NYT: Verbal Gaffe From a Senator, Then an Apology

Verbal Gaffe From a Senator, Then an Apology

By DAVID STOUT | August 15, 2006

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 — If Senator George Allen of Virginia is thinking of running for president in 2008, as is widely believed, what he said in a little town in southwestern Virginia several nights ago may haunt him.

“This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is, he’s with my opponent,” the Republican lawmaker said on Friday night at a rally in Breaks, next to the Kentucky border. “He’s following us around everywhere. And it’s just great.”

Mr. Allen, a Republican running for re-election to the Senate, was singling out S.R. Sidarth, a 20-year-old volunteer for Mr. Allen’s Democratic challenger, James Webb. Mr. Sidarth’s mission was to trail Mr. Allen and videotape his speeches, in the hope they would yield grist for the Webb campaign.

But it was Mr. Allen who supplied grist for his rival with his use of the term “macaca,” a genus that includes numerous species of monkeys found in Asia.

Mr. Allen said Monday that he meant no insult, that he was sorry if he hurt anyone’s feelings and that he did not know what “macaca” meant, according to The Washington Post, which reported about the incident today.

Mr. Sidarth, who is of Indian descent, was not convinced. “I think he was doing it because he could, and I was the only person of color there, and it was useful for him in inciting his audience,” Mr. Sidarth told The Post.

The senator’s communications director, John Reid, said in an interview today that Allen campaign workers had good-naturedly nicknamed Mr. Sidarth “Mohawk” because he would not disclose his name and the sobriquet seemed appropriate for Mr. Sidarth’s hair style.

Perhaps, Mr. Reid suggested, “Mohawk” morphed into “macaca,” with results that turned out to be regrettable.

After his initial use of the term, Mr. Allen went on to urge the crowd to “give a welcome to macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”

Mr. Reid said those words were not an attempt to stamp a “foreigner” label on Mr. Sidarth, who, incidentally, was born in Fairfax County, Va. People who follow the senator’s campaign know that he often talks about “the real America, real people in the real world,” meaning people outside the Washington Beltway, Mr. Reid said.

Mr. Allen expressed further regrets today. “I apologize if my comments offended this young man,” he said.

Mr. Webb’s communications director, Kristian Denny Todd, was highly skeptical. “I think it’s reaching, at best,” Ms. Todd said in an interview.

Several Virginia polls show Mr. Webb, a Vietnam war hero, novelist and former navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan, trailing Mr. Allen. Yet Ms. Todd said there is no discouragement in the Webb camp. “We have a fantastic candidate,” she said, asserting that Mr. Webb offers leadership instead of a rubber stamp for President Bush.

Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said today that Mr. Allen was strong enough in Virginia that the verbal gaffe would probably not keep him from being elected to a second term in the Senate.

But should Mr. Allen run for president, the word “macaca” will hurt him, “not only because it is offensive on its face but also because it fits into a long pattern of insensitivity by Allen on racial and ethnic matters,” Mr. Sabato said.

Mr. Sabato was student council president at the University of Virginia when Mr. Allen was class president there three decades ago.

In 1984, as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Mr. Allen opposed a state holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After being elected governor in 1993, he issued a proclamation honoring Confederate History Month. He also kept a Confederate flag in his home, according to The Almanac of American Politics.

The Almanac also notes that as a senator Mr. Allen sponsored legislation to award $1.25 billion in grants for computers and technology for historically black colleges and universities (the measure died in the House), and that he proposed that the Senate apologize for its failure to enact anti-lynching laws in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

“I have worked very hard in the Senate to reach out to all Americans, regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity or gender,” Mr. Allen said today.