By Matt DeLong
Washington Post
Rep.-elect Allen West (R-Fla.) defended his decision to hire a Florida radio personality as his chief of staff and blamed the ensuing outcry over her views on immigration on racism and misogyny on the left. The staffer, Joyce Kaufman, resigned last week to avoid an "electronic lynching" after her previous comments on illegal immigrants came under heavy fire.
"I was not hiring a talk radio host. I was hiring a very brilliant political mind, someone that has been in South Florida politics for 20-plus years," West, a tea party favorite, said in an interview Sunday with CNN. "But, unfortunately, the liberal left showed that I guess they are threatened and intimidated by me, and so they went into the attack dog mode."
West went on to say: "I think the American people are sick of, and that despicable, disgusting action and the way that they went after Joyce Kaufman shows that not only this liberal left has some issues with racism. I guarantee you, if I was a black Democratic congressman-elect, they would not be doing these type of actions. And the fact that they're attacking a woman like this, that shows me something about sexism and misogynist behavior."
Kaufman reportedly suggested in 2007 that illegal immigrants who commit crimes in the United States should be hanged. She also referred to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as "garbage" on her radio show on Nov. 8. Last week, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow aired a video clip of Kaufman saying that "if ballots don't work, bullets will."
On Thursday -- the day Kaufman resigned -- schools in Broward County, Fla., were temporarily locked down after a man e-mailed a threat against government buildings to Kaufman. A local Fox affiliate reported that the e-mail writer said Kaufman was the inspiration for the threat.
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