Larry Darby
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Larry Darby, is the Alabama-based founder of the now-defunct Atheist Law Center[1] whom has also run for Alabama elective political offices.
Though he has never held any political office, he most recently resigned as General Counsel and closed his Center in July 2006, to compete in Alabama's 2006 Democratic primary for the statewide office of Attorney General. [2]. Darby lost that race to Mobile County, Alabama, District Attorney John Tyson Jr, but made a surprisingly strong showing, winning 163,000 votes (44% of the vote). [3] Most political observers believe that voters' ignorance of Darby accounted for his unusual polling.
Before contending against Tyson under Democratic auspices, Darby tried to run for state office as a Libertarian. According to Alabama Libertarian Party chairman Dick Clark, "In or around January 2002, Larry Darby approached Libertarian Party members expressing interest in seeking the party's nomination for the position. Within two months of beginning discussions with members of the LPA, Mr. Darby's name was withdrawn from the nomination ballot and his party membership resigned, largely due to perceived ideological disagreements with the Libertarian Party platform." [4]
Darby's candidacy drew controversy when he questioned the Holocaust and associated himself with White Supremacist groups. In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, Darby said he believes that no more than 140,000 Jewish people died in the Holocaust, and that most of them succumbed to typhus. He said, "I am what the propagandists call a Holocaust denier, but I do not deny mass deaths that included some Jews," and "there was no systematic extermination of Jews. There's no evidence of that at all." [5] Darby also believes that illegal immigrants should be treated like prisoners of war. [6] He discussed his views on the Holocaust and immigration in a state-wide televised interview on the news program For The Record, on Alabama Public Television. [7]
On May 13, 2006, Darby spoke at a meeting of National Vanguard, which bills itself as an advocate for the White race. [8]
On May 19, 2006, Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham announced they could not remove Darby from the ballot because a challenge was not filed in the allotted time and because absentee ballots were already coming in. It did, however, issue a statement calling Darby's views "bizarre and offensive" and urged Democratic primary voters to remember that Darby's statements "are not reflective of this party, its platforms or its principles." [9]
Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama said the atheist community dropped Darby "like a hot rock" after they heard his views on race. [10]
When Darby closed his Center, he also announced in a press release that he was now a Christian “in a sense that Jesus of Nazareth would approve." [11]
Darby is also now considered a 'race traitor' by some, when it was discovered that he has two children by his ex-wife, whom is Chinese [12].
