An embattled state senator says he's being unfairly characterized as "the bad guy" and as unwilling to meet with the NAACP after negatively using the word black to describe a bill.

"I reached out to them, I said I'd like to meet with them," Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, said Tuesday. "I extended myself to them and they changed the deal."

Buttars was referring to a meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening with Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake Branch of the NAACP, and members of the civil rights organization's executive committee. The meeting's intent was to discuss Williams' call for Buttars resignation.

Buttars, who plans to run for re-election, said he decided not to attend after Williams had told him the meeting would be public.

"They're angry at me, it would be just another angry exchange," Buttars said. "I wanted to meet with them in private."

But Williams pointed out it was in a public setting that Buttars, during a Senate debate, had referred to a school equalization bill, saying, "This baby is black, I'll tell you. This is a dark and ugly thing."

So, she said, he should be comfortable apologizing to the NAACP publicly.

"We wanted the media to be here to see that we, the NAACP Salt Lake Branch, we're not a lynch mob as we were so-called," said Williams. She was referring to Buttars' reference to critics calling on him to step down, often in angry e-mails, as a "hate lynch mob" during an interview this week with the Salt Lake Tribune.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a life member of the NAACP, had arranged the meeting between Williams and Buttars. He said he was disappointed that it didn't work out.

"I just felt like I could maybe be somebody who could get them together," Shurtleff said. "Even though I don't believe what he said was racist, he still hurt people, and he needs to apologize to the African-American community."

Williams said she doubted Buttars could have said anything to change the committee's mind about the call for Buttars to step down. But based on comments made during the meeting with reporters at the Law and Justice Center it was apparent that the senator would have had a tough sell.

NAACP branch member Ed Lewis Jr. said Buttars' remarks about the black baby could only be taken one way: "This is a black baby and it's ugly ...That's what he meant. That's what he said."

And Lewis held up an article as he said he had researched the last lynching in Utah in 1925 in Price.

"The man knows nothing about what a lynch mob is," Lewis said. "It is an insult for a man to say he is getting lynched when we know what real lynchings are."