UPDATE: National media pickups at
Huffington Post,
Talking Points Memo,
The Daily Beast and
Daily Kos. Still no word from the Brunstetters.
ORIGINAL POST: Chad Nance, a Winston-Salem freelance journalist who is currently active in electoral campaigning, says poll workers outside the early voting site at the Forsyth County Government Center in downtown Winston-Salem reported to him that the wife of NC Sen. Peter Brunstetter remarked today that her husband sponsored legislation to put the marriage amendment on the primary ballot “to protect the Caucasian race.”
Nance said he recorded a conversation with the woman, whose name is Jodie Brunstetter, on video, and that she confirmed that she used the term “Caucasian” in a discussion about the marriage amendment, but insisted that otherwise her comments had been taken out of context by other poll workers.
Nance until recently served as campaign manager for Matt Newton, a Democratic candidate for the 12th Congressional District. Nance
announced on Facebook today that he was resigning from the campaign because of Nance’s reaction to his plans to publicize Jodie Brunstetter’s alleged remarks. The Newton campaign has not responded to an e-mail request for comment about the resignation.
Nance has been working as a volunteer poll worker for the campaign of NC House candidate Ed Hanes Jr. and the campaign against the marriage amendment. He is a primary source for an unrelated story published by YES! Weekly about efforts to manipulate Democratic voters for the benefit of a favored slate of candidates.
Nance said an African-American poll worker identified only as “Michael” initially told him about Jodie Brunstetter’s alleged remarks during a conversation with opponents of the marriage amendment.
Nance paraphrased the remarks, as told to him by those who were present: “During the conversation, Ms. Brunstetter said her husband was the architect of Amendment 1, and one of the reasons he wrote it was to protect the Caucasian race. She said Caucasians or whites created this country. We wrote the Constitution. This is about protecting the Constitution. There already is a law on the books against same-sex marriage, but this protects the Constitution from activist judges.”
Nance said he recruited a friend, who works for the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, to witness his interview with Jodie Brunstetter. He said Brunstetter reluctantly acknowledged that she had used the term “Caucasian” and then repeated the statement previously attributed to her, but substituted the pronoun “we” for “Caucasian. Nance said Brunstetter insisted there was nothing racial about her remarks, but could not explain why she used the term “Caucasian.”
A phone message left at the Brunstetter residence in Lewisville was not immediately returned. Peter Brunstetter has served in the state Senate since 2006, when he was appointed to replace the late Ham Horton. Brunstetter has no primary opponent, but will face Democrat Delmas Parker in the November general election.
Nance provided an edited transcript from the video. I’ve left all spelling and punctuation errors intact to preserve its integrity. Nance said he is working with a local TV news outfit to disseminate the footage and plans to post it in entirety so that people will be satisfied that he has not taken Brunstetter’s words out of context or manipulated their meaning in any way.
Transcript follows:
MICHAEL:
“I had my back to her like this. She said, 'The reason my husband my husband wrote Amendment 1 was because the Caucasian race is diminishing and we need to uh, reproduce.”
UNIDENTIFIED POLL WORKER:
“(Mrs. Brunsetter said) … the Caucasian race is diminishing. ?The reason that's a problem is that it was white people that founded this country.”
“She just wants a white majority so the good 'ol US of A can stay white.”
Brunsetter:
We are looking at the history of the United States and it is already law about what marriage is. Between a man and a woman. And we are looking at how American has been a great country. That's why people are coming here. And people who fouinded the United states wrote a Constitution and it has been what has preserved this society. And we were just talking about lots of different things which the gentleman was turning around.
Me:
You didn't tell that one lady that it was to preserve the Caucasian race because they were becoming a minority?
Brunsetter:
No.
Me:
She's lying?
Brunsetter:
No. It's just that same sex marriages are not having children.
Me:
Yeahm but you didn't say anything about Caucasians, white people, preserving them that's why it was written?
Brunsetter:
No I'm afraid they have made it a racial issue when it is not.
Me:
She didn't say it was a racial issue. She said that you had said that opart of the reason it had been sponsored and written was to preserve the white race.
(a moment later) … you didn't say anything about Caucasians?
Brunsetter:
I probably said the word.
Me:
You didn't tell her anything about Caucasians?
Silence.
Me:
I want you to clear it up if you could.
Brunsetter:
Right now I am a little confused myself because there has been confusion here today about this amendment where it is very simple. The opponents are saying things that are not true and there has been a lot of conversation back and forth.
Right now I have some heat stroke going on. Um there has been lots of confusion.
Me:
Did you say anything about Caucasians?
Brunsetter:
If I did it wasn't anything race related.
Me:
But it is about identifying a race.
No context on Caucasians?
Brunsetter:
There has been so much talk about this point that there is just a lot of confusion.
Me:
You're not going to be able to explain it?
Brunsetter:
Well, it's a little hard.
