Harpootlian Explains That He Meant to Make a Sexist Attack, Not a Racist One

USA Today reports:

While he was chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian was known for his "pithy and pungent comments." Now, he's trying to apologize and clarify such a remark he made last week about GOP Gov. Nikki Haley.

Harpootlian said he hoped South Carolina voters next year send "Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from" -- a comment that many Republicans believed was racist because of Haley's Indian heritage. Haley, South Carolina's first female and minority governor, is up for re-election in 2014.

"I'm the grandson of immigrants. She's not from India," Harpootlian said Tuesday on MSNBC. "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."