WHY IS ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS' LITTLE BROTHER A DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE IN SOUTH CAROLINA? Everybody knows, or knows about the execrable Armstrong Williams, former protege of Strom Thurmond, former "confidential assistant" to Clarence Thomas at the Reagan-era EEOC, now a syndicated right wing black talking head in print and on TV. Along with Steadman Graham, longtime associate of Oprah Winfrey, Williams is one of the principals in the Graham Williams Group, a PR firm whose major clients include Republican politicians and a few entertainment figures not fussy about the company they keep. Williams is even rumored to have done PR for the apartheid government of South African. He likes to brag that his South Carolina family are "third generation Republicans", and to take his own tainted word for it, is a player in the highest circles of that party.
So it's no surprise that when Armstrong Williams's younger brother Kent
Williams decided to run for state senate back home in Marion SC,
Armstrong would fly back to the family farm in South Carolina and bring
Steadman Graham with him to support and raise money for lil bruh Kent's
campaign.
Here is what the hometown newspaper, the Mullins Star-Enterprise had to say about the event in early April;
Kent Williams Holds Campaign Kickoff
Sorry, the article is not available on the web.
The only strangeness amid all this barbeque and backslapping is the fact that Steadman's buddy and Armstrong's brother Kent Williams is running for state senator in the June 8 Democratic primary election. The question is why a Democrat?
Kent Williams seems to be just as much a Republican as the previous two
generations of his family and big brother Armstrong. But unlike
big brother who shouts it from the housetops, Kent is keeping a low
profile in this majority black district, where most of his white
neighbors vote Republican anyway.
Noting that there was no biographical information on the man, zumbi
called him up and after the obligatory moment of southern politeness,
asked him to fax over a bio, which he did. Not much to work with
--- he volunteered for the March of Dimes and has held three jobs, by
the look of it. Wondering what else baby bruh had been up to,
zumbi took a look around and turned up the web site of SCEIN, the South
Carolina Education Information Network, which lists Kent Williams as a
"consultant/researcher" and board member from 1977 till at least 1999
or 2000, after which no traces of SCEIN turn up on the web. SCEIN
is described as
"...a conservative group of business leaders espousing Republican-type
reforms."
In line with the Republican right's longstanding goal of discrediting,
defunding and eventually dismantling public education, SCEIN endorsed
one of Kent's fellow board members, Jim White, as a candidate for state
superintendent of schools, based because he was "...A small businessman
who recognizes the economic and social impact of a failed public school
system."
Another one of Kent Williams's colleagues on the board of SCEIN is a
well known flaming right-wing anti-education activist. He's SCEIN
co-founder Rev. E. Ray Moore Jr. Moore's web site at
http://www.exodusmandate.com/ tells us that since 1997, while serving
on the SCEIN board with Kent Williams he has been advancing "...the
proposition that private, Christian and home-school education can
successfully replace public education". The reverend warns us all
that public schools are "the agents of moral decay" in our
society. Rev. Moore is so far out there on the rightist fringe
that you can google up a lot of looniness with his name on it.
Don't take zumbi's word for it.
With friends and associates like these it's no wonder Kent Williams
keeps a low profile among Democratic primary voters in his home
town. Does the South Carolina Education Association
even know about this nutcase? Williams might be counting on a
Denise Majette vs Cynthia McKinney style wholesale crossover of white
Republican voters to the Democratic primary. Or maybe big brother
Armstrong and Steadman came to SC as enablers in the ego-stroking
festival that doomed campaigns oft turn into. Big Republican
crossovers do seem unlikely, in SC this year, given the jostling among
Republicans to fill the US Senate seat vacated by Fritz Hollings.
Folks close to the ground say that Williams isn't fooling anybody who
knows him, and that the district is small enough, if not for everybody
to know everybody else, for a lot of folks to know the man and his
history. Still, facing a millionaire on one side and a friend of
Dick Cheney, Steadman and all of Armstrong Williams's "circle", State
Senator Maggie Glover could use your $5, $10, $20 or $50
donation. Maybe it will keep her out of runoff with the
millionaire. Go on over there and show her some love. |
Seymour Hersh is the reporter who gets credit for releasing a portion of the classified Taguba report --the one that Rummy and Gen. Myers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say they hadn't found time to read in the several months it's been on their desks -- outlining a few of the instances of torture conducted by US military personell and mercenary "contractors" in Iraq. Sunday Hersh posted a new article on the subject with additional detail in the New Yorker. 5:49:13 PM |