Republican politicians scrambled this week to divest themselves of campaign contributions received from a donor tied to the designated white nationalist hate group that allegedly influenced Dylann Roof to shoot and kill nine African Americans at the historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina last week.
While Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) quickly moved to donate the contributions he received from Earl Holt III to a fund established to help the victims’ families, this stands in stark contrast to his past handling of white separatist donors.
Though on most of Holt’s campaign contributions he identified himself as a “landlord” or as a “slumlord,” he has also served as president of the Council of Conservative Citizens — a group that calls itself “the only serious nationwide activist group that sticks up for white rights.” The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes the Council as “the modern reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils, which were formed in the 1950s and 1960s to battle school desegregation in the South.”
Holt made multiple contributions to Paul’s leadership political action committee, RandPAC. A Paul spokesman said Monday that “RandPAC is donating the funds to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund to assist the victims’ families.”
But this is not the first time Paul has had to deal with this issue. In his first campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Paul received multiple donations from contributors tied to organizations identified by SPLC as white nationalist or neo-confederate hate groups. In September of that year, the New York Daily News reported that three such activists had given at least $1,400 combined to Paul.
The Paul campaign’s Federal Election Commission reports revealed that he received $500 from Virginia Abernethy (a self-described “ethnic separatist” with her own ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens), two donations totaling $700 from William Daniel Johnson (a corporate lawyer who once proposed a constitutional amendment to strip non-white Americans of their citizenship), and $200 from Carl Ford (an officer of a group that endorsed a second secession).
The contributions came during a campaign in which Paul openly criticized the public accommodations provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, saying “I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant — but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership.” Paul has since denied ever holding that position.
When the 2010 donations came to light, Paul spokesman Gary Howard said that the campaign would not return the donations and “cannot perform background checks on all of our 35,000 plus donors.” He later acknowledged that these donations had come from white separatists — but still declined to return the funds, arguing, “Dr. Paul condemns hatred and discrimination, and if the white separatists who donated to his campaign think he shares their views they are badly mistaken and would be in for a rude awakening when they see that 20 percent of his campaign staff is made up of African Americans.”
The Paul campaign did not immediately respond to multiple ThinkProgress inquiries regarding whether it would now donate the Abernethy, Johnson, and Ford contributions to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund and why those contributions were handled differently than the funds received from Earl Holt III.