Politicians and the CCC
Today, the council boasts of endorsements by past and present political leaders including Lott, Fordice and Barr, who was the keynote speaker at the semiannual council board meeting held last June; Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.); former Georgia Gov. Maddox, a staunch segregationist whom the CCC has honored with a "patriot of the century" award; former Rep. Rarick (R-La.); former Rep. Webb Franklin (R-Miss.); and more than 50 local politicians in eight states, including the 34 in the Mississippi state legislature.
Republican National Committeeman Buddy Witherspoon of South Carolina is a CCC member, according to The Washington Post, and GOP National Committeewoman Bettye Fine Collins of Alabama has spoken to the group and received a special award. So has former Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt. Alabama Judge Roy Moore, who stirred national debate by refusing to take down a display of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom, addressed the Council. Claire Bawcom, a vice president of the Tennessee Federation of Republican Women, writes a column for the Informer and regularly speaks at CCC meetings.
Many politicians, like Arkansas’ then-Lt. Gov. Mike Huckabee, have walked away from the CCC after learning something of its ideology. Huckabee, today the governor of Arkansas, backed out of a 1994 speech to the CCC after learning that he would have shared the podium with white supremacist lawyer Kirk Lyons. Last year, Winston-Salem, N.C., Mayor Jack Cavanagh publicly apologized after speaking to the CCC, saying he was not a racist and had not known of the group’s views. In Washington, the influential Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which once allowed the CCC to co-host an annual meeting, has barred the CCC because, CPAC’s director said, "they are racists."
For his part, Barr, after being criticized in December for speaking to the CCC, told reporters that he disagreed with many of the group’s "ridiculous views."
Lott, similarly criticized in December, initially told The Washington Post that he had "no firsthand knowledge" of the CCC and was not a member. Informed that Cotterill and other CCC leaders had told the Intelligence Report that Lott was in fact a paid-up CCC member, Lott spokesman John Czwartacki said Lott "doesn’t consider himself" a member and "has no recollection" of ever paying dues. Czwartacki declined to say if Lott had been a member in the past, but he did insist that Lott "firmly rejects" many CCC views. Later, after a month of criticism, Lott issued a statement decrying "the racist view of this group." Publicly, Baum said, in effect, that if Lott didn’t consider himself a member then he wasn’t one. "He’s gotta do what he’s gotta do," Baum said of Lott’s denials.
In any event, Lott certainly had heard of the group.
In 1992, Lott gave a speech to 400 CCC supporters in Greenwood, Miss., at the group’s national board meeting. In 1994, when Lott’s hometown newspaper reported he was a CCC member, no one objected. In 1997, Lott hosted a private meeting in his Senate office with Baum, Lord and Dover, who together are the chief leaders of the CCC. Baum keeps a photo of that meeting in his office that is signed, "Best Wishes, Trent Lott." Lott’s uncle, former state senator and current Carroll County, Miss., CCC officer Arnie Watson, told The New York Times that Lott was, in fact, a CCC "honorary member."
"We’re a rather large organization in Mississippi," Lott’s home state, Baum said. "I would assume someone as astute as Mr. Lott would have a pretty good grasp of us."
According to the Informer, Lott concluded his 1992 Mississippi speech to the CCC with this: "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let’s take it in the right direction and our children will be the beneficiaries!"
He has been accused of writing a column for their newsletter but if you probe a bit deeper it turns out that the newsletter simply prints releases from his senate office. The releases are impossible to find on the internet, presumably because there is no there there.
He has spoken to that organization several times which is determinative of nothing.
Is Lott a southerner? Yes. Is he a racist? No.
I might add that the smear started during Clinton's impeachment by the party that disdains the politics of personal destruction. Ironic, no?