Racist McCain Backer Is Out

On Sunday we wrote about a racist newspaper column by McCain County Chair Bobby May of Buchanan County, Virginia. We predicted he's be out of the campaign by Monday night; it took a little longer than that, but he's been dropped like a hot potato.

LATimes: John McCain backer dropped from Virginia campaign team due to racially tinged column

John McCain's campaign has denounced and rejected a racially charged, anti-Barack Obama newspaper column written by one of the Republican campaign's organizers in Virginia,and has removed the author-activist from his post as a member of the candidate's statewide leadership team.

The column by Bobby May appeared in a southwestern Virginia newspaper,The Voice, and drew attention after it was cited in a Sunday Los Angeles Times report about how voters in that mostly white region were reacting to potentially electing the country's first black president.

May, who in July was named his county's Republican representative on the McCain statewide campaign team, offered a spoof of Obama's platform and plans in his recent column.

[]

McCain spokeswoman Gail Gitcho, in a written statement announcing that May was being dropped from the campaign team, said the attempts at humor "are offensive, insulting and have no place in political discourse. Mr. May's comments in no way reflect the views or opinions held by John McCain or his campaign. The McCain campaign wholeheartedly disavows Mr. May's column."

McCain would prefer to attack Obama indirectly; "Who is Barack Obama" is coded racism.