Burns Running Strong, Even With Foot-in-Mouth

So far this campaign, Republican Senator Conrad Burns of Montana has been able to get away with saying almost anything. Once on everyone's endangered-incumbent list, partly because of his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Burns is running even against a strong challenger, Jon Tester, president of the Montana Senate and a family farmer. A race Democrats were counting on to tip the balance in the U.S. Senate now is a toss- up.

Burns, 71, running for a fourth term, makes foot-in-mouth folks like Earl Butz and Trent Lott look like diplomats. Already notorious for calling Arabs ``ragheads,'' using the N-word in a meeting with editors at a Montana newspaper and holding a mock ``slave'' auction, Burns has kept up the pace this campaign, making numerous joking references to immigrants, among others.

In the middle of a debate, he recounted having called a contractor fixing the roof on his house in Virginia after having seen a news piece about an illegal roofer getting caught at the Mexican border. ``You better go out and get your help,'' Burns warned, ``or you won't get my house roofed.''

He often refers to ``the little Guatemalan man'' who may or may not be legal, who looks after his house. At an event with the First Lady, he took a detour from a discussion of national security to note that America is full of terrorists who ``drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.''

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