Sunday, May 19, 2013
Scott D’Amboise, one of two Tea Party-aligned conservative Republican challenging Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, in next year’s Senate primary, says he “doesn’t believe” that President Obama is a Christian, according to the web site FrumForum.
(Updated as of 1 p.m.: D’Amboise campaign aide Tyler Harber asserts that the web site misquoted D’Amboise. See below for more of what Harber said.)
D’Amboise, a Lisbon Falls health care technician and small business owner, said in an interview Wednesday with the web site FrumForum, whose editor is conservative writer David Frum who in recent years has challenged GOP orthodoxy, that Obama “exercises a lot of Muslim faith.”
Obama, of course, has repeatedly affirmed that he is a Christian.
FrumForum quoted D’Amboise as saying: “The president, he says he is Christian but yet he’s exercises a lot of Muslim faith too. Me personally, I’m a Christian conservative. I don’t hold any malice to anybody, whether they are Muslim, or Jewish, or Catholic, or anything else. I just believe that he needs to come forward with his views a little bit clearer.”
FrumForum said that when D’Amboise was asked in the interview whether he believed that Obama was secretly a Muslim, D’Amboise responded: “I don’t know if he is or isn’t, but I don’t believe he’s a Christian.”
(Updated as of 1 p.m.: Tyler Harber, a D’Amboise campaign aide, called the article by FrumForum “an example of irresponsible journalism” and asserted that D’Amboise was misquoted and that the story posted on the web site was “wholly inaccurate.”
Harber said that, “When asked about Obama's faith, D'Amboise said that it didn't matter whether Obama was Christian or Muslim and that it was not up to him to decide or define the President's spiritual or religious relationship.”
Harber added that, “The bottom-line, Mr. D'Amboise was mis-quoted and does not believe that Obama's religiosity is of any concern.”
Harber's statement, however, does not seem to directly address the issue, however, of whether D'Amboise believes Obama is a Christian.)
The interview also touched on issues such as immigration and the support D'Amboise receives from the hard-line immigration group the Minuteman PAC and the disproved allegation that Obama was not born in the United States.
Also saying he will run against Snowe in the GOP Senate primary is Andrew Ian Dodge, a free-lance writer from Harpswell.
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Kevin Miller is Washington bureau chief for the Portland Press Herald and MaineToday Media. He has worked as a journalist in Maine for 6 ½ years, covering the environment, politics and the State House. Before arriving in Maine, he wrote about politics, government and education for newspapers in Virginia and Maryland.
Kevin can be reached at 317-6256 or kmiller@mainetoday.com
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