The wife of a sponsor of North Carolina’s Amendment One, a proposed change to the state’s constitution that would ensure legal recognition only for marriage between a man and a woman, reportedly offered an eyebrow-raising explanation for her husband’s support of the measure.
Jodie Brunstetter, the wife of state Sen. Peter Brunstetter (R), has found herself embroiled in controversy after suggesting that her husband’s role in writing the bill — which passed the Republican-controlled general assembly last fall –Â was racially motivated.
According to the alternative Yes! Weekly, which picked up the remarks from freelance journalist and activist Chad Nance, Jodie Brunstetter told a poll worker in Winston-Salem, N.C. Monday that the reason her husband “wrote Amendment 1 was because the Caucasian race is diminishing and we need to uh, reproduce.”
Nance had been volunteering for a group opposed to Amendment One while also serving as a campaign manager for Matt Newton, a U.S. House candidate in North Carolina’s 12th Congressional district. After a dispute with the candidate over his decision to make Jodie Brunstetter’s remarks public, Nance resigned from Newton’s campaign.
Nance ultimately approached Jodie Brunstetter for clarification and he chronicled the exchange on video. Throughout the conversation, she offers often-convoluted responses to Nance’s questions and even admits to invoking race in her original remarks, although she insists that they were taken out of context. Yes! Weekly has obtained and published the transcript:
Brunsetter:
We are looking at the history of the United States and it is already law about what marriage is. Between a man and a woman. And we are looking at how America has been a great country. That’s why people are coming here. And people who founded the United states wrote a Constitution and it has been what has preserved this society. And we were just talking about lots of different things which the gentleman was turning around.
Me:
You didn’t tell that one lady that it was to preserve the Caucasian race because they were becoming a minority?
Brunsetter:
No.
Me:
She’s lying?
Brunsetter:
No. It’s just that same sex marriages are not having children.
Me:
Yeam but you didn’t say anything about Caucasians, white people, preserving them that’s why it was written?
Brunsetter:
No I’m afraid they have made it a racial issue when it is not.
Me:
She didn’t say it was a racial issue. She said that you had said that part of the reason it had been sponsored and written was to preserve the white race.
(a moment later) … you didn’t say anything about Caucasians?
Brunsetter:
I probably said the word.
Me:
You didn’t tell her anything about Caucasians?
Silence.
Me:
I want you to clear it up if you could.
Brunsetter:
Right now I am a little confused myself because there has been confusion here today about this amendment where it is very simple. The opponents are saying things that are not true and there has been a lot of conversation back and forth.
Right now I have some heat stroke going on. Um there has been lots of confusion.
Me:
Did you say anything about Caucasians?
Brunsetter: If I did it wasn’t anything race related.
Me:
But it is about identifying a race. No context on Caucasians?
Brunsetter:
There has been so much talk about this point that there is just a lot of confusion.
Me:
You’re not going to be able to explain it?
Brunsetter:
Well, it’s a little hard.
North Carolina will vote on Amendment One on May 8, with polls showing that it is likely to pass. State Sen. Peter Brunstetter did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.
