Utah GOP Senator Apologizes To Local Black Leaders For Insult

Jet, Sept 13, 1999

Senator Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah, apologized privately to civil rights leaders for making what they called an insulting remark about Black women (JET, Sept. 6).

Utah leaders for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) urged Sen. Bennett to make a public apology as well.

The senator was criticized for a newspaper quotation about the Republican presidential race. In a meeting on Aug. 13 with the editorial board of The Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Sen. Bennett said that Gov. George W. Bush of Texas would win the Republican nomination "unless some woman comes forward, let's say some Black woman, with an illegitimate child that he fathered."

By way of explanation, Sen. Bennett said he was thinking of the movie Primary Colors and its portrayal of womanizing by a fictional Southern governor.

"We told him that was a very poor excuse," Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP's Salt Lake City branch, said at a news conference after meeting privately with Sen. Bennett.