New Report that Senator Uttered Slurs

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/us/politics/27allen.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&ref=politics&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — Another acquaintance of Senator George Allen said Tuesday that she heard him use a racial slur in 1976, contradicting a statement he made Monday in an effort to tamp down similar accusations.

Mr. Allen’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, called the account by the woman, Ellen G. Hawkins, “another false accusation.”

Mr. Allen, a Virginia Republican whose re-election campaign has been knocked off balance by the accusations, said Monday that he did not remember ever using the term and that “it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary.”

Mrs. Hawkins, who described herself as a rural Virginia housewife and an active Democrat, said in an interview Tuesday that she heard Mr. Allen use the slur repeatedly at a party on election night in 1976. She said Mr. Allen used the term while deprecating the intelligence of the black players on the Washington Redskins football team, which Mr. Allen’s father coached. Recalling remarks about its star running back, Larry Brown, Mrs. Hawkins said that Mr. Allen “started in effect bad-mouthing him, saying what a shiftless you-know-what” he was.

She said she remembered the conversation because she was a big fan of the team and was shocked. She said Mr. Allen’s statement on Monday was “just plain a lie.”

. . . more