LITTLE ROCK — President Barack Obama should produce his birth certificate if there are questions about whether he was born in the United States, Republican Senate candidate Curtis Coleman said during a radio show this week.
Coleman said that he made the comment on Wednesday in response to a caller on KARN in Little Rock.
But Coleman told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette later that if Obama has already produced a “legitimate” birth certificate, he won’t worry about it.
“I refuse to get distractedby it,” he said.
Some Obama opponents have claimed the president was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and thus is ineligible to be president.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama’s campaign released a copy of a certificate that says he was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu.
The U.S. Supreme Court in December 2008 dismissed a lawsuit filed by a New Jersey man who was seeking to block Obama’s inauguration based on the question of Obama’s birthplace.
The director of Hawaii’s Health Department also made public statements that Obama’s birth certificate was legitimate.
Coleman acknowledged he may have missed the “latest developments” on the birth certificate issue because he’s been focused on the “morecompelling” issue of the national debt.
He “felt obligated,” he said, to answer the question about the birth certificate from the caller to KARN.
“My response was that it’s a matter of essential importance that presidents be completely transparent and open to the public,” Coleman said.
He hasn’t “seen what’s been released” by Obama and regardless is “not qualified to make that judgment” whether the certificate is legitimate, he said, which is up to the courts.
Coleman is one of eight Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 03/27/2010