ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 16, 1996 TAG: 9602160050
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Cox News Service
Larry Pratt, a co-chairman of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign and a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates, stepped aside Thursday after a report linked him to gatherings of white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups.
With Buchanan rising in the polls just days before Tuesday's crucial New Hampshire Republican primary, the candidate moved quickly to give Pratt a leave of absence but said he believed Pratt was not a racist.
The allegations came in a report by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity detailing the backgrounds of presidential campaign advisers.
Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America and an ardent promoter of citizen militias, denounced the report as a ``smear'' and a ``scurrilous attack designed to derail'' the Buchanan campaign.
However, Pratt acknowledged many of the facts in the study.
Pratt said he had addressed a 1992 meeting in Estes, Colo., along with representatives of the Aryan Nation and other anti-Semitic and white supremacist groups. But he insisted that he had only learned about their affiliation later.
``I loathe the Aryan Nation and other racist groups with every fiber of my being,'' Pratt said at a news conference. He said he was a member of the Congress of Racial Equality, a predominantly black civil rights group.
Roy Innis, chairman of CORE, said that he and Pratt have ``walked the streets of the black community explaining to black people their rights'' to bear arms.
Buchanan called Pratt a ``devout Christian.'' He told CNN he would eject from his campaign organization ``anyone who is a member of a white supremacist group or any other racial supremacist group.''
Pratt said he suspended his ties to the campaign out of concern that the controversy could damage Buchanan's presidential effort. Buchanan said his sister, Bay Buchanan, his campaign manager, had talked to Pratt, and they had agreed the co-chairman should take time off to respond to the allegations.
Pratt, whose name appears on the Buchanan campaign's letterhead, said his chief role has been to endorse Buchanan and give the campaign his membership mailing list.
Pratt's Gun Owners of America represents a faction of the pro-gun community that believes the National Rifle Association is not hard-edged enough in defending the constitutional right to bear arms.
He promotes the idea of citizen militias as a way to fight crime, and in 1990 published the book ``Armed People Victorious.''
Pratt, a sharp critic of federal law enforcement, said he participated in the 1992 Colorado meeting to protest government misconduct in the FBI shootout with white separatist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
In the aftermath of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Pratt appeared to equate the violence with the FBI raid two years earlier on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.
``Somebody has descended to the level of the FBI,'' Pratt said in an interview with Cox Broadcasting one hour after the bomb outside the Oklahoma City building exploded. ``They've killed children in Oklahoma City, just as the FBI killed children in Waco.''
Pratt was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates from Fairfax County in 1979 and served one two-year term. He introduced bills to outlaw the display of nude pictures on automobiles and to limit experimentation on fertilized human eggs. Both bills were defeated.
Landmark News Service contributed to this report.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Larry Pratt\Former Virginia delegate KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB