AFP Michigan sponsors event featuring racist speaker

January 13, 2015

On the eve of the Republican National Committee’s annual winter meeting, Chairman Reince Priebus and RNC leaders find themselves dealing with the fallout from yet another inappropriate, racist remark by a Republican official. According to a report from Slate, Michigan RNC Committeeman and former State Rep. Dave Agema has become an “embarrassment for much of the party,” thanks to his long history of posting racist material on Facebook.

“Much” is the operative word here. Prominent GOP members are calling for Agema’s ouster after his most recent Facebook post, which quoted a white supremacist magazine. Further, according to Slate, two sponsors — the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Heritage Action — backed out of an event Agema recently spoke at in Michigan, “The Powwow.” Yet a handful of organizations remained listed as sponsors despite Agema’s racist rants, including Americans for Prosperity Michigan, the Koch brothers’ political arm in the state. Slate notes that Agema, who reportedly addressed “The Powwow” last Friday evening, won the RNC committeeman post in 2012 thanks to a fractious campaign that enjoyed substantial Tea Party support.

Last week’s meeting isn’t the first time a Koch-sponsored event has invited a known racist to the dais. Charles Murray, the noted bigot behind “The Bell Curve” who is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “White Nationalist,” was invited to address the Koch network’s secretive donor summit last June.

Paid for by American Bridge 21st Century Foundation