Former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian on Tuesday again defended controversial comments he made about Nikki Haley (R) — he told Jefferson-Jackson dinner attendees last week that she should go back “to wherever the hell she came from” — by claiming he was referring to Haley’s past occupation as an accountant.
“I apologized yesterday if anyone inferred — I’m the grandson of immigrants,” Harpootlian said Tuesday on MSNBC. “She’s not from India. … She’s from Bamberg, South Carolina, where she was an accountant in her parents’ clothing store called Exotica. All I’m suggesting is she needs to go back to being an accountant in a dress store rather than being this fraud of a governor that we have.”
The Indian-American governor was born in South Carolina and her parents are from India. The remark drew rebuke from both Haley’s aides and South Carolina Republicans.
Harpootlian told Politico on Friday that he was referring to “Lexington County … she was born in Bamberg [South Carolina] and lived in Lexington. Anybody implying anything different is attempting to feign insult.”
Harpootlian also drew outrage last September after he made a poor joke on the floor of the Democratic National Convention that compared Haley with Eva Braun.
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Correction: Dick Harpootlian is no longer the South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman. He was replaced this past weekend. We regret the error.
