Va. GOP candidate: Planned Parenthood "more lethal" for blacks than KKK
E.W. Jackson, the new Republican nominee for Virginia lieutenant governor, railed against Planned Parenthood in a 2012 video maligning the Democratic party, comparing the women's health organization to the Ku Klux Klan, and decrying what he cast as black voters' "slavish devotion to the Democrat party."
Jackson, a black minister from the Chesapeake area, was selected from a crowded field at this weekend's state GOP convention as the party set its top candidates for this November's statewide elections. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is the party's gubernatorial nominee, and Mark D. Obenshain is the nominee for attorney general.
Within days of his nomination, Jackson was drawing national scrutiny thanks to the controversial video, posted on his YouTube channel in September 2012, in which the candidate accuses Democrats of attempting to hold black voters "captive" with their "ridiculous lies," and which accuses Planned Parenthood of propagating "genocide."
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"It is time to end the slavish devotion to the Democrat party. They have insulted us, used us, and manipulated us. They have saturated the black community with ridiculous lies," Jackson says in the video. "The Democrat party has created an unholy alliance between certain so-called civil rights leaders and Planned Parenthood, which has killed unborn black babies by the tens of millions. Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was. And the Democrat party and their black civil rights allies are partners in this genocide."
Jackson also decries comparisons to homosexual and black oppression, claiming "the Democrat party has equated homosexuality with being black, which is another outrageous lie."
"They can keep their homosexuality private. You and I cannot hide being black. I need not recount to you the painful history of slavery: Jim Crow, lynchings, and sterilizations -- all because of skin color," Jackson says in the video. "Anyone who dares equate the so-called gay rights movement to the history of black Americans is exploiting the black community."
Aneesh Chopra, a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, was quick to seize on Jackson as having "extreme views" further to the right even than Ken Cuccinelli - "which is quite a feat," he argued in a statement over the weekend.
"I know that come November, the voters of Virginia will reject Jackson and his extreme agenda. This is a man who has attacked the Democratic Party as having an 'agenda worthy of the Antichrist,'" Chopra said. "This is a man who has called the LGBT community 'perverted' and 'very sick people.'"
Chopra is facing off against state Sen. Ralph Northam, D-Va., in a June 11 primary for the Democratic Lt. Governor nod; Democrat Terry McAuliffe was certified as his party's gubernatorial nominee last month.
