"What difference might it make to voters if U.S. Senate candidates used racial slurs in their speech decades ago?

Democrat Jim Webb did use the n-word, but said he never directed it at any individual. Republican George Allen used the word as well, if those who say they heard him use it are telling the truth today.

Many Virginians who used the ugly slur decades ago have given that up, abandoning a vestige of the old South hurtful to many people. I feel confident that both U.S. Senate candidates today would not use the word.

Then what difference does it make if they once did?

Perhaps the answer lies in how candidates and campaigns handle the question.

One of the lessons I learned from my mother was her admonishment never to say “never.”

Mom taught school in Fairfax and Arlington counties and insisted that when a question includes the word “never,” the wiser course is almost always to reject the never answer.

I think Allen, R-Fairfax County, would not be struggling with a campaign bogged down with as large a bunch of questions about his character and charges of racial insensitivity if he had avoided making a full denial when asked if he had ever used the n-word.

By saying he’d never used the nasty racial epithet, Allen put his credibility on the line.

Reporters started getting phone calls and e-mails from people who say they heard him use it.

Voters can ignore or downplay the question. They can believe Allen or believe the growing number of people who say he used demeaning language a long while ago. They can believe Democratic challenger Webb’s tacit acknowledgement that he used the n-word, and forgive or not forgive him.

Allen has made the issue of character a harder nut to crack, ignore or easily move on from.

In the 27 years that I’ve known him, I can say I have not heard him utter the n-word, but I cannot automatically dismiss or ignore the three current and former Charlottesville residents who swear to me that they heard him use it often.

One is a doctor, one is a nurse and one is retired and a former classmate of mine at the University of Virginia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Only the former classmate does not wish to be named because a close relative works at a high level in the Bush administration.

To put their recollections in some context, the alleged usage was in the 1972-1975 period when Allen was a UVa quarterback and then a UVa law student.

Yes, that’s more than 30 years ago, but never is a longer time.

The nurse who said she heard Allen’s use of the n-word, who agreed to be identified by a maiden name of Leah Deason, lived then in a house on Route 20 near the Key West subdivision. She and her housemates, including a UVa jock or two, often hosted poker games.

“He just threw it around so casually, it’s like he didn’t know any better,” she said. In poker games, “whenever he’d get a black card that he didn’t like, he would refer to it as a ‘nig--- card’ he needed to get rid of,” said Deason, a registered nurse and widow of a UVa faculty member. “Allen was in law school at the time,” she said.

Why would she bring up such a thing now and notify a reporter? “What infuriated me was the way he got up there and flat out lied about it,” she said.

The former classmate attended the same poker parties and recalled the same language from the then-law student. “It was part of his everyday speech,” he said. “It just rolled off his tongue. He’d get a black card he didn’t like and he’d toss it back and say, ‘I don’t need that nig--- ten.’”

Chris LaCivita, contacted Oct. 5 after the two former poker players contacted the newspaper, said he would not ask Allen about the allegations.

“We’re not going to allow baseless attacks and smear tactics to draw us away from a discussion of the issues that people want to hear about,” said LaCivita, a top Allen consultant and spokesman.

The third former UVa student to insist last week that Allen often used the n-word was former football teammate Ken Shelton, a former tight end and wide receiver who earned a UVa medical degree in 1979 and works in North Carolina as a doctor.

“He definitely used the n-word, but that’s been blown out of proportion because his actions often spoke louder,” said Shelton, who has been interviewed by national newspaper and magazine reporters about an early 1970s Louisa County hunting trip with Allen in which Shelton said the then-quarterback stuffed a deer head in a black family’s mailbox. Allen denied any such incident.

“Allen has called me a liar,” Shelton said. “To me, George should come forward and be honest about his past and prove that he is different.”

Shelton said Allen showed disrespect to UVa and the school’s mostly black cleaning staff by walking down the hallways of Newcomb Hall as a student and spitting tobacco juice “on the floors in the hallway and on the walls.”

Why would he resurrect old memories this year? “He absolutely denied ever having used the term [and] was testing the political waters for a potential presidential bid,” Shelton said.

Truth and credibility still matter in politics. Racial insensitivity matters to many people. Allen seeks to enhance his status as a credible spokesman for conservative and family values and will not deny he harbors White House ambitions.

This is the same Allen who reportedly painted racially offensive graffiti on his own high school in Southern California, or is it? He acknowledges the spray paint but not spray painting any racially insensitive words.

Webb acknowledges use of the n-word and perhaps more easily put it in his past." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, October 8, 2006)

Editor's Note: An index to coverage of George Allen on the Loper website may be found at http://loper.org/~george/archives/2006/Aug/925.html