Duke May Run as Independent to Defy GOP

NEW ORLEANS — David Duke indicated Thursday that he will run for President as an independent next fall if the Republican Party continues its efforts to keep him off state primary ballots.

“I want to be treated respectfully by the party,” Duke, the onetime klansman and Nazi sympathizer, said during an interview at his office in suburban Metairie. “They’ve been knocking me around for quite a while, and I’m not going to sit back and take it. I have political options, and I’m prepared to exercise them. If they keep me off the ballot in states, they might expect a third-party challenge in those states.”

Florida, Georgia and Wisconsin have kept him off their ballots. His final status in those states and several others is to be decided in court. But he qualified for Louisiana’s primary Thursday.

Duke is not running in New Hampshire, leaving the insurgent movement there to conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, whom he praised Thursday as “a good man with good principles.”