Yesterday I wrote about Randy Gray, the Midland County, Michigan coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign who is also a longstanding active and vocal organizer for the Knight's Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan. Before I published that diary I contacted the press office of the national Ron Paul campaign in Virginia, explained the situation, and asked if the campaign would like to release a statement on the matter. The press official I spoke to said he would look into it and get back to me. He never did.
Today I called the campaign again and spoke, I believe, to the same press official, who seemed slightly less interested in helping me than he did yesterday but said I'd get a call when he received a statement. The phone hasn't rung, and there's no trace of a statement on the campaign Web site. Meanwhile, Gray remains listed as the official contact for Midland County, Michigan on the Ron Paul campaign's Web site.
In fact, this matter is even more significant than I thought yesterday, when I pointed to pages referencing Gray on michigan4ronpaul.com, a site whose relationship to the national campaign committee is unclear. Today, however, I found a list of Michigan county contacts on the national campaign's own Web site. Some of the names differ between the two lists, but Randy Gray is on both of them. It is clear that Gray is and has been acting in an official capacity for the Paul campaign in Midland County.
I want to make it clear that the mere fact of a white supremacist serving as a county coordinator for Ron Paul does not, by itself, indict the candidate or his campaign organization. Modern presidential campaigns are large, decentralized organizations by necessity, and with more than 3000 counties in the United States it is unreasonable to expect a candidate or his core team to develop full dossiers on everyone who wants to volunteer their time for what may amount to little more than ringing doorbells and planting yard signs. Nor is the fact that a white supremacist would be attracted to the Ron Paul phenomenon by itself necessarily damning. People with fringe political beliefs often don't arrive at them by what we would consider rational thought processes, and if you probe deeply enough into any candidate's fan base you're likely to find at least a few kooks. Nevertheless, the frankly overwhelming support that Paul has received from the US neo-Nazi community (and his refusal to return a donation from one of America's highest-profile white supremacists), combined with the continually unfolding revelations about the racist, anti-gay content of Paul's newsletters in the 1990s, make this an issue the Paul campaign cannot credibly afford to ignore.
The opportunity for the Ron Paul campaign to claim that they are unaware of Gray's affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan is at an end; if nothing else, they are aware of it today because I informed them about it yesterday. I would expect any official statement from the campaign to cover the following points:
- When did the campaign learn that Gray is an open and active white supremacist?
- What action, if any, does the campaign intend to take regarding Gray and his position as Midland County coordinator?
- What is the campaign's policy on allowing avowed white supremacists to serve in official coordinating roles with the campaign?
Until the campaign sees fit to provide answers to these questions, we continue to wait.