Column: De León embodied the American dream. After racist audio leak, he’s living a political nightmare
Voters will decide De León’s fate on Election Day
A week later, De León apologized.
In a lengthy Facebook post, De León apologized for “showing my support for the Black Lives Matter movement with hate-filled and hateful messages” during his campaign against Sheriff Richard Hall, who had made an off-the-record comment expressing frustration about the way De León’s supporters have been greeting him. Hall responded, calling De León a “disgrace to his race.”
De León has maintained his innocence of any wrongdoing. His staff denied that he is racist.
And while this post was shared thousands of times, it did not reach the level of controversy. But the damage was done, and De León was left with the choice of apologizing or standing by his campaign against Hall.
After the release of the audio this week, De León was subjected to an avalanche of negative responses from the left.
In a series of editorials and op-eds in The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The Huffington Post, The Washington Examiner and elsewhere, liberals called De León a racist, accused him of racism, accused him of being a thug and said the only thing worse than De León was a De León-like character like the one who allegedly assaulted a black couple in Virginia on Monday.
But De León has never been accused of being a racist.
But his campaign has been a litany of racial controversy.
It began with the release of a racist Facebook video in July 2013. In it, De León was shown celebrating the death of a man who was killed on the street in Ferguson, Mo., for his alleged role in a robbery.
In it, De León says the man’s death is an example of how African-Americans “should have no place in this country.”
De León went on to criticize African-Americans for being ignorant and blaming them for the high crime rate in Ferguson. De León said a black person who was shot while carrying a bag of marijuana in St. Louis would now be shot dead in his home.
After the release of the video, then-candidate De León apologized.
