Texas GOP Cuts Off Vendor Of Racist Button

The Texas Republican Party said that it plans to donate to charity the $1,500 rent it collected from a vendor who sold campaign buttons at the state convention that asked, "If Obama is president…will we still call it The White House?"

The Associated Press reports the state Republican Party said the vendor's rent will go to victims of the Midwestern floods.

"This vendor need not apply to another Texas GOP state convention," Texas GOP spokesman Hans Klingler said. "We will neither tolerate nor profit from bigotry."

The Texas Republican Party was also involved in a controversy over diversity issues in 1998, when it denied the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay Republicans, a booth at its state convention.

"We don't allow pedophiles, transvestites or cross-dressers, either," then-GOP spokesman Robert Black said at the time.

*Update: The vendor who sold the racist button has apologized, The Dallas Morning News reports.

"It's just been crazy," Jonathan Alcox, who runs republicanmarket.com and had buttons and other items for sale at the GOP gathering, told the newspaper. "The point is we made a mistake. I realize that now. And I apologize."