New Nevada GOP House Speaker Resigns After Racist, Anti-Gay Past Uncovered


Nevada will be looking for a new Speaker of the House-Elect for the upcoming legislative session after the last pick for the post resigned this week.

According to Mediaite, Republican State Rep. Ira Hansen resigned from the position he was due to hold next session following an expose in the Reno News and Review that Mediaite writer Evan McMurry said included “a slew of fringe racist and homophobic opinions.”

Dennis Myers of the Reno News detailed some of Hansen’s past comments, many of which were written in columns over 13 years in the Sparks Tribune. Among the quotes Myers found from the now-former Nevada GOP House Speaker-Elect Ira Hansen is this bit on African Americans and Democrats (quoting Hansen).

“The Democratic coalition would split asunder if the NAACP & co. actually promoted what black Americans truly desire—educational choice. The shrewd and calculating [black] ‘leaders’ are willing to sacrifice the children of their own race to gratify their lust for power and position. The relationship of Negroes and Democrats is truly a master-slave relationship, with the benevolent master knowing what’s best for his simple minded darkies. For American blacks, being denied choice and forced to attend the failing and inferior government school system is a form of involuntary servitude. Let’s call it what it truly is—educational slavery.”

Also, be sure to check out what Hansen wrote about women, again quoting Hansen himself per Myers’ research.

“Women, historically, have been the nurturers and mothers while men have been the providers and defenders….”

“So what happened between 1960 and 2001?… Major social changes that negatively affected the family. Childbearing was reduced to an average of two kids…. Divorce rates skyrocketed. ‘Child care’ became an industry. Child abuse skyrocketed. Thanks to the ‘sexual revolution’ and the ‘women’s liberation movement,’ women chose to act as foolishly as men, and illegitimacy also went through the roof…. Abortions get about one out of every four children conceived….

“As usual, it boils down to the issue of murdering unborn children, given the clinically sterile title of ‘abortion’….

“Today, when Army men look at women in the ranks with ‘longing in their eyes’ it very well may constitute ‘sexual harassment.’ The truth is, women do not belong in the Army or Navy or Marine Corps, except in certain limited fields.”

Regardless of the fact that Hansen wrote the above comments and many more included in the News Review article, he said the uncovering of the past columns were nothing more than a political attack.

“I have already served two terms as an Assemblyman without any of these vicious attacks…. It was only when I had risen to leadership that this smear campaign occurred. That is the real reason for this and it is vital the public understands that.”

Hansen is, of course, not the first to resign over items in his past coming back to haunt him. Of course, he could have made a mistake like a Canadian politician did, posting a crass blog post following the beheading of an individual on a bus.

[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]

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