Rep. Hayes’ statement starts at 00:40

It’s hard to say what could be worse for a GOP pol two weeks before an election in a tight race — saying liberals (ie., roughly half his suburban consituency)”hate real Americans,” or the fact that he denied saying it, only to find out there’s audio of him uttering the exact phrase.

But that is exactly what happened to Rep. Robin Hayes over the weekend. At a rally for John McCain in Concord, N.C., Hayes included this vile smear in his introduction of the GOP candidate:

“Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God. That’s a great comparison.”

Ironically, just a few seconds before he declared that liberal U.S. citizens are not “real” Americans, Hayes stressed the importance of civility and of taking care with one’s words:

Before Hayes’ comment, he had told the crowd, presumably as part of his effort to keep the audience respectful, that he wanted to “make sure we don’t say something stupid, make sure we don’t say something we don’t mean.”

Later, when national news outlets, including the New York Observer, reported Hayes’ smear about liberals, his spokeswoman denied he made the remark, perhaps hoping no one had noticed because only 7,000 people had turned out to hear McCain speak:

Hayes spokeswoman, Amanda Little says that Hayes absolutely denies making the comments that appear in the [New York] Observer article. She noted that other national reporters were at the event and didn’t pick up on what the Observer reported.

In fact, a reporter from WFAE, the Charlotte NPR outlet, had tape-recorded Hayes’ remarks. Upon learning about the hard evidence of his smear, Hayes, who is 63, said he couldn’t recall making the remark:

“I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way.”

Hayes is in a tight re-match with Democrat Larry Kissell, who came within 329 votes of defeating him in 2006. RealClearPolitics shows the contest as a toss-up. While it may be too soon for Kissell to start measuring the drapes in Hayes’ congressional office, he has a lot of financial support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and this gaffe will be useful in the campaign to unseat Hayes.

There’s also a bit of George Bush-style absurdity here that is likely to damage Hayes credibility inside his district. In the recording, Hayes is heard using the phrase “get ‘er done,” which is a catch phrase among self-described redneck comedians:

Sarah Palin. She’s a lady who can get ‘er done. She’s been in Alaska. She got ‘er did. Folks there’s a real America. Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God. That’s a great comparison.

Hayes’ use of this phrasing, and especially his imitation of a commoner, reads as what it is: an attempt to pander to the NASCAR dads and their families in the crowd that day. It rings false, however, because, like Bush, Hayes is the scion of a family that accumulated great wealth in the 19th and 20th centuries. While Bush’s family made their money in munitions, Hayes’ ancestors were the founders, along with R.J. Reynolds, the Dukes and the founders of Hanes Mills, of one of North Carolina’s earliest industrial fortunes, Cannon Mills.

The company was founded in Concord by Hayes’ great-grandfather, James W. Cannon, in 1887, and was led throughout most of the 20th century by his grandfather, Charles W. Cannon. The mills were the principal employer in the area for decades. The Cannons owned outright the town of Kannapolis, where the main plant — once the largest textile plant in the world, or so legend has it — and corporate offices were located. The Cannon heirs in Hayes’ generation sold the company, and the town of Kannapolis, to California financier David Murdoch, in 1982.

Hayes attended Duke University, and is married to another blueblood, Barbara Coltrane, whose family founded a regional telecom company in 1897 that recently sold for $585 million.