The wife of a North Carolina state senator reportedly told poll workers during early voting Monday that an amendment sponsored by her husband was intended partially to protect the Caucasian race.
Jodie Brunstetter is the wife of state Sen. Peter Brunstetter (R), a supporter of Amendment 1, which would change North Carolina's Constitution to permit only heterosexual marriage.
According to the alternative Yes! Weekly, writer and campaigner Chad Nance spoke to a pollworker who told him that Jodie Brunstetter said, "The reason my husband wrote Amendment 1 was because the Caucasian race is diminishing and we need to uh, reproduce."
Nance has volunteered for a group working to defeat the marriage amendment and was until recently the campaign manager for a Democratic candidate for Congress. Nance resigned from the campaign to speak about Jodie Brunstetter's alleged remarks, according to Yes! Weekly.
Nance also spoke to Jodie Brunstetter, who said that she had used the word "Caucasian" in discussing the amendment, but that her remarks were taken out of context.
"We are looking at the history of the United States and it is already law about what marriage is," Brunstetter told Nance, according to Yes! Weekly. "Between a man and a woman."
"I'm afraid they have made it a racial issue when it is not," Brunstetter said of the poll workers. Pressed on whether she had used the word "Caucasian," she said, "I probably said the word," but that she hadn't used it in a race-related manner.
The blog said Brunstetter's campaign could not be immediately reached for comment.
