An offhand comment comparing a bill to a dark and ugly black "baby" made during a heated floor debate by Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, ended up being the talk of the session.
Buttars was talking about the "baby" divided by a school equalization bill on Feb. 12 when he said, "This baby is black, I'll tell you. This is a dark and ugly thing." He apologized shortly after, but the damage had been done.
Jeanetta Williams, the president of the Salt Lake branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called for his resignation, saying this wasn't the first time the two-term senator had made a racist statement.
But Buttars dug in his heels, at first insisting the issue was finished because he had said he was sorry after Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, announced on the floor that there had been a breach of decorum and the senator involved wanted to apologize.
But later explained to the mediawhy his comment wasn't meant as racist and was simply misinterpreted. He also said he was running for reelection in November. But Buttars would misspeak again. This time telling a reporter that he was being bombarded by e-mails from a "hate lynch mob." He then skipped a meeting set up with the NAACP after the civil rights organization invited the media to attend, further angering his critics.
Buttars tried again to calm the situation, speaking Feb. 24 to the largely black congregation of the Calvary Baptist Church at the invitation of the Rev. France Davis. The senator later said he asked for forgiveness and was warmly greeted by churchgoers. "They're a wonderful people," he said.
Senate leaders, who avoided acknowledging their frustration with Buttars publicly, finally issued a full-page statement calling Buttars "a good man who — like every single one of us — can make mistakes" and who made a poor choice of words "carelessly, but not maliciously."
They also took away his most controversial piece of legislation, a bill targeting Salt Lake City's domestic partnership registry, and allowed Sen. Greg Bell, R-Fruit Heights, to open a late bill file on the issue. The substitution was made after House leadership indicated they had almost no intention to hear the bill if it was sponsored by Buttars.
Buttars also lost his chairmanship of the Senate Judicial Confirmation Committee after a critical letter he'd written to a judge he'd helped confirm surfaced. In the May 2007 letter to 4th District Judge Derek Pullan, Buttars said he was "embarrassed" he supported the judge because of his ruling against the senator's close friend, Wendell Gibby, in a long-running eminent domain dispute with the city of Mapleton.
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