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The Indian American Leadership Initiative and Democratic Party activists and political operatives, have rounded up Mike Pompeo, Republican Congressional candidate in Kansas' District 4, for using Twitter to direct his followers to a blog posting, which he said would be 'a good read' that attacks his Democratic opponent Raj Goyle in a most vile, racist and bigoted manner.
Pompeo's suggested reading includes, in part, the following: "Just like his evil muslim communist USURPER comrad [sic], barrack hussein obama, This goyle character is just another 'turban topper' we don't need in congress or any political office that deals with the U.S. Constitution, Christianity and the United States of America!!!"
IALI President Kathy Kulkarni, in condemning Pompeo said, "It is stunning that a candidate for federal office would support such a hateful and bigoted tirade. There are always people on the fringe who will use ethnic smears to attack Indian Americans, but we are outraged that a candidate for Congress would encourage his supporters to use such tactics."
She said, "It is un-American and certainly contrary to the values of the people of Kansas. It is unfortunate that, even in 2010, we see campaigns tactics employed to generate fear, prejudice and hatred."
Kulkarni pointed out, "Four years ago Senator George Allen of Virginia made reference to an Indian American as 'Macaca' and the voters decided that he was not fit for the elected office. Let's make sure Raj Goyle's opponent for Congress sees the same fate."
Anurag Varma, vice president of IALI, said, "We know Raj would make a great Congressman. This despicable incident proves that Raj's opponent would not. Now we have to give Raj whatever support he needs to make sure Kansas voters see the difference."
Longtime political operative Anil Mammen, noted, "This kind of hateful rhetoric is common in the right wing blogosphere. While many Republican candidates privately encourage it, they usually make a public show of distancing themselves from such extreme views."
But Mammen said, "Mike Pompeo is taking a big risk when he associates himself with these ethnic slurs. It might energise the hard core Republican base, but will likely offend the moderate Republicans and Independent voters who will decide the outcome of this election."
Another longtime Democratic strategist Toby Chaudhuri pointed out, "We've seen this before. We know what to do. It's time to do it."
Chaudhuri also argued that 'the former Whites-only Republican Party tried to turn Obama into an alien too, but his victory helped Americans wake up to new possibilities. Race is still a very powerful force in our society. Indian American candidates of every stripe are forced to negotiate with this reality, despite carrying proven records of public service -- and they've all responded in very different ways.'
"Fortunately, there's an unprecedented amount of political activity happening within the community and outside the formal campaigns. Activists are building a movement to force changes that might otherwise never take place. They're using politics to solve our community's everyday problems and change America," he said.
Chaudhuri also noted, "Indian Americans are beginning to lead in political fundraising and we're challenging politicians who don't support our values, mobilising activists and recruiting and supporting strong candidates of our own."
Following the furore over his tweet that the bigoted blog against Goyle would make 'a good read,' Pompeo had called Goyle to apologise and also posted an apology on his Facebook page on August 12 at 12.27 pm, saying that 'yesterday at approximately 2:00pm the Pompeo for Congress Press office inadvertently posted a link to a tremendously offensive blog post on the Pompeo for Congress Facebook page and the same link was Tweeted. The mistake was discovered within less than an hour of it occurring and the Facebook post and Tweet were pulled down immediately upon our learning of the error.'
He said, "It was an honest mistake and our campaign truly regrets the error," and went on to state that the "the statements of the blogger in no way reflect my views. There is no place in campaigns or in public discourse for language of this nature. I have placed a personal call of apology and spoken to Rep Goyle directly expressing our campaign's regret for the error."
Pompeo added, "I have spent a great deal of time visiting with the staff person who inadvertently posted this link. I am convinced there was no malice in his actions. He mistakenly posted a link to the wrong Google alert."
"I want also to apologise to our Facebook friends and Twitter followers who may have followed the link," he added.
Robert Becker, senior communications adviser to Goyle, told rediff.com that Pompeo had 'called and apologised and Raj spoke with him and they reached an agreement that this kind of bigotry has no place in the public discourse and campaigns and we intend to fully hold him to that standard.'
"They have said that this was a mistake made by a member of their staff, but I don't necessarily but that," Becker said. "I have made it very, very clear that if any one of our staff did that -- just posted something that bigoted and xenophobic and all that, they would be fired immediately."
He said, "I don't know what their motives were or if there was some sort of like strategy over there, but it was a wrong-headed move. We called them on it and we are going to hold them to their word that this kind of stuff will stop."
Becker said, as of now, Goyle had taken Pompeo's apology at face value and accepted it 'with the agreement that this type of bigotry will not be part of the dialogue in his campaign for the next 84 days and beyond. I mean, honestly when I saw that on Twitter with the caption, 'here's a great read,' I was shocked.'
He said that what was most despicable about the blog post was that besides 'Raj being a local boy here -- born and bred -- I mean we are talking about a guy who finally got the law passed to stop the Rev Phelps and his crazy protests at the soldiers' funerals to afford some privacy and dignity to funerals.'
Becker pointed out that 'he (Goyle) took on one of the biggest sort of promoters of bigotry and hate in Kansas and got a law passed. So to sit there and do something to a guy like Representative Goyle who has done that for this community, his state, his country, is just reprehensible.'