North Carolina is apparently ground zero of the latest resurgence of the birther movement, as a number of Republican candidates in the state are expressing doubts about President Obama’s birthplace.
ThinkProgress has previously noted that Richard Hudson, running for a congressional seat in the state’s 8th district, said Obama is “hiding something on his citizenship,” while the Charlotte Observer rescinded its endorsement of Jim Pendergraph, running in the 9th district, after he expressed his own doubts about Obama’s birth certificate.
Now, the Observer reports that Dr. John Whitley, one of Hudson’s opponents in tomorrow’s GOP primary, has also gone birther. He declared Obama’s birth certificate a “poorly reproduced forgery” after comparing it to the Hawaiian birth certificate of one of his campaign workers. “There is a tremendous amount of smoke here,” Whitley said. “In fact, it’s called a smoke screen.”
Meanwhile, Ilario Pantano, running the 7th district, also has “real questions” about Obama’s birthplace. “The way I see this is whether he was born on the moon or Nicaragua or Honolulu, the bottom line is he has to be defeated in November,” Pantano said.