Dublin DA, ex-supremacist debate heading into runoff

<p>A district attorney candidate who in the 1970s authored anti-Semitic writings praising Adolf Hitler said in a debate Wednesday he's offended some people accuse him of being a racist.</p><p>"I cannot be called a racist," Craig Fraser, a former deputy prosecutor, said during a debate in the studio of local station TV-35. "I am not a racist and personally I am offended by the smear that has gone on in this campaign."</p><p>Fraser, facing an Aug. 10 runoff against incumbent District Attorney Ralph Walke, has apologized for what he calls his "radical politics" in the 1970s when he was in his 20s.</p><p>Fraser was a follower of white supremacist J.B. Stoner during his 1970 gubernatorial campaign. He also authored the forward to the book "The Testament of Adolf Hitler," a compilation of Hitler documents published that same decade.</p><p>"And what a mind Hitler had! Surely even his enemies, the anti-Christ Jews, will admit to the superiority of his mental powers," Fraser wrote in that introduction.</p><p>The book, in which Fraser called Hitler "the greatest White man the world has ever known," is still available for sale on the Internet.</p><p>Fraser's writings became an issue in 2000 when he ran unsuccessfully for Superior Court judge. Four years later, incumbent Walke has made them an issue again.</p><p>Still, Fraser finished first in a three-way primary for district attorney July 20, with 42 percent of the vote. Walke, a 16-year incumbent, had 31 percent.</p><p>A runoff was forced because no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote needed to win outright in the Dublin judicial circuit of Laurens, Johnson, Treutlen and Twiggs counties in rural east Georgia.</p><p>During the debate Wednesday, Fraser pushed his campaign pledge to hire a black attorney in the district attorney's office _ and chided Walke for not having one already.</p><p>Walke said he has had two black prosecutors during his 16 years in office, but couldn't keep them because of higher paying jobs in private practices.</p><p>In 1970, Fraser worked in Stoner's failed Georgia gubernatorial campaign. Stoner later served more than three years in prison in the 1980s for the 1958 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church.</p><p>Walke has criticized Fraser about his past racist views, but also acknowledges he knew of them when he rehired Fraser as a deputy prosecutor after his failed campaign for judge in 2000.</p><p>Fraser, meanwhile, has accused Walke of being a lazy manager who delegates most of his responsibilities to assistants. Fraser also has said the office needs "sober leadership."</p><p>"I have been slandered so much in this campaign it is unbelievable," Walke said during the debate.</p><p>Walke defends his record, saying his office has one of the highest conviction rates in Georgia. He has acknowledged having a drinking problem while going through a divorce in 1998.</p><p>Walke has said he joined Alcoholics Anonymous soon after and hasn't touched alcohol in a long time.</p>