Buttars says he'll run for re-election in November

Sen. Chris Buttars said Monday he's running for re-election in November and hopes to persuade the NAACP to withdraw its call for his resignation once he explains why his references to a bill as black, dark and ugly weren't racist.

"I'm not resigning. I never intended to and I'm not going to. I plan to re-run," the West Jordan Republican told the Deseret Morning News in an interview late Monday afternoon, ending a week of near-silence since his controversial statement Feb. 12 on the Senate floor.

Buttars said he had planned to respond to critics by running a full-page ad in the Morning News and the Salt Lake Tribune today as well as holding a rally at the Capitol on Wednesday with supporters from the Utah Eagle Forum.

But now he's put those plans on hold and has agreed to meet with Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

It was Williams who called for Buttars' resignation last week, after he used the word black to negatively describe the "baby" being divided in a school equalization bill saying, "This baby is black, I'll tell you. This is a dark and ugly thing."

Buttars said Monday his statement was misinterpreted and never intended to be racist.

"We live in a very, very sensitive world. Although what I said had literally nothing in my mind to do with a human being at all — we were talking about an ugly bill — I made a statement that could be easily misinterpreted, and it was."

Buttars said he'll tell Williams and the NAACP board today that he is sorry for what he said and ask them to take back the call for his resignation. He said he understood how his statement, as well as one made in 2006, could be seen as racist without knowing the context.

Williams, though, said Buttars won't be able to convince her to back down in her call for his resignation. In August 2006, Buttars called the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools "wrong to begin with" in a radio interview.

"We at the NAACP are here to say enough is enough," Williams said. "It's not the first time he's made derogatory remarks. ... If he feels comfortable enough to sit up in the Senate and say those things that are harmful, he doesn't belong in the Senate."

Williams said she and the board "want to sit down and tell him his actions will not be tolerated in the state of Utah. It would make it easier, I'm sure, for his constituents if he would go ahead and resign, or at least not seek re-election."