Late last week, the House of Representatives failed to pass a resolution introduced by Democrats to call on Perry to apologize for not immediately getting rid of a rock that read “Niggerhead” at hunting grounds he and his family leased.

The resolution also asks Perry to “condemn the use of this word as being totally offensive and inappropriate at anytime and anyplace in United States history” and to “list the names of all lawmakers, friends, and financial supporters he took with him on his hunting trips at ‘Niggerhead.’”

Perry has defended his family’s actions, saying that the rock was painted and then turned over many years ago.

Campaign manager’s controversial history on race

Perry’s campaign manager in South Carolina, Katon Dawson is the former head of the South Carolina Republican Party. He came under scrutiny in 2009 when he was running to be the chair of the Republican National Committee and it was revealed that he was a member of a “whites-only” country club.

When the press reported on his membership in the club, Dawson said he had been working to get the club to change its membership practices. Dawson was a member of the club for 12 years before he announced that he had resigned in 2009.

At the time, an interview with Dawson done in 2003 surfaced that seemed to indicate that Dawson became involved in politics because he disagreed with desegregation in the 1960s:

I, in the 1960s was a product of school segregation, where we took our schools and completely disbanded them, and made racial equality. Fifty-Fifty. And the kids had no choices. They closed Booker T. Washington, Blease, down here. A pretty good school. Closed it and sent the students to A. C. Flora, across town. And they did it over the summer because the laws had been changed by the politicians. And, the day that school opened, we were on CBS news with the busses turned upside down, and one of them lit on fire. By folks who didn’t want to go to school there. Not folks who did.

The end of that story was, I was standing in a bathroom in public school… This scar over here [pointing to his forehead] was from a baseball bat. I will tell you it was a pretty harsh environment. Government reached into my life and grabbed me and shook me at the age of fifteen. I remember how blatant it was that government just thought that they knew better, that government just thought they knew better what to do in my school. And I can’t say it was so much racial. I can say that people had a lot of stuff thrust on them because politicians thought they knew better. Whether they did or didn’t, I don’t know. But from that day on I’ve always been politically active, and wanted my voice heard. Not always right. And my opinion is not always consistent with everyone else’s. but I care greatly about the State we live in, and greatly about the idea of freedom.

The controversy died down until reporters in South Carolina found evidence of Dawson being involved in more whites-only clubs. Dawson was an officer in the Camellia Ball and the Columbia Ball, two clubs that restrict membership to white, privileged families.

And in 2010, the South Carolina-based Fits News reported Dawson hadn’t actually quit the whites-only club while he was running for RNC chair. The news outlet alleges that Dawson merely paid in advance for his membership while he took a leave from the club.

Anti-LGBT

Perry’s Iowa team has several members that are opposed to LGBT rights.

Matthew Whitaker is Perry’s Iowa co-chair. He was a federal prosecutor from 2004 to 2009.

In February 2007, Whitaker emceed an event for the Iowa Christian Alliance, an anti-gay group headed by Steve Scheffler. Whitaker’s involvement sparked criticism from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State which said members of the federal judicial system should remain impartial.

“Appearing at an event like this certainly raises legitimate questions,” Rob Boston, spokesman for Americans United told the Associated Press. “It’s important that our federal prosecutors present the image of impartiality and that they not be captive to the extreme agenda of special interest groups.”

Also in 2007, Whitaker brought an extortion case against openly gay Democratic Iowa state Sen. Matt McCoy who was quickly acquitted by a jury when the case went to trial in 2007. State Sen. McCoy and his attorney accused Whitaker of prosecuting the case based on politics.

McCoy told the Advocate at the time, “Since coming out as an openly gay man, I have been a continuous target of groups targeting gays to advance their own agendas of intolerance and hate. Clearly, there is significant speculation about what has motivated federal officials to take this action against me.”

Perry’s central Iowa field staffer, Dane Nealson, is the former chair of the Iowa Federation of College Republicans and he was livid when marriage equality for same-sex couples came to the state.

“I find it disturbing that a handful of activists in black robes have reversed the decision of our elected officials over a decade ago and gone against the will of the Iowan people,” he said in 2009. “But this is the problem you’ll run into when you’ve had ten years of Democratic Governors appointing liberal judges who legislate from the bench. It is especially disappointing to see Governor [Chet] Culver and Senator [Mike] Gronstal reversing earlier statements saying they were committed to protecting marriage as being between one man and one woman, even as their constituents look to them for leadership to defend marriage. Flip flopping on issues such as this is not leadership. Because of this, we must let Iowans decide. Let the citizens of our state make their voices heard in a vote on the issue.”

Some of Perry’s surrogates are more vocal in their opposition to gays and lesbians.

New Hampshire state Rep. Alfred Baldasaro made headlines in that state several weeks ago when he praised a GOP-debate audience for booing a gay soldier, Stephen Hill.

“He doesn’t realize it, but when the (expletive) hits the fan, you want your brothers covering your back, not looking at your back,” Baldasaro said.

Baldasaro endorsed Perry and has campaigned for him in New Hampshire. When Democrats called on him to apologize, he doubled down on his statement.

“Oh no, I thought the audience, when they booed (Hill), I thought it was great,” he said.

He told the Union Leader that he doesn’t speak for Perry. “I’m not speaking for Governor Rick Perry. I’m speaking for myself as an American with a First Amendment right to free speech,” he said.

Perry’s traveling press secretary, Robert Black, once compared the Log Cabin Republicans to the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1998, the Republican Party of Texas denied the Texas Log Cabin Republicans a booth at the state convention and Black, who was communications director for the party at the time, told the press the Log Cabin Republicans were a “deviant group” like the Ku Klux Klan and, “We don’t allow pedophiles, transvestites and cross- dressers, either.”

Perry also picked an anti-gay activist to chair his Florida debate team. John Stemberger is head of the Florida Family Policy Council and successfully spearheaded the campaign to add a ban on same-sex marriage to the Florida Constitution.

Stemberger has made some controversial statements in his time amongst the religious right in Florida.

Stemberger was caught in a flap over adoption by same-sex couples when his group used a false picture to make a lesbian couple look bad. He also compared same-sex marriage to suicide.

An attorney, Stemberger once sued a company for renting a car to someone of Irish descent because they are likely to get drunk. In court papers, Stemberger argued that the company “knew or should have known about the unique cultural and ethnic customs existing in Ireland which involve the regular consumption of alcohol at ‘Pubs’ as a major component to Irish social life.” He added the car company “knew or should have known that Sean McGrath would have a high propensity to drink alcohol.”

The Florida Bar filed a misconduct complaint against Stemberger last year for his involvement in a high-profile case of a Muslim teen who converted to Christianity and ran away from her Ohio home to Florida. It was eventually dropped.

New Apostolic Reformation and The Response

Perhaps the most controversial of Perry’s surrogates are those affiliated with a controversial branch of Christianity, the New Apostolic Reformation, and The Response, a gathering of conservative Christians in Texas this summer.

Stemberger’s partner in Perry’s campaign is Pam Olsen. Olsen is a member of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which believes harmful spirits such as Baal have taken over geographic and political areas and, through spiritual mapping, they can be identified and eliminated.

Olsen is the head of the Tallahassee branch of the International House of Prayer which helped organize Perry’s The Response event in Texas two months ago.

Olsen says God will bring natural disasters to America because of the legalization of gay rights. She also says in the “end times,” God will give her the power to raise the dead.

Mainstream evangelicals have criticized Perry’s involvement with NAR members. Brannon Howse, who hosts a series of “Worldview Weekends around the Midwest and South, criticized the movement and those who latch onto it for political support.

“This is what people think is Christianity and it is not. This isn’t biblical orthodox Christianity,” Howse said recently on his radio program.

Perry’s deputy communications director Eric Bearse was also involved in The Response, as the event’s spokesperson. He appeared on the radio program of the American Family Association, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center calls an anti-gay hate group, to explain that the event was intended for people of all faiths to get to know Jesus Christ.

“A lot of people want to criticize what we’re doing, as if we’re somehow being exclusive of other faiths,” he said. “But anyone who comes to this solemn assembly regardless of their faith tradition or background, will feel the love, grace, and warmth of Jesus Christ in that assembly hall, in that arena. And that’s what we want to convey, that there’s acceptance and that there’s love and that there’s hope if people will seek out the living Christ. And that’s the message we want to spread on August 6.”

Along with the International House of Prayer, TheCall Ministries, a national prayer organization founded by evangelist Lou Engle, helped organize The Response. Engle has called for the need to convert gays, lesbians and Muslims, among other harsh rhetoric about the LGBT community. Engle led a rally of around 1,300 people in Uganda in May 2010 in support of the country’s “Kill the Gays” bill.

Leaders of the NAR movement, though not working for Perry’s campaign, have a demonstrated history of making controversial assertions.

Cindy Jacobs, a prophet in the movement, recently said the United States is cursed because Native Americans, who “did blood sacrifice,” “were cannibals” and “ate people.” She said The Response, led by Perry, was a key to eliminating that curse.

“[T]he land is starting to rejoice, you see, because of that prayer,” said Jacobs.

Steele ran his campaign for RNC Chair partially on the premise that he would be able to launch race-based attacks on the President while inoculating the GOP against charges of racism because he is black. I guess part of me hoped it was a hustle, and that he wouldn’t actually go that route. I think it’s pretty clear from the above who Steele was actually hustling.

From a second nominating speech: “He knows this committee better than anyone I’ve ever worked with. Mike Duncan’s only agenda is serving his committee, serving his candidates.”

Katon Dawson, the South Carolina Republican chairman who’s been battered by stories about his membership in a whites-only country club, is next. Glen McCall, a black committee member from the state, gets up for a character witness speech. “Katon’s been a mentor to me,” McCall says. “We’re not like the Democrats. We’re about experience and accomplishments.”

…wait for it…

… racial integration.

I, in the 1960s was a product of school segregation, where we took our schools and completely disbanded them, and made racial equality. Fifty-Fifty. And the kids had no choices. They closed Booker T. Washington, Blease, down here. A pretty good school. Closed it and sent the students to A. C. Flora, across town…

The end of that story was, I was standing in a bathroom in public school… This scar over here [pointing to his forehead] was from a baseball bat. I will tell you it was a pretty harsh environment. Government reached into my life and grabbed me and shook me at the age of fifteen. I remember how blatant it was that government just thought that they knew better, that government just thought they knew better what to do in my school. And I can’t say it was so much racial.

To be fair to Dawson, he has been endorsed by two of the three black members of the RNC, and getting brained by a baseball bat is no fun.

Candidates for the RNC chairmanship held a debate on Monday. (David Weigel)

Chip Saltsman has put the “magic negro” story behind him. The news that the ex-Mike Huckabee campaign manager and candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee had sent RNC members a CD of parody songs that included “Barack the Magic Negro” lit up the political press during the slow Christmas week.

But the aftermath of those first frenzied days was not so hard on Saltsman. According to the Politico’s Andy Barr, RNC members were angry at the media for exploiting the story, and some of them considered supporting him because of it. “I would say that’s about right,” Saltsman told The Washington Independent, confirming the Politico’s take.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Monday’s debate between Saltsman and the five other candidates for RNC chair — including Mike Duncan, the incumbent chairman crushed under the Obama wave — provided yet more evidence that the obsessions of the “MSM” will have nothing to say about who leads the opposition party. Ken Blackwell, the black RNC chairman contender from Ohio, trumpeted his support of Saltsman during the “magic negro” flap on a leaflet handed out to reporters and spectators. You couldn’t find a better example of the Republican Party’s internal wisdom about what its political problems are right now, or what it needs to do to correct them. According to all but one candidate for the job, the GOP’s fortunes will reverse just as soon as it gets better at messaging and networking with activists. Fix that and they’ve fixed the party.

The debate — the first televised RNC slugfest ever, organizer and moderator Grover Norquist crowed — provided plenty of flashbacks to the debates of the 2007-2008 Republican presidential primaries. George W. Bush was only mentioned when Norquist brought him up. Chances to critique the party were judo-flipped into chances to attack the Democrats, who, in power, were sure to cause a voter backlash.

“The Obama administration has promised tremendous increasing in spending,” said Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis, “which they’re either going to pay for with higher taxes or higher deficits. That’s going to create tremendous opportunities for us as a party and as a movement.”

Mike Duncan, the incumbent who won the job two years ago, made everyone understand why he’d initially had to share the role with Florida Sen. Mel Martinez (R) — he spoke as if a sudden burst of charisma could poison him. “We’ve got to get our candidates using the technology,” Duncan said, explaining how the RNC already had the tools and the philosophy it needed to win. “We did that in Georgia for Saxby Chambliss,” he said. “We sent 79 million ad impressions to 600,000 Republicans.” According to Duncan, the GOP only lost in 2008 because of the Bush-damaged brand and tricks by wily Democratic technocrats. “We won the election on Election Day, 2008,” he explained in a glossy handbook (“Leadership You Can Trust”) handed out in the audience. “Early voting, however, resulted in our defeat.”

Blackwell, leaning back in his chair and speaking slowly, was as grim and confident. “When Ken Blackwell speaks,” commented American Spectator managing editor J.P. Freire, “I feel like I’m in trouble for something.” Blackwell framed the GOP’s problems as those of an ossified organization unable to reap the benefits of its good ideas.

“We have to reinvigorate the base and push our resources back to state and county parties,” Blackwell said. “It is only when you decentralize power that you get serious accountability at the local level.” He suggested a “40 under 40 strategy” that would make sure four out of 10 local GOP officials were still looking down the road at middle age.

Saul Anuzis — by one measure the frontrunner for chairmanship, with 12 public commitments from RNC members — used the word “network” as often as Blackwell invoked the name of Ronald Reagan. “It’s nice to talk about technology,” said Anuzis, “but we need to make this part of everything we do.” When Norquist got around to asking the candidates whether they used Twitter, the gleam in Anuzis’s eyes could be seen from the Mall — he has more than 4,000 Facebook friends and nearly 3,000 followers on Twitter, where he types whatever’s on his mind and preaches the gospel of high-tech outreach. At a post-debate reception, Anuzis kept tweeting: “Ken Blackwell seemed to be very proud he had more Facebook friends than me…send more my way :)”.

Saltsman picked up the high-tech banner and flew it high. “The magic of the Obama campaign,” he argued, “was that they had open box solutions that their supporters could use to work better in the communities, with their voters.” Katon Dawson pledged to run more candidates and to talk to more members of minority groups, such as the Hispanics who abandoned the party in 2008. “We are more consistent with that community,” said Dawson, “with their family values and the school choice. But did they listen to us in the last election cycle?”

When Republican consultant Patrick Ruffini asked what issues could galvanize the Republican base, the candidates were back in their comfort zones. Republicans, said Duncan, could oppose the “billion-dollar gamble” that President-elect Obama thinks will stimulate the economy. And Duncan was “willing to put resources in immediately to strike down any attempt to bring back the fairness doctrine in this country.” Saltsman expected the Obama administration to “give us a gift of an overreaching, overpowering government that will limit our freedoms” and, in turn, make more voters into Republicans.

The lone RNC candidate who used the forum to critique the party, not just its messaging, was Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and current chair of GOPAC. He entered the race nine days after Sen. John McCain’s defeat, announcing on the friendly turf of Hannity and Colmes. Conservative activists were thrilled. But Steele is running behind the pack in public commitments from RNC members, although Steele campaign aide Kevin Igoe chalked that up to “a different strategy” of not trumpeting every new endorsement.

“I represent a threat to the system,” Steele explained after the debate. “I want to change it bottom up to top down.”

But Steele’s criticisms of the party have not helped him among conservative activists and RNC members who don’t thrill at being told what they’ve done wrong. “He looks like he knows he’s losing,” whispered one conservative blogger who’d been reading Steele’s body language.

It’s a strange situation for Steele, whom activists consider one of the most charismatic figures in the party, regularly requested to stump for Republicans in close races. The problem is that “change” he’s talking about. While his five rivals for the RNC post discussed the party’s failures in terms of messaging, of technological gaps, and of poor outreach, Steele would launch into existential questions about what the party stood for, who it talked to, and who it had alienated.

“We can Twitter, we can YouTube all you want to,” Steele said, answering a question about reaching out to young voters, “but we need to put young people in the game and let them play. Not just sticking them on committees and rolling them out to see ‘Gee, look who we got,’ like we do with black folks and a whole lot of other folks.”

The not-so-secret truth that’s hurt Steele, and reportedly helped Saltsman, is that Republicans don’t want (or believe they need) a candidate who’ll bring change as dramatic as their 2006 and 2008 election losses. Why do that if the Democrats will overreach and anger voters anyway? After the debate, Steele could be heard grousing about “this ideological stuff” that opponents were using against him — specifically, the claim that he’s soft on abortion and his association with the Republican Leadership Council proves that. A just-for-fun lightning round question about the candidates’ firearms proved, again, how hard Steele’s task would be if the party was looking for cultural validation from its next chief.

“Four handguns and two rifles,” said Duncan.

“Too many to count,” said Dawson.

“Seven,” said Blackwell. “And I’m good.”

“Two,” said Anuzis, “but they wouldn’t let me carry them in Washington, D.C.”

“In my closet at home,” said Saltsman, “I’ve got two 12-gauges, a 20-gauge, three handguns, and a 30.6. And I’ll take you on any time, Ken.”

“None,” said Steele.