David Duke Running for Office — Again
Former Klansman David Duke jumped into a Congressional race in Louisiana after losing other political races.
Perennial campaigner David Duke (see The Alliance and its Allies, Sharks in the Mainstream, and Race and 'Reason') has jumped into the race for the seat being vacated by Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), who announced plans to resign shortly after he was selected to replace Newt Gingrich as House Speaker.
In January, Duke told a crowd of some 100 people in Arlington, Va., that he would be the only candidate "to stand up openly and proudly" to defend white Christians against federal policies that he said favor blacks, Jews and other minorities. The event, at which long-time white supremacist Edward Fields also spoke, was organized by Mark Cotterill, who recently resigned as leader of the capital region chapter of the racist Council of Conservative Citizens (see Sharks in the Mainstream).
Duke, 48, has made a series of similar political runs since leaving the Klan in the late 1970s to found the National Association for the Advancement of White People, another white supremacist organization. After a 1988 campaign for the presidency on the ticket of the far-right Populist Party, Duke won a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives.
In 1990, he lost a U.S. Senate race, followed by a second loss in a run for state governor. In 1996, he lost a second bid for a U.S. Senate seat.
