Jones backlash hits home

Wednesday, March 1, 2000 | 10:28 a.m.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and several fellow Democrats joined the political fray over Bob Jones University Tuesday. As presidential hopefuls George W. Bush and John McCain awaited primary and caucus results in three states, Reid, Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., and Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., introduced nonbinding resolutions in the Senate and House to condemn discrimination at Bob Jones University.

Nonbinding resolutions create no action but allow members of Congress to express opinions.

Bob Jones, a conservative Christian school in Greenville, S.C., is the site of a Feb. 2 Bush speech. The school became the center of controversy in the Bush and McCain campaigns in the following days as McCain painted the school as anti-Catholic and Bush scrambled to defend and partly apologize for his appearance.

Reid, a Mormon, took his own shot at Bob Jones at a news conference on Capitol Hill, saying university leaders in 1994 labeled Mormonism, Catholicism and Islam as among the "world's deceptions." He said the school's "bigotry" should offend everyone.

"I'm deeply offended by these comments, as I'm sure are Catholics and Muslims," Reid said. "George W. Bush's stop at Bob Jones University has turned over a rock under which has lived all sorts of bigoted practices."

Bush went on to win a vast majority of religious right voters on Tuesday that helped propel his victory in Virginia.