Gov. Steve Beshear (D-KY) is heavily favored to win re-election in a vote next Tuesday, with leads of roughly 2-1 in all the publicly released polls. Now his Republican opponent, state Senate President David Williams, is launching an attack against Beshear on a new front: Beshear participated in a Hindu religious ceremony!
This past Friday, Beshear attended a groundbreaking ceremony in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, for a new factory run by FlexFilm, a company based in India that makes materials for packaging, printing, insulation and other purposes. The plant represents a $180 million investment, and is expected to create 250 jobs in Kentucky.
As the local newspaper the News-Enterprise reports, the groundbreaking included a Hindu ceremony, the bhoomi poojan:
For more than an hour, guests observed the traditional Indian blessing through a haze created by burning incense and a ceremonial fire. A handful of participants, including Beshear and Elizabethtown Mayor Tim Walker, sat cross legged and shoeless on cushions while a priest chanted Hindu prayers.
At the end of the ground blessing, participants shoveled the newly blessed earth into a hole in the center of the pit.
And now, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, this has Williams up in arms, with Williams denouncing Beshear during a campaign stop in Shelbyville, Kentucky.
“He’s there participating with Hindu priests, participating in a religious ceremony,” Williams said. “They can say what they want to. He’s sitting down there with his legs crossed, participating in Hindu prayers with a dot on his forehead with incense burning around him. I don’t know what the man was thinking.”
Williams further told reports: “If I’m a Christian, I don’t participate in Jewish prayers. I’m glad they do that. I don’t participate in Hindu prayers. I don’t participate in Muslim prayers. I don’t do that. To get down and get involved and participate in prayers to these polytheistic situations, where you have these Hindu gods that they are praying to, doesn’t appear to me to be in line with what a governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky ought to be doing.”
And Williams wasn’t done yet!
Williams said he was not showing disrespect to Hindus with his comments.
“I think you disrespect other peoples’ religion when you go down there,” he said.
He said he has visited countries that had Hindu ceremonies but declined to participate. “That would be idolatry,” he said.
Williams added that Beshear has said in his campaign ads that he is the son and grandson of Baptist ministers.
“Yet between his not being pro-life and his support for gambling and now getting down and doing Hindu prayers to these Hindu gods, I think his grandfathers wouldn’t be very pleased with Steve Beshear,” Williams said.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.