Outrage over Mecklenburg GOP's racist photos goes national

George Allen can't be racist, he held an "ethnic rally!" LOL (0.00 / 0)

Seriously, he really did hold an "ethnic rally" (on Sept. 9, 2006):

...watch the attached video (the picture above links to YouTube), which I took outside as people entered and left this morning, and it's pretty clear that there aren't very many people there, and more than half of them are white.

Eric from RaisingKaine went in and filmed the speeches, which I will add to this diary later once he sends me the YouTube links, and he made a preliminary estimate of 300 people in the auditorium. From watching people arriving, it was clear than at least half were white. Of the rest a couple busloads of people from Asian-American church groups made up the largest contingent. The number of African Americans probably did break into the two digits, but just barely.

The George Washington University College Republicans didn't let good 'ol George Allen down though -- a large contingent of 'ringers' from GWU showed up, almost all white, and provided the cheering crowd which gave Allen such a roaring sendoff -- as you can see toward the end of my video on YouTube.

I also included some footage of the protest group which was there, which included the now-familiar monkey and banana crew, and a 90-year-old Army Air Corps veteran who showed up to protest the Iraq War

The video really speaks for itself. The Allen campaign obviously has every incentive to try to demonstrate support from nonwhite Virginians, and probably spent a lot of staff time trying to contact groups and invididuals from the long laundry list of ethnic communities listed in their press release, quoted above. Despite these efforts, the turnout this morning was quite lackluster -- low three figures when you count out his white supporters and the college Republicans...

Hopefully, plenty of people will be able to take a look at this video, since I think it really speaks volumes about Allen's troubles. Is that all the people they can turn out, even giving it such a high-profile push?

Again, I hope to be able to update this diary later this evening with links to YouTube footage of the speeches themselves, and footage from inside the auditorium.

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by: lowkell @ Thu Sep 27, 2012 at 16:01:12 PM UTC