GOP Mum On Firestone Lawmaker’s Lynching Comment

DENVER, CO – By Alex Burness for The Colorado Independent. Colorado House Republicans are not taking a position on a controversial statement about lynching victims that the GOP caucus leader made during a resolution on the House floor honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

“We are standing in the moral arc of history today,” Rep. Lori Saine, a Firestone conservative and caucus chair, said at the onset of a four-minute speech on Friday. “We have come a long way on that arc since the Reconstruction, when whites and blacks alike were in nearly equal numbers lynched for the crime of being Republican.”

Most historians would dispute Saine’s assertion that lynchings were colorblind.

Julia Kiewit, House Republican spokeswoman, told The Colorado Independent on Tuesday, “I’m not sure what position we could have” on Saine’s remarks. Asked whether House GOP leadership would seek to sanction Saine in any way, Kiewit added, “There have been no discussions about that. … I feel certain that there aren’t any.”

Democrats in Colorado’s Black Democratic Legislative Caucus, meanwhile, say Saine’s comments were “out of touch” and “inappropriate,” but not necessarily indicative of any racist beliefs.

Saine, who is serving her fourth and final term, has not responded to requests for comment from The Independent.

Saine’s floor speech was first reported on Monday by The Greeley Tribune.

The NAACP has found there were 4,743 reported lynchings in the United States between 1882-1968, and that about 73 percent of the victims were black.

Since making her statement, Saine clarified she wasn’t talking about overall lynchings in this country in the 19th and 20th centuries, but only about those that targeted Republicans specifically during the post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction, which ran from 1865-1877. She said she has read research to that effect.

E.M. Beck, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Georgia and one of the country’s experts on the history of lynchings, said that Saine’s comment was “misleading.”

READ MORE in The Colorado Independent

Watch the video of the remarks posted by Saine on her Facebook page:

House GOP Caucus Chair Lori Saine is in the spotlight this week for suggesting black and white Americans were lynched in "nearly equal numbers" because they were Republicans. (Photo by Alex Burness)