Cain: Gov. Perry’s hunting camp sign ‘just plain insensitive’

GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain said Sunday that the one-time name of a hunting camp leased by Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-Texas) family is “just plain insensitive.”

“My reaction is, that's just very insensitive,” Cain said on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. “[There is not] 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 Washington Post reported Sunday that Perry hosted friends and other lawmakers at a Texas hunting camp that was at one point known by a name containing an offensive racial epithet. The slur, "N-----head," was painted on a rock on the property.

Perry’s campaign insisted Sunday that the presidential candidate’s father painted over the rock in the early 1980s.

"A number of claims made in the story are incorrect, inconsistent, and anonymous, including the implication that Rick Perry brought groups to the lease when the word on the rock was still visible,” said a statement from communications director Ray Sullivan. “The one consistent fact in the story is that the word on a rock was painted over and obscured many years ago."

The campaign said: "Perry's father painted over offensive language on a rock soon after leasing the 1,000-acre parcel in the early 1980s." The Post, however, quotes several people who say the offensive slur remained on the rock during the 1980s and 1990s, when Perry launched his political career in Texas.

—This story was first posted at 9:35 a.m.

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