Mary Rakestraw and her supporters would like to make Signe Waller Foxworth a political liability for Joel Landau in the District 4 race for Greensboro City Council. Landau is taking some heat for first listing Waller Foxworth on his campaign website as a supporter and then removing her name, giving the impression that he is embarrassed by the association.
The issue has resonated with the conservative types who would be expected to take issue with such an association: Guilford County Republican Party Executive Director Tony Wilkins, blogger Joseph Guarino and The Rhinoceros Times.
The matter was first broached by Rakestraw in a candidate questionnaire submitted to the News & Record. The newspaper asked candidates to pose a question to their opponents. Rakestraw’s question for Landau was, “Your website has listed at least one controversial political activist supporter (e.g. a Communist Workers Party organizer) but has now removed that one. Why are you removing names, and have you received any financial contributions from them?”
Landau told me in a phone conversation today that he considers the premise of the question to be misleading. Signe Waller was a member of the Workers Viewpoint Organization at the time of the fatal confrontation with the Klan and Nazis in Morningside Homes in 1979, when her husband, Dr. James Waller, was killed. The Workers Viewpoint Organization had planned to rename itself the Communist Workers Party at a conference held later that day, but the deadly confrontation at the mustering point of the march caused the organization to disintegrate.
In Landau’s words, Rakestraw “made reference in the N&R questionnaire to an organization that hasn’t been in existence for 20 years. That’s like referring to Ronald Reagan in 1983 as a ‘liberal Democrat.’”
Wilkins stepped up the pressure on Landau to address the question in blog post on Tuesday, entitled, “Joel Landau, Where Is Signe Waller?”
Guarino picked up the thread hours later on his own blog.
“Waller, of course, was one of the primary players in the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation process,” Guarino noted. “If Waller is supporting Landau, it might speak volumes about his political stance.”
Landau’s position on the truth process is actually a matter of record.
YES! Weekly asked candidates for city council in 2005 how they felt about the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its examination of the circumstances surrounding the 1979 confrontation, and whether they thought the city council should take a more active role in the truth process.
Landau, then a candidate in the at-large race, answered, “Something is amiss when people are murdered on city streets in broad daylight and the known killers are set free. This is currently a divisive issue, but I think it’s important for the future unity and reconciliation of the city that we learn the truth about how that came about. I believe city council should endorse the work of the commission and encourage any city official with relevant information to come forward with that information.”
Landau told me today that he hasn’t changed his position on the truth process, but doesn’t see it as an important issue in this campaign.
“I felt that it would be beneficial for some people that needed resolution to hear information and get information out there,” he said. “I believe in dialogue and people listening to each other.”
I pushed him a bit, noting that the 30th anniversary of the shootings is coming up — right on Election Day, as it turns out — and that another important anniversary, the 50th anniversary of the Woolworth sit-ins, is also imminently on the horizon.
Landau responded: “I think they’re important to acknowledge and recognize, but they’re not on the agenda right now for the right reasons. They’re being brought up as part of a smear campaign.”
The day after Wilkins and Guarino posted their commentary on the scrubbing of Waller Foxworth’s name from Landau’s website, Rhinoceros Times Editor John Hammer interviewed the candidate. Landau’s comments were published in the conservative newspaper today, essentially mainstreaming the controversy to the Greensboro electorate.
Landau told me essentially the same thing he told Hammer about his decision to remove Waller Foxworth’s name.
“Back in June and July, we were putting down names of people who publicly support me: Democrats, Republicans — we didn’t look at anyone’s affiliation,” he said. “One of my other supporters approached me, and raised that that could become a distracting issue because some people consider her to be a controversial figure. I talked to Nick, my campaign manager, about it. We agreed that it would be a distracting issue. She’s not the one running for office. That’s not a pressing issue that the city is dealing with right now. I called Signe and told her about my decision.”
Landau said he thinks it’s a sign of the Rakestraw campaign’s “desperation that they can’t find anything else to talk about. They’re afraid she’s going to lose the election.” He characterized his association with Waller Foxworth as “a non-issue.”
“It’s one of the silly things the rightwing does,” Landau said. “I could just as easily bring up EH Hennis, who went before the county commission and denounced them, and then went before the city council and called them ‘a pack of liars and whores.’ He’s a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. He didn’t have anything good to say about any of the other city council members, but he said, ‘Mary Rakestraw, that’s the one person on city council that I can get behind.’ What is it about her that gains the approval of this avowed racist? To me, both questions are irrelevant.”
I asked Landau for the date of the city council meeting in which Hennis expressed approval of Rakestraw. He told me he thought it took place in the late spring.
Hennis addressed the city council on April 21, 2009; April 1, 2008; and Feb. 21, 2008. After reviewing videos on the city’s website, I could find no record of Hennis calling the council “a pack of liars and whores” or saying, “Mary Rakestraw, that’s the one person on city council that I can get behind.” In fact, in the February 2008 remarks, which I transcribed at the time, he called Rakestraw “Motor Mouth,” accused her and fellow Guilford County commissioner, Phyllis Gibbs of lying to a magistrate and grand jury about him and marching through the courtroom like a couple hussies acting like lesbians, and then threatened to hang her in effigy at his house on Groometown Road.
Hennis did open his April 2009 remarks by saying, “I was so happy to hear that Mary Rakestraw wants to continue offering her services to you city folk, and I’m sure it makes you happy.”
Hennis possesses a sense of humor that is richly laced with sarcasm. His later comments make it clear that he is no fan of Rakestraw: “They ganged up on me, mayor, because I filed for county commission…. She would not come out and look at almost $4,000 worth of hate crimes perpetrated against me by the county officials destroying my real estate and personal property…. Mary and the others lied to the magistrate that I was extremely dangerous and had explosives on my property…. Their lies cost me over 10,000 dollars.”
One comment by Hennis during that sequence could be construed as support and, to be honest, I’m not sure what to make of it: “I tried to spend as much time with Mary Rakestraw as possible campaigning and introducing her to her constituents, so you can buy one and get one free.”
Landau said he thinks that a “much more pertinent issue” is why Rakestraw made a statement during a city council meeting in August that council members were unaware that staff was undertaking a rewrite of the Land Development Ordinance that reclassifies zoning districts.
“That got people agitated,” he said. “It made political hay, and it was false. The council had received a report on it from [Planning] Director [Dick] Hails. That’s a current-time issue. I trust that the majority of citizens are more concerned with real issues right now than what someone who’s not a candidate did 30 years ago.”
Rakestraw did not respond to a request for comment.
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