North Carolina Democratic Party chairman Randy Voller said he did not mean to "offend anyone" when he said the Republican Party is "raping" North Carolinia at a party event Thursday.
"The GOP that’s leading us – we don’t know where they’re taking us, but they’re raping us along the way," Voller reportedly said.
The remark was tweeted--then deleted--by an attendee of the women's event in Guilford County, North Carolina.
Voller would not confirm nor deny that he made the remark in an interview with WRAL in North Carolina:
"I think it’s a complete misquote, or a redaction," he said, then added, "I did use the term contextually."
Voller said "raping" has more than one meaning, and his use of it was strictly metaphorical.
"I was discussing what had just happened on the Nightmare on Jones Street," he said. "It’s as if barbarians are pillaging and plundering. I'm talking about the destruction that's going on." [...]
"I was not intending to offend anyone," he said. "I’m sorry if they took it that way. That’s not what the metaphor means."
In another interview, Voller refused to say whether the remark was appropriate or not:
Voller said he made the remark off the cuff, like the rest of his speech, and he declined to comment on whether it was appropriate. I mentioned that, given crime statistics and the likelihood that many rapes go unreported, there was a good chance that a woman in the room last night had herself been raped.
"I don’t know that," he replied. "Women and men are both victims of abusive power and violence. I personally could have been raped."