Barbour: I'll Veto Klan License Plate
Politico reports:
Under pressure to address racial issues swirling around a potential presidential bid, Haley Barbour said on Monday for the first time that he wouldn’t sign legislation in Mississippi to honor a former Ku Klux Klan leader with a state-issued license plate.
"The bureaucracy denied it, the legislature won't pass it and if the legislature passes it, it won't become law because I won't sign it,” Barbour told the Associated Press in an interview – a change from when he had earlier declined to take a position against the measure.
The plate proposal, backed by the Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans, would honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who went on to become a leader in the Ku Klux Klan.
Barbour had previously come under fire for refusing to condemn the bill — "I don't go around denouncing people," he said — after the Mississippi NAACP called the plate “absurd” and opposed honoring such a "racially divisive" figure.
"I know there's not a chance it'll become law," Barbour, who is considering a presidential run in 2012 and was in Iowa to meet GOP officials on Monday, said last week when he refused to address the merits of the plate bill.
The proposal is part of the Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans push to use state license plates to recognize the 150th anniversary of what it calls "the War Between the States."
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