> A California Republican party official who sent out an e-mail of President
> Obama's face super-imposed onto a chimp says she's sorry, but insists she
> wasn't trying to be racist.

> Marilyn Davenport, an elected member of the Orange County Republican
> central committee, sent the e-mail on Friday. The "family photo" features
> the commander-in-chief as a baby chimpanzee with two chimp parents.

> Along with the offensive image was the tagline "Now you know why -- No
> birth certificate."

> The supposed gag refers to the belief by so-called "birthers," who insist
> - even after the White House released a digitally scanned image of his
> Hawaii birth certificate in 2008 - that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and
> is ineligible to be president.

> Davenport admitted to passing it around to her "friends and
> acquaintances," reported the Orange County Weekly.

> The Tea Party activist then offered up a half-hearted apology.

> "I'm sorry if my email offended anyone," she wrote, according to the OC
> Weekly. "I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and
> all the questions surrounding his origin of birth."

> Davenport wrote she hadn't considered that Obama is "half black."

> "In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people
> tried to make this about race," she wrote.

> The GOP committeewoman then blamed the "media" for trying to make a big
> deal out of the racist e-mail, insisting that the "average person knows
> and agrees is much ado about nothing."

> Davenport has since sought to hunt down the "cowardly" person who leaked
> the e-mail, said Republican Party of Orange County chairman Scott Baugh,
> who was one of the original people who received the "highly inappropriate"
> Obama e-mail.

> "It's a despicable message, it drips with racism and I think she should
> step down from the committee," he said.

> Davenport, however, has already refused to quit.

> "I will NOT resign my central committee position over this matter," she
> wrote to the OC Weekly.

> "I have never seen anything like this before from an elected official,"
> Michael Schroeder, former chairman of the California GOP Party, told CBS 2
> News in Los Angeles. "It's stunning."

> He noted that in 2009 the former Republican mayor of Los Alamitos, Dean
> Grose, e-mailed a photo showing a watermelon patch in front of the White
> House last year, Davenport defended him. She also backed former Newport
> Beach City Councilman Dick Nichols for making an offensive remark about
> Mexicans.

> "She has managed to top both of those incidents by comparing African
> Americans to monkeys," Schroeder told the OC Weekly on Saturday. "She has
> disgraced herself and needs to resign."

> In March 2010, Tennessee Hospitality Association CEO Walt Baker was fired
> after forwarding a joke via e-mail equating First Lady Michelle Obama to
> Cheeta, Tarzan's chimpanzee sidekick.