Democrat says racism played role in election losses

USA Today

By Catalina Camia, USA TODAY
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Updated at 12:48 p.m. ET

Democratic congressman Jim Moran said racism was one factor in his party's losses in the 2010 midterm elections, invoking President Obama's race, slavery and the Civil War in a TV interview.

Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., on right, has blamed racism for Democratic election losses in 2010. He's pictured here with former congressman Tom Davis, R-Va.
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By Charles Dharapak, AP
Moran, a Virginia lawmaker, told Arab network Alhurra after Obama's State of the Union Address earlier this week that "a lot of people in this country ... don't want to be governed by an African-American."

He went on to say that Democrats essentially lost the majority in the U.S. House for "the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States...the Southern states, particularly the slaveholding states, didn't want to see a president who was opposed to slavery."'

His comments were part of a larger interview, in which he discussed foreign policy, the economy and other issues. Moran has said that he believes concerns about jobs and the economy were the primary reasons Democrats took a drubbing at the polls.

In the biggest midterm election change since 1938, the GOP won 63 House seats -- easily eclipsing the Republican Revolution of 1994 that put Newt Gingrich in the speaker's chair.

Moran's remarks were first reported by The Weekly Standard and picked up by other news outlets.

Anne Hughes, a spokeswoman for Moran, said the congressman "was expressing his frustration" about the nation's struggle with racial equality. "Rather than ignore this issue or pretend it isn't there, the congressman believes we are better off discussing it in order to overcome it," she said in a statement.

Moran, first elected in 1990, has a history of making controversial remarks and is known for his combative personality. For example, he angered Jewish groups in 2007 by suggesting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee pushed the United States to go to war with Iraq. In the mid-1990s, Moran got into a shoving match with a Republican congressman.

The National Republican Congressional Committee sent out a news release entitled "Civility," highlighting Moran's comments.

The GOP campaign committee mentioned remarks made earlier this month by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who apologized for invoking Nazis and the Holocaust during a speech about GOP efforts to repeal the health care law, and by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who suggested overturning the law would end up "killing Americans."