(This was updated on Sunday morning.)
I had a post up here about Donald Sterling, and about blogger Donald Douglas's accounting of his political contributions. I don't think either one of us had the facts straight. Several Donald Sterlings have appeared on the FEC's list of campaign contributors, but none seem to be Donald Tokowitz Sterling of California:
Is the donation to Bill Bradley reported by Douglas really from the Clippers' Donald Sterling? It's not clear -- his ultimate source is this site, which says Sterling gave to Bradley and to former California governor Gray Davis in the early 1990s, but there's no backup documentation. The donation to Bradley listed on the FEC site from the late 1990s is from another Donald Sterling. The two donations to the Republican National Committee that I cited weren't from him, either.
I regret my error. I'd like to see more backup for what Douglas wrote. In any case, even Douglas can't find evidence for a Sterling contribution to a Democrat in roughly the last two decades.
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And since Douglas is cackling over the fact that I pulled the post, I'm restoring what I wrote about about his selective reading of the electoral history of Frazier Glenn Miller, the Klansman who was arrested for the murders of three people at Jewish centers in Kansas City. Douglas wrote:
Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., Kansas Jewish Murder Suspect, Made Democrat Congressional Bid in 2006I stand by every word of what I wrote in response to that:
The suspect ran for office numerous times, but he started as a Democrat in 1984, running in the North Carolina gubernatorial primary. After a number of other attempts at elected office, he returned home to the Democrat/Ku Klux Klan/Party in 2006, running in the Democrat primary for Missouri's 7th congressional district in 2006. His candidacy had the far-left hate site Daily Kos freaking out, "Racist felon running for the Dem nomination in MO-7."
Frazier Glenn Miller is a Democrat to the core....
Douglas's post doesn't even make sense -- if Miller were "a Democrat to the core," why would a Daily Kos blogger be "freaking out" about his candidacy? Why would the Kos post be urging someone else to file for candidacy as a Democrat in that race?Donald Sterling: rarely a Democratic donor, and not a Democratic donor for many years. Frazier Glenn Miller: not on a Democratic ballot line in the past three decades. Those are the facts.
In fact, Miller didn't make it onto the ballot as a Democrat in that primary, according to election results on the Missouri secretary of state's website, or at least he didn't get a single vote. He did get a whopping 23 votes in the general election, but as a write-in candidate. (Where were all the Democrats flocking to vote for this guy if he was a "Democrat to the core"?)
And, of course, he's never had a particular party affiliation -- he ran in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in North Carolina in 1984 and finished eighth, with 0.56% of the vote, then ran in Republican U.S. Senate primary in North Carolina two years later and finished third, with 3.17% of the vote. He got 7 votes as an unaffiliated write-in candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri in 2010.
But, of course, Glenn Reynolds catapulted Douglas's propaganda back then, as I'm sure he'll catapult the latest example.
No honest Democrat denies that the party has accommodated racists within what is, for us oldsters, living memory. The segregationists of the civil era were Democrats until LBJ signed away the South when he signed the Civil Rights Act. The 1970s anti-busing racists in my hometown of Boston -- Louise Day Hicks and others -- were Democrats. Both Frazier Glenn Miller (born 1940) and Donald Sterling (born 1933) are old enough to remember when racists were welcome in both major parties. So Miller ran as a member of both major parties and Sterling gave to candidates from both parties.
But those days are long gone. Donald Douglas knows that, but he wants to help sustain the ignorance of readers who don't. On his deathbed, I hope he asks himself why he squandered so much of his life trying to make so many people believe things that are untrue.
