WASHINGTON – GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain today took offense that Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s family hunting camp used to be called “Niggerhead.”
“My reaction is, that’s just very insensitive,” Cain, who is black and surging in the polls, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The former Godfathers Pizza CEO added that there isn’t “a more vile negative word than the N-word and for him to leave it there as long as he did, before I hear that they finally painted it over is just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country.”
The Perry campaign strongly denied a Washington Post report yesterday that the name of the property – written on a rock at the entrance — didn’t change for years after it became associated with the Perry family.
“Mr. Cain is wrong about the Perry family’s quick action to eliminate the word on the rock, but is right the word written by others long ago is insensitive and offensive,” said Perry Campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan.
“That is why the Perry’s took quick action to cover and obscure it,” he said.
Perry insists that his father painted over the slur when he joined a lease on the land in 1983.
smiller@nypost.com