as parts of Kendall and LaSalle counties.

Local and state political experts said Sutterlin's race for Lauzen's seat likely is dead after he defended this week his 1994 comments to a national TV audience, in which he said black people should have been sent back to Africa "a long time ago."

"Needless to say, the Republican Party does not agree with anything he said," said Bill Keck, the GOP chairman in Kane County. Keck further distanced himself from Sutterlin by saying he's upset his views might reinforce a stereotype that the Republican Party is an all-white party.

"Certainly we're not," Keck said. "And we don't want that projected. We're not that type of party. Maybe that's what his vision is, but it's certainly not ours."

Some neighbors in Sutterlin's west Geneva neighborhood who had posted Sutterlin yard signs said upon learning of his comments they would remove those signs.

Throughout the day Wednesday, signs all across Geneva supporting Sutterlin became increasingly hard to find.

Brad Smircich, who lives near Sutterlin, said he was shocked by the candidate's words, which were exposed by the Daily Herald Wednesday.

"He just said he was running for election," Smircich said. "He said he was for families and wanted to know if he could put up a sign. I said 'Sure.'

"It's coming down," Smircich said.

Lynda Rivers, the Geneva Township Republican Party chairman, said Wednesday that Sutterlin, though on the Republican ballot in the March primary, has never attended a local party meeting or done volunteer work for the party.

The township party organization, she said, attempted to screen candidates running on the GOP ticket earlier this year, but Sutterlin never responded to the invitation.

"I believe we would have been able to get to his viewpoints if he'd come before us, but he didn't," Rivers said.

Sutterlin, who was contacted twice Wednesday, declined to comment further on either his candidacy or his comments.

On Tuesday, he admitted to saying "we need to separate the races" in 1994 on the "Geraldo" show, which at the time was taping a Ku Klux Klan rally in Janesville, Wis.

Sutterlin, now 45, used the name Scott Alm when he appeared on the show. Alm is his adopted name, which he gave up in lieu of his biological father's name seven years ago.

He said he was at the rally at the invitation of the show, not to support the KKK. Instead, he thought he was going to get a chance to voice support for conservative Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan (news - web sites).

Even so, Sutterlin affirmed Tuesday the comments he made, saying that even today he agrees with them "in general." According to a transcript of the show, Sutterlin said:

"We should have sent (black people) back to Africa a long time ago, and maybe paid their way and set them up again.

"In my opinion, we have to do something like that because we are different people. We think and behave differently.

"They're people from the jungle, and we are people from Europe. And there's nothing wrong with that," he said.

Charles Wheeler III, an associate professor of public affairs at the University of Illinois-Springfield, said Sutterlin's comments show he's not qualified to be an elected official.

"An elected official has to represent all constituents and do it fairly," he said. "Somebody who is a self-avowed racist can't do that."

Wheeler said he didn't think Sutterlin's attachment to the Republican Party would be harmful to the GOP.

"You can call yourself whatever you want to call yourself," he said. "But the reaction (by party officials) whenever one of these people with extremist views is uncovered is usually a repudiation by the mainstream members."

That repudiation came swiftly Wednesday as Keck released a strongly worded statement to the news media regarding Sutterlin. In it he said:

"Sutterlin's comments are at best ignorant and at worst hateful," Keck wrote. "Either way, they are hurtful and disappointing, and there is no place for them in the Republican Party, or anywhere else for that matter."
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The Republicans never can shade that image of being a party polluted with racism...