Slate reported Thursday on the execrable new ad released by Republican West Virginia Senate candidate Don Blankenship, a former mining executive who recently served a prison sentence for conspiring to violate safety standards at a mine where 29 people were killed in a 2010 explosion. The ad attacks Senate majority leader and “Establishment” boogeyman Mitch McConnell, whose wife Elaine Chao was born in Taiwan, for having a “China family [sic]” that has bribed him into creating jobs for “China people” [sic] rather than Americans.

What Slate has not yet reported is how Blankenship responded when a reporter from Roll Call asked him why he’d done such a racist ad:

We’re confused on our staff as to how it can be racist when there’s no mention of race. There’s no race. Races are Negro, white Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian. There’s no mention of a race. I’ve never used a race word.

Not mentioning the four races or any of the major “race words”? Someone give this guy a trophy!

Blankenship is running third in the polls ahead of next Tuesday’s Republican primary.