Progressive group questions Blackwell bus tour

"It’s a bus very different from post-Birmingham," Brian Rothenberg, executive editor of ProgressOhio.org, a new online political group, said today in reaction to Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's plan to take a bus tour with Larry Pratt.

"Mr. Pratt, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, has a history of associations with racist and anti-Semitic organizations," Rothenberg said in a press statement. "So much so that even the right-wing Pat Buchanan asked him off of his campaign leadership after these associations became known."

UPDATE:
Carlo LoParo, Blackwell's campaign spokesman, reacted: "Those charges that Rothenberg leveled on Pratt are inaccurate. Gun Owners have already addressed them several years ago and debunked all of those false claims.

"Mr. Pratt has been a friend and supporter of Secretary Blackwell for quite some time. Gun Owners of America has endorsed the Blackwell campaign," LoParo said. "And we're happy and proud to have their support."

Even so, the Southern Poverty Law Center continues to post this biography of Pratt, at http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=365

"Eight Lanes Out"
Larry Pratt, 58

"Larry Pratt, a gun rights absolutist whose Gun Owners of America (GOA) has been described as 'eight lanes to the right' of the National Rifle Association, may well be the person who brought the concept of citizen militias to the radical right.

"In 1990, Pratt wrote a book, Armed People Victorious, based on his study of 'citizen defense patrols' used in Guatemala and the Philippines against Communist rebels — patrols that came to be known as death squads for their murderous brutality.

"Picturing these groups in rosy terms, Pratt advocated similar militias in the United States — an idea that finally caught on when he was invited for a meeting of 160 extremists, including many famous white supremacists, in 1992.

"It was at that meeting, hosted in Colorado by white supremacist minister Pete Peters, that the contours of the militia movement were laid out.

"Pratt, whose GOA has grown since its 1975 founding to some 150,000 members today, hit the headlines in a big way when his associations with Peters and other professional racists were revealed, convincing arch-conservative Pat Buchanan to eject him as a national co-chair of Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign.

"The same year, it emerged that Pratt was a contributing editor to a periodical of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America, and that his GOA had donated money to a white supremacist attorney’s group.

"Pratt is today close to the extremist Constitution Party and its radical theology."

Rothenberg added: "We call on Ken Blackwell to ride the right bus, right in front. Rosa Parks fought for his right to ride proudly in the front of the bus, but not with the likes of Larry Pratt."

ProgressOhio.org calls itself the state's largest progressive state-based online organization whose mission "is to promote progressive solutions, correct right-wing misinformation, and hold public leaders accountable."