Newly elected House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) attends a news conference after House Republican leadership elections in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington in this file photo. — Reuters WASHINGTON — The third-ranking Republican in the House has acknowledged that he once addressed a gathering of white supremacists, a revelation that could put a crimp in his party's efforts to reach out to minorities ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The office of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise denies any association with the social views of the group he addressed. Scalise, 49, served in the Louisiana state Legislature when he appeared in 2002 at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke founded the group, which the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, has classified as a hate group. The story comes just days before a new Congress convenes, with Scalise poised to shape House Republicans' agenda in his first full term as whip. It also comes as American voters demonstrate increasing racial polarization in their political preferences, with white majorities siding overwhelmingly with Republicans in the 2014 midterm elections and non-whites continuing their strong support for Democrats. Many strategists say both parties must figure out how to reach beyond their respective bases. The Republicans won control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House in the November midterms. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee criticized Scalise in a statement on Tuesday and questioned why the Republican Party leadership has remained silent. “Steve Scalise chose to cheerlead for a group of KKK members and neo-Nazis at a white supremacist rally and now his fellow House Republican Leaders can't even speak up and say he was wrong,” said DCCC national press secretary Josh Schwerin. In a written statement, Scalise aide Moira Bagley Smith confirmed that Scalise addressed the group as it gathered at a New Orleans-area hotel near the neighborhoods that both Scalise and Duke represented during separate stints as state lawmakers. Smith said in her statement that Scalise spoke only to rally support for conservative fiscal policies in Louisiana, not to endorse the mission and views of his audience. Smith's statement came after a liberal Louisiana blogger, Lamar White Jr., first reported the 12-year-old story using online postings from members. “He has never been affiliated with the abhorrent group in question,” the statement said. “The hate-fueled ignorance and intolerance that group projects is in stark contradiction to what Mr. Scalise believes and practices as a father, a husband and a devoted Catholic.” Scalise said in a telephone interview with NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune on Monday that he “didn't know who all of these groups were and I detest any kind of hate group. For anyone to suggest that I was involved with a group like that is insulting and ludicrous.” — AP
