January 22, 2019 06:00 PM UTC

Lori Saine Becomes Colorado GOP Shame Nexus (Again)

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• by: Colorado Pols

PM UPDATE: The Greeley Tribune’s Tyler Silvy updates, as the story of Rep. Lori Saine’s whitewash-y revisionist history goes to hell with a disturbing quickness:

Following media reports from across the state and beyond which focused largely on Saine’s lynching comments, Saine argued with constituents on Facebook and Tuesday morning appeared on right-wing radio host Jimmy Lackey’s show.

Lackey introduced the topic by saying reaction to Saine’s comments represent revisionist history, that kids were being taught about Martin Luther King Jr. by “union hacks” and that Colorado is now a segregated state. Lackey also referred, multiple times, to Gov. Jared Polis as “our gay, Jewish governor.” [Pols emphasis]

For the record his name is properly spelled Jimmy Lakey, morning conservative radio host of the relatively obscure AM600 KCOL radio, who we didn’t realize was such an unapologetic…well, you know! But we most certainly know now, and that ought to make the Republican officeholders who regularly appear on his show think twice–at least the ones smarter about managing their public image than Lori Saine.

In any event, if the intent here was to make Rep. Saine or any Republican look better, that was not the outcome.

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Less than 24 hours after you read it here first, the story of GOP Rep. Lori Saine’s wildly exaggerated estimate of white Republicans lynched following the American Civil War, made during a speech purportedly in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., has gone national–starting with the Greeley Tribune story we updated yesterday’s post with, then the Denver Post’s Anna Staver:

A Colorado representative from Weld County claimed blacks and white Republicans were lynched in “nearly equal” numbers following Reconstruction and chastised the main sponsors of a resolution honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day during a speech on the House floor Friday…

Saine, Buck and dozens of other House members sponsored House Joint Resolution 19-1006, which commemorated King’s birthday. It was introduced in the House by Reps. Jovan Melton, D-Aurora, and Leslie Herod, D-Denver…[Rep. Herod] went on to characterize Buck’s brief floor speech on the resolution as both eloquent and in keeping with the spirit of MLK, but Herod said Saine’s remarks were “completely off base.”

Colorado Public Radio:

“The lynching comment is extremely problematic, in the sense that it really does kind of take away and hide some of the dark past that this country has faced,” Herod said Monday. “And if we’re not honest about our history, if we don’t face our past, then we’ll never be able to move forward as nation and a country. And so her comments really sought, I think, to water down the realities of the march for justice and for civil rights.”

Saine said she delivered the comments with little preparation, based on things she’d read. She clarified that she meant only the earliest days of post-Civil War Reconstruction. However, the article Saine said she referenced is an amateur statistical analysis that looks at data from a later period and makes no reference to party affiliation.

From there…Newsweek:

Saine, a Republican representative, backed up her remarks on Monday, all in support of a white state representative who was shunned from introducing a resolution to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In her statement that was televised, Saine said whites were lynched more often than blacks “in the beginning,” and also acknowledged that blacks were collectively lynched at a far-higher pace over the next seven or eight decades.

Saine claimed whites and blacks were all lynched for the simple fact of being a Republican, which caught one college professor in the state off guard.

The Hill:

While lynchings of white, Hispanic and Native American people have taken place in the United States and Republicans were targeted during Reconstruction, evidence points to African-Americans being by far the greatest number of victims of lynchings, which were used as a tool for racial suppression.

And this morning, even FOX News is obliged to report:

According to the NAACP, nearly 73 percent of people who were lynched from 1882 to 1968 were black. Many of the white people who were lynched were being punished for helping black people, the NAACP said. It noted that many lynchings were not recorded.

The political affiliation of those who suffered this punishment was not recorded in the NAACP’s statistics. University of Northern Colorado professor Fritz Fischer said Saine’s assertion was incorrect.

“Blacks were lynched for the ‘crime of being black’ which obviously isn’t a crime – and not even close to equal numbers,” Fischer told The Greeley Tribune. “I suppose there were a certain number of blacks who were lynched who were Republican. But that was coincidental.”

With more stories going to print as we write, it won’t be long before everyone with even late-night talk show familiarity with current events hears about the Republican from Colorado who said white people were lynched as often as black people. The added insult of claiming lynchings of African Americans were for “the crime of being Republican” is not just inaccurate but a complete whitewash of the ensuing century of history, in which the Republican Party willingly morphed into the party of holdout Southern racism.

As for Rep. Lori Saine? This is hardly the first time she has shoveled shame on Colorado Republicans, having made national headlines for getting caught with a loaded handgun at a DIA security checkpoint in 2017, then introducing bills to weaken Colorado’s gun laws–not to mention underscoring Sen. Vicki Marble’s nationally infamous monologue about “problems in the black race” with heart disease by bringing fried chicken to the next hearing.

We’ve said it before: Lori Saine is a walking, talking disaster for the Republican brand.

So naturally, ALEC should give her another award.