Pete Hoekstra Doubles Down On Claims His Campaign Ad Was Not Racist

By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 7, 2012 4:20PM

Michigan Senate candidate and former congressman Pete Hoekstra was in damage control mode yesterday following the overwhelmingly negative reaction to an ad his campaign ran in that state Super Bowl Sunday which depicted a woman of Asian descent thanking his opponent, incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow for the flourishing Chinese economy in pidgin English.

Hoekstra appeared on Fox News yesterday where he reasserted his claim the ad wasn't racist to news bunny Megyn Kelly. "The only group of people that this group is 'anti,' it's anti- Debbie Stabenow. It's anti-Barack Obama," Hoekstra said. Watch.

"There's nothing in here that has a racial tint at all," Hoekstra told Kelly. "The bottom line is when they can't defend their record they will move to the race card." Using Hoekstra's logic, Charlie Chan movies, Boris Karloff's "Mr. Wong" films and Mickey Rooney's performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's are compliments to Asian Americans.

Hoekstra has at least one defender in Fox News' Brit Hume, who said on his Twitter feed the broken English spoken by the actress in the ad was "pretty impressive for an alleged 'slur.'" The Michigan chapter of Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote group called the ad "disturbing" while using "harmful stereotypes" to foster "anti-Asian sentiment," while Reverend Charles Williams II of Detroit's King Solomon Baptist church said the ad was comparable to "having a black person speaking in slave dialect."