Ky. gov candidate Bevin wants state to remove Jefferson Davis statue
Kentucky GOP gubernatorial hopeful Matt Bevin wants his state to remove a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from its statehouse.
Bevin on Wednesday praised South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) for her call Monday to take down the flag from her state’s capitol grounds and offered a Bluegrass State suggestion.
“It would be equally appropriate for Kentucky to remove the Jefferson Davis statue from our capitol,” he said in a statement to The Hill.
{mosads}”It is important never to forget our history, but parts of our history are more appropriately displayed in museums, not on government property.”
Theo Keith, a reporter for WAVE-TV in Louisville, Ky., first reported Bevin’s stance.
The decision comes as South Carolina is set to debate removing the flag in the wake of the deadly shooting in a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., that left nine dead.
In pictures released after the shooting, alleged shooter Dylann Roof can be seen posing with the Confederate flag, and he reportedly told police that he wanted to start a race war.
Calls to disassociate from the Confederate flag continue to mount across the country, not just in South Carolina. Critics are calling for Mississippi to remove the image from its own state flag, and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) is removing the symbol from state license plates. Multiple large retailers have also announced that they’ll stop selling merchandise with the flag on it.
Statues of Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, are included in the National Statuary Hall collection in the U.S. Capitol Building.
States are allowed to submit statues of any two people to represent their state in the Statuary Hall collection. Davis’s statue was submitted by Mississippi; Stephens’s by Georgia.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) expressed interested in removing those statues, but said he didn’t want to shift the focus away from the South Carolina debate.
“I think there’s nothing wrong with evaluating things from time to time to see whether certain things are still appropriate, and whether or not they are sufficiently offensive to many people to at least take a look at,” he said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”
“But right now, I want to concentrate on this flag.”
Bevin challenged now-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from his right in the 2014 primary, but lost by 25 percentage points. Since then, he secured the GOP gubernatorial nomination after a tough primary where he won by just 83 votes.
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