McCain Links Hayworth to 'Extreme Groups'

Sen. John McCain's campaign is calling on his primary challenger to disavow the backing of an anti-illegal immigration group that the campaign says permits the use of derisive epithets sometimes used for immigrants on its Web site.

But the North Carolina-based Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) tells POLITICO those phrases have only appeared in a discussion board on their site and said no member of their group has ever used the offensive terms.

ALIPAC organizer William Gheen said the group did not delete the term "Operation Wetback" from postings because it referred to President Dwight Eisenhower's historical effort to remove a million illegal immigrants from the country in the 1950s.

"The term wetback appears on our website as well as 90,300 other sites, according to Google," Gheen said. "The moderator didn't remove it because it wasn't used as a pejorative racial slur. Our moderators do their best to remove any racially insensitive comment but the website is clearly marked as an open-source comment section."