Lurking in the background of the Steve Forbes Presidential campaign is a lawyer from North Carolina who is described by campaign officials as an "informal adviser" and friend of the candidate. His name is Thomas Ellis and he is an affront to black people everywhere.>From 1973 to 1977 Mr. Ellis was a director of the Pioneer Fund, a New York foundation that has spent more than half a century promoting the idea that whites are genetically superior to blacks.
*Among those who have received grants from the fund are J. Philippe Rushton, a crackpot professor who has equated small penises with heightened intelligence, and Richard Lynn, a white supremacist professor of psychology who once speculated that Jews had gotten an evolutionary boost from "intermittent persecutions which the more intelligent may have been able to foresee and escape." *
The fund was established in 1937 by a textile millionaire who urged that all black Americans be shipped to Africa. Its first president was a Nazi sympathizer who had testified before Congress that more than four-fifths of all Jewish immigrants were feebleminded.
In 1989 the fund recommended that the United States give up on the idea of racial integration altogether because "raising the intelligence of blacks or others still remains beyond our capabilities."
Mr. Ellis, a lawyer who is in his mid-70s, has long been an adviser to Senator Jesse Helms, and has long been associated with racially intolerant views and activities. Adam Miller, an author who is working on a book about eugenics, has cited one of the reasons offered by Mr. Ellis for his (Mr. Ellis's) rabid opposition to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed school segregation. The eventual goal of integration, Mr. Ellis wrote, "is racial intermarriage and the disappearance of the Negro race by fusing into the white."
In 1983 Mr. Ellis was forced to withdraw as Ronald Reagan's nominee to a seat on the Board of International Broadcasting because of his role with the Pioneer Fund. Paul Tsongas, then a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, had denounced the nomination, saying, "The President has made a great to-do about his sensitivity on racial matters. It's time to see if he is really serious."
Calls to Mr. Ellis's office in Raleigh last week were referred to the Forbes campaign. Mr. Forbes's press secretary, Gretchen Morgenson, said Mr. Ellis is a "friendly adviser" who will speak to Mr. Forbes by phone from time to time.
"He is not involved in meetings, he is not involved in setting strategy, he is not involved in the day-to-day nuts and bolts of the campaign," she said.
When asked what he advised the candidate about, she said, "Well, he might call and say, 'Look, I think you should talk about thus and such in your speeches,' or, you know, 'Stay on the flat tax' or 'Go on to something else.' That kind of thing."
When asked if Mr. Forbes had any problem with Mr. Ellis's views on race, or his tenure with the Pioneer Club, Ms. Morgenson said she couldn't answer. "Probably you should talk to Bill Dal Col, the campaign manager," she said.
Neither Mr. Forbes nor Mr. Dal Col would return phone calls on that issue.
Mr. Ellis has never been shy about injecting bigotry into the rough and tumble of practical politics. A recent article in The Times noted that he had admitted distributing handbills during the 1976 Republican primary in North Carolina that said President Gerald Ford was considering a black running mate.
In 1990 Mr. Ellis was one of the architects of Senator Helms's vicious, racially polarizing re-election campaign against Harvey Gantt, the first black mayor of Charlotte. When polls showed Mr. Gantt ahead late in the race, Mr. Ellis and his colleagues came up with the now notorious "white hands" television ad. The hands of a white man were shown crumpling a rejection letter while the voice-over said a less-qualified "minority" got the job because of a racial quota.
Steve Forbes has an obligation to explain why a repellent figure like Thomas Ellis has any role in his campaign. And he needs to be especially forthcoming on whether he -- Steve Forbes -- has any sympathy himself for the nauseating views Mr. Ellis represents.