A Republican policy advisor from the North Carolina Speaker of the House of Representatives’ office resigned after his “pro-white” comments from the early 2010s resurfaced.
The staffer stepped away from his position even though he denounced his former views, saying he is “not proud” of his old position and has since “shifted.”
Pressure from the press, which received tips about old written and spoken comments made by Carlton Huffman, has caused the staffer, who lists himself online as an advisor for North Carolina Speaker of the House Tim Moore, to step down from his position in the state’s General Assembly, The Charlotte Observer reports.
On Wednesday, Jan. 25, anonymous tips were emailed to statehouse reporters, leaking his appearance on a “pro-white” radio show called “The Political Cesspool,” along with other statements he made starting as far back as 2010.
Moore’s office quickly distanced itself from Huffman, saying he was hired only a few weeks ago as an investigative analyst for the Legislature’s Commission on Governmental Operations, which the House Speaker leads, and has since departed from the staff. A representative said he “no longer works at the General Assembly,” leaving after the office became aware of his statements on Thursday, Jan. 26.
Huffman, 38, has a history with “The Political Cesspool” radio program, a far-right talk show that touts an “unapologetically pro-White viewpoint,” working as a contributing author and featured guest in 2009 and 2010. In 2011, Huffman was hired as a legislative assistant with the general assembly.
While there, he used his position in the assembly to go up against the Legislature’s desire to pardon former Gov. William Holden, who was impeached in 1870 by the Dixie Democrats for several reasons, including defending Black voters targeted by the Ku Klux Klan in Alamance County.
Huffman protested by circulating a letter asking elected officials to vote down the pardon and calling the governor, who served from 1868 to 1871, corrupt.
He allegedly broke senatorial rules by leaving information about the vote anonymously on senators’ desks when they were not there.
He reportedly authored an article on the website for “The Political Cesspool” in 2015, praising Confederate soldiers and the South’s “resistance to change” despite “over 150 years of attempted cultural genocide,” according to The Charlotte Observer.
Huffman said his heart was broken when South Carolina was forced to retire the Confederate flag — a symbol of the treasonous act of secession during the American Civil War.
Another position he took once on the show was to rage against forced integration at the University of Mississippi in 1962, theorizing it was at that point the South began “a very long fall from grace.”
Huffman praised the students who “stood side-by-side with Southern patriots” as they fought feverishly against integration and “change the character of the campus.”
The host of the show said, “We have got to coalesce as an ethnocentric group and fight together as one,” and Huffman agreed, adding, “We have to stand together and we also have to get involved with the political process.”
More recently, around the insurrection on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, he allegedly texted Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, with the message, “You’ve earned a special place in infamy for the events of today. And if you’re the Christian you claim to be in your heart you know that.”
Since then, according to his LinkedIn, the career Republican has worked as the political director for the recently unsuccessful Wisconsin Republican attorney general candidate Eric Toney and three other positions, including six years with the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
He also recently served as the regional field director for the Herschel Walker for U.S. Senate campaign against incumbent Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock, who won reelection.
After news broke of Huffman’s past racist statements, he apologized and said he’d changed.
WRAL-TV interviewed Huffman, and he said, “Those views that I expressed represent a time in my life that I am not proud of. Views that I have shifted from, that I disavow.”
Huffman shared that he “deeply regretted the ugly person I was.” Back then, he was a part of the segregationist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, but he has since separated himself from that group because of its anti-Semitic views.
“Those views, they were ugly,” he said. “I admit it, and I hate that the world is seeing that, and I’m ashamed of it. But I know in my heart that the person that I am today is not the person that is reflected in that email and those writings.”
Now, his social media imprint features statements by abolitionist Frederick Douglass and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
