GOP leader steps down after rant on ex-Miss America

Catalina Camia | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The local Illinois Republican Party official who called a biracial congressional candidate a "street walker" resigned Thursday, after his comments were widely denounced as offensive.

Jim Allen referred to Erika Harold, a lawyer and former Miss America, as a "street walker" and "love child" in an e-mail with racial overtones to the conservative website, Republican News Watch.

Harold is challenging Rep. Rodney Davis in a GOP primary in Illinois' 13th Congressional District.

"Today, I accepted the resignation of Jim Allen as Montgomery County chairman. These types of offensive and inappropriate remarks have no place in our Republican Party," said Jack Dorgan, chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, in a statement posted on the state GOP's Facebook page.

Allen's resignation came shortly after Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and other GOP officials called on him to step down. The national party has been undergoing a rebranding effort aimed at improving its standing with minorities, who voted overwhelmingly for President Obama in last year's election.

"The astonishingly offensive views expressed by Chairman Allen have absolutely no place among the leaders of our party at any level," Priebus said. "His behavior is inexcusable and must not be tolerated."

In his original comments, Allen mocked Harold's Miss America platform focused on abstinence and bullying in schools before making comments about her candidacy. "Now, Miss Queen is being used like a street walker and her pimps are the DEMOCRAT PARTY and RINO REPUBLICANS," he wrote.

Allen had predicted that Davis would defeat Harold, saying she would end up "working for some law firm that needs to meet their quota for minority hires."

Davis, a freshman elected in November, already had distanced himself from Allen's comments and removed him from a list of campaign supporters.

Priebus and the national Republican Party have been stepping up their outreach in minority communities after a scathing internal report outlined the GOP's 2012 election failures and shortcomings. The party is investing $10 million on outreach, and Priebus recently held a "listening session" in Cleveland with black community leaders

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