Haaretz
Iyyad 15, 5766
Democratic Party leaders
are wondering what to do about a candidate for attorney general who denies
the Holocaust occurred and wants to "reawaken white racial
awareness."
Larry Darby, the founder of the Atheist Law Center,
made an abortive bid for the attorney general job as a Libertarian in
2002, but only recently have his views on race and the Holocaust come to
light.
In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Darby said
he believes no more than 140,000 Jewish people died in Europe during World
War II, and most of them succumbed to typhus.
Historians say about
6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, but Darby said the figure is
a false claim of the "Holocaust industry."
Darby said he will speak
Saturday near Newark, New Jersey, at a meeting of National Vanguard, which
bills itself as an advocate for the white race. Some of his campaign
materials are posted on the group's Internet site.
"It's time to
stop pushing down the white man. We've been discriminated against too
long," Darby said in the interview.
The state Democratic chairman,
Joe Turnham, said the party began an nvestigation last week after hearing
about some of Darby's comments in a television interview.
While the
party supports the free-speech rights of any candidate, Turnham said some
of Darby's views appear to be in "a realm of thought that is
unacceptable."
"Any type of hatred toward groups of people,
especially for political gain, is completely unacceptable in the Alabama
Democratic Party," said Turnham.
It is unclear whether the party
could do anything at this point, although the party could decline to
certify the results should he win.
Darby has no money for campaign
advertising and has made only a few campaign speeches, but garnered 12
percent support in the June 6 primary in a poll of 400 registered voters
last month.
The poll, which was conducted by a university professor
for Alabama media outlets and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5
percentage points, shows Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson ahead
with 21 percent of the vote but about two-thirds of respondents
undecided.
Tyson said he does not consider Darby to be a serious
candidate.
"I am astonished as anyone has ever been that anyone is
running for public office in Alabama on that platform," he said.