In e-mails to readers of a popular Atheist blog, City Councilor Don Harris recently apologized for attempting to use his opponent’s religion against him, saying he had “learned a great deal,” from the experience.

Campaign mailer of City Councilor Don Harris

Campaign mailer of City Councilor Don Harris

In his campaign for reelection, Harris had sent out mailers labeling opponent David Barbour as an atheist and painting him as a radical.

In response to NMI’s initial coverage of the mailer, Harris defended his decision, saying, “Mr. Barbour, in both the League of Women Voter’s questionnaire and in the Albuquerque Journal questionnaire commented that he was on the Board of a ‘church,’ obviously attempting to make himself look more mainstream than he is on such things.”

As NMI then reported, the “church” that Harris put in quotes was a Unitarian Universalist congregation, for which Barbour had been the choir leader.

Our posts on the incident generated a surprising amount of traffic and lots of comments on our site, but they were also picked up by FriendlyAtheist.com.

Blogger Hemant Mehta did not reply to an e-mail from the Independent requesting an interview, but you can see his original post, which prompted many readers to write to Harris and complain about the attempt to use his opponent’s religious beliefs against him.

On election day, Mehta announced in a follow-up that many readers had sent e-mails directly to Harris. Several said they had received a similar response to their e-mails:

Dear [sender],

I was intending to expose his radical politics, and, in retrospect, how I did it was a mistake.

I apologize.

Sincerely,

Don Harris

Two days later, after Harris had won reelection to his Council seat, Mehta wrote that Harris had responded to one reader with a promise not to bring up atheism again, saying he’d learned his lesson:

After attacking opponent Dan Barbour about his ties to atheism during the campaign, newly re-elected Albuquerque city councilperson Don Harris must have had enough of your emails.

Instead of a canned response, he finally issued a real response to reader Gareth.

It’s the response Harris should really have delivered days ago:

Thank you for taking to time to write to me.

I appreciate your very thoughtful comments.

I will not bring up Atheism in any future endeavor, as I have learned a great deal from this experience.

Best regards.

Don Harris

In an interview with the Independent, Harris said that once NMI’s stories about his mailer were picked up by FriendlyAtheist, he got “a fair bit of e-mail.”

“Although the safest course would be to leave it alone, I felt compelled to at least write the people back who took the time to write to me, and to post something on their site, which several of them asked me to do,” Harris told the Independent.

“I was reminded that the decisions that one makes when running for office and being in office are not simple ones, and they can have unexpected consequences. Being true to one’s own principles, while respecting the principles of others’, as a public official is a delicate balance. Political campaigns are by definition divisive; then after the election some healing and mending fences may be in order. That was the case here,” he wrote, adding, “I’m just doing the best I can.”