Republican Congressional Candidate Quoted Saying To: Bus Black Youth To The Field To Pick Crops

Just when I think we've hit the floor, another Republican says something that is in bad taste, purely racist, and looks around like "Hey...What Did I Say?"

Congressional candidate Jack Davis shocked local Republican leaders in a recent interview when he suggested that Latino farmworkers be deported -- and that African-Americans from the inner city be bused to farm country to pick the crops.

Several sources who were in the Feb. 20 endorsement interview with Davis confirmed his comments, which echo those he made to the Tonawanda News in 2008, when he said: "We have a huge unemployment problem with black youth in our cities. Put them on buses, take them out there [to the farms] and pay them a decent wage; they will work."

When Davis repeated those sentiments in the recent interview, the Republican leaders -- who later delivered the party endorsement for the vacant seat in the 26th Congressional District to Assemblywoman Jane L. Corwin of Clarence -- said they couldn't believe what they were hearing.

"I was thunderstruck," said Amherst GOP Chairman Marshall Wood. "Maybe in 1860 that might have been seen by some as an appropriate comment, but not now."

Davis spokesman W. Curtis Ellis acknowledged that Davis' comments "may not be politically correct and ... may not be racially correct."

The revelations about Davis highlighted a busy Monday in the race to replace Rep. Chris Lee, an Amherst Republican who resigned last month after getting caught in an Internet flirtation with a woman who wasn't his wife.

The state Independence and Conservative parties endorsed Corwin on Monday, and local tea party activists held a candidate forum at Brennan's Bowery Pub in Clarence featuring Davis, Iraq War veteran David Bellavia, of Batavia, and Amherst Council Member Mark A. Manna, a Democrat.

When asked before the event about the comments he made, Davis replied: "It's politics." He did not address the remarks when he spoke to those assembled at the event.