Republican Candidate for State Senate Involved in Racial Attack on Black Man in 2001

 
A GOP state Senate candidate from Nantucket was involved in a racial-slur-laced fight in which he and three other men beat up a black man who took exception to being called a racial epithet in front of his 5-year-old son, according to police. Douglas L. Bennett, a selectmen and county commissioner in Nantucket, is identified in police records as a participant in the beating of William G. Lawrence during a nasty altercation July 4, 2001. “Witnesses said the white males (Jamie McCullough, Samuel King and Douglas Bennett) were punching and kicking Lawrence as he tried to fend them off with (an) angle iron,” according to a Nantucket police report that said a fourth white male later joined in the attack. The report stated the confrontation began when occupants of the pickup truck Bennett was riding in started shouting racial slurs and giving Lawrence the finger in front of his young son, Michael. Bennett, 30, said yesterday he did not shout any racial slurs and that an assault and battery charge filed against him was dismissed eventually. “I tried to break it up and stop it because I didn’t want anybody to get hurt,” Bennett said. “My opponents are getting desperate because they know I’m going to win the election and they’re trying to dig up as much dirt on me as they can.” Bennett is running against Ricardo Barros in the Republican primary and, if successful in that contest, would face Democratic incumbent Robert O’Leary in the general election. Bennett said he fully expects to be victorious. [MORE]