WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Republicans will try to remove their own candidate from the ballot in a suburban New York congressional race because he wrote an article warning against racial mingling, a party official said Wednesday. Jim Russell, 56, a perennial GOP candidate known for his strong opposition to immigration, wrote in 2001 that parents should teach their children "an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage." Several times, he cited the eugenics movement, the effort to improve the human race by controlling heredity. In a long recitation of the accomplishments of Western civilization, he also quoted T.S. Eliot as writing, "reasons of race and culture combine to make any large number of freethinking Jews undesirable." The article appeared in the Occidental Quarterly, titled "The Western Contribution to World History." It was first reported on the Politico website. Westchester County Republican Chairman Doug Colety called Russell's article "racist." "We've denounced his campaign," Colety said. "We're not supporting him. We've withdrawn funds, volunteers, all resources. This is not the way Republicans think." He added: "This is the party of Lincoln." Colety said the GOP would go to court to get Russell off the ballot. "We'll say he doesn't have core Republican values, that's what we'll try, that will be our legal argument," Colety said. "And if we can't get his name off, we could probably find another candidate, run him as a write-in." The party would then promote the write-in candidate as the "real" Republican candidate, Colety said. Russell did not return messages left by The Associated Press on Tuesday or Wednesday. He has said the essay has been misinterpreted. "It's a speculative survey on over 3,000 years of historical and cultural developments," he told The Journal News. "It's speculating there about how Western civilization can be preserved, how the cultural traditions can be maintained." The Journal News reported on its website Wednesday that Russell wrote a letter to its editor in 1996 about desegregation in Yonkers that said: "We must acknowledge that neither court orders nor millions of taxpayers' dollars can alter what nature has preordained — namely, that it is normal and healthy for people to prefer the company of their own kind in their neighborhoods and schools." Russell, a self-employed consultant who lives in Hawthorne, is challenging longtime Rep. Nita Lowey, a powerful Democrat. Lowey, who is Jewish, defeated Russell in 2008 by 37 percentage points. Republicans had planned to run another candidate, Paul Wasserman, but he dropped out in July and they turned to Russell. Russell ran for Congress in 1996, 2004 and 2006 but lost Republican primaries each time. Lowey's campaign manager, Kim DiTomasso, said, "Mr. Russell's offensive writings speak for themselves. Racism and anti-Semitism have no place in this campaign or anywhere else." Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. +++
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