Mullins McLeod

Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Mullins McLeod is holding a food drive for the Lowcountry Food Bank prior to tonight’s GOP debate.  McLeod says the purpose of the food drive in part, is to continue to raise awareness of Lt. Governor Andre Bauer’s poor choice of words when he compared poor children benefitting from free or reduced school lunches to “stray animals.”

McLeod says that he is amazed at “how some Republican politicians claim to have a monopoly on religion and Christianity, and then they turn around and say and do the most unchristianable [sic] things imaginable.”

(Mullins McLeod  MP3   4:02)

(Mullins McLeod 4:02)

McLeod said, “When I first read the quote, I hoped that I had read it out of context, but I didn’t. People often say that a person’s eyes are the window to their soul. In this instance, I think  what we’ve seen is that Lt. Governor’s mouth is the soul of Republican leadership in our state.”

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The day before Lt. Governor Andre Bauer takes the stage in a guberatorial candidate debate, the state conference of the NAACP officially responded to his recent controversial statements. The civil rights organization’s President Lonnie Randolph sent to the media the following release.

Statement of Dr. Lonnie Randolph, Jr. –

The South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP condemns the statements by South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer during a town hall meeting in Greenville County, where he compared citizens receiving government assistance to stray animals. It is particularly telling that he displays such bigotry, as passed through three generations of his family, with such pride while holding the second highest elected office in South Carolina. His comments give us no confidence in his ability to fulfill his oath to serve all of the people of South Carolina. We also view his poorly attempted apology as insincere and insulting to all South Carolinians, including those who may find themselves in need of help at some point in their lives. The poor are not strays or pets as Mr. Bauer views them. Those who utilize government assistance are fathers, mothers, and children who comprise a significant portion of the population in the state where he aspires to serve as governor. Because of Mr. Bauer’s opinions, South Carolina is once again distinguished as the place to find model leaders in public service.

Bauer has apologized for using the words “stray animals” in his speech at an Upstate forum, in which he said: “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”