Breaking: Fernando C. de Baca resigns

C. de Baca had been under increasing pressure to resign after he was quoted on a Friday blog posting on BBC News’ Web site as saying, “The truth is that Hispanics came here as conquerors. African-Americans came here as slaves. Hispanics consider themselves above blacks. They won’t vote for a black president.”

C. de Baca claims the quote was published out of context, and he was speaking in a historical context about his grandfather’s generation. He claims he believes many young Hispanics will vote for Obama. But BBC News and Kelly stand by the blog posting’s portrayal of the comment as referring in general to Hispanics.

In addition, there is a recording of a separate interview C. de Baca conducted with a different BBC reporter in which C. de Baca said this:

“I feel strongly that Hispanics will not support, in my generation and the generation around my age, are not going to support the Democratic candidate for president primarily because there is a strong feeling that African-Americans during the civil rights movement took advantage, full advantage, of all the benefits and programs that the government offered, that were supposed to be offered to all minorities. But we were left behind, we were left sucking air, and we resented that ever since the 60s, and I don’t see how a black president is going to change that.”

The county party’s executive committee had backed C. de Baca, but the county party’s central committee had not acted.