Republican U.S. Senate nominee Jim DeMint apologized Wednesday after telling a newspaper editorial board that single, pregnant women should not teach in public schools.

It was not clear — because DeMint refused to comment further — whether that apology also applied to his remark in a televised debate Sunday that gays and lesbians should not be teachers.

“As my wife often reminds me, sometimes my heart disengages from my head, and I say something I shouldn’t — and that’s what happened yesterday,” DeMint said. “I clearly said something as a dad that I just shouldn’t have said. And I apologize.”

When asked to explain DeMint’s statement, campaign manager Terry Sullivan said the Greenville congressman would not elaborate. Repeated attempts to reach DeMint directly in Washington, D.C., were unsuccessful.

“This is, frankly, something we’re trying to put an end to,” Sullivan said.

The nature of the apology and DeMint’s refusal to talk about it make it difficult to tell exactly what the father of four adult children was apologizing for and whether he maintains that either of those groups should be forbidden from teaching.

The result, Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen said, is that DeMint looks awkward.

“The whole thing is bumbled getting into it, and it seems to me it’s bumbled trying to get out of it,” Thigpen said. “I can’t imagine why he didn’t make it clear” to whom he is apologizing.

DeMint met Tuesday with the editorial board of the Aiken Standard newspaper. During that interview, he was asked about his remarks during Sunday’s debate with Democratic nominee Inez Tenenbaum.

Responding to a question about the state GOP’s platform, DeMint said Sunday that gays and lesbians should not teach school because the government should not endorse homosexuality, and “folks teaching in school need to represent our values.”

DeMint told the Aiken newspaper Tuesday: “I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman, who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend, should be hired to teach my third-grade children.”

Tenenbaum, state superintendent of education, has denounced DeMint’s remarks.

“A person who is well-qualified and does their job well should not be discriminated against,” she said Wednesday.

In South Carolina, public school teachers can lose their teaching certificates for many reasons, including “moral turpitude,” although that term is not defined in the law, said Jim Foster, spokesman for the state Department of Education that Tenenbaum runs.

Department attorney Jane Turner said the agency would not normally consider consensual sex between adults to violate that clause. She and Foster also said the department would not work to remove a teacher for being gay or for being a single woman who becomes pregnant.

A spokesman at the U.S. Department of Education said Wednesday a quick search did not yield any federal limitations on who can teach and that such determinations are usually reserved for the states.

Asked who DeMint believes should and should not be allowed to teach children, Sullivan said the question “should be addressed to a school board candidate.”

Though the three-term congressman would like to put this issue behind him, others say he could be intentionally pushing it to the forefront in this tight Senate race.

USC political scientist Brad Gomez said DeMint, a fiscal and social conservative, might be using his comments to energize a portion of the S.C. electorate uncomfortable with gays and pregnant, single women in the classroom.

“My hunch is that this is red meat for the conservative Christian base,” Gomez said.

But he also sees the potential for the strategy to backfire.

“He risks ostracizing moderates and even moderate Republicans who, in the past, have been relatively supportive of Inez Tenenbaum in her bid for superintendent of education.”

National Republicans don’t think DeMint’s statements were very damaging.

An article in Wednesday’s edition of the Capitol Hill political magazine Roll Call said national party operatives were confident of DeMint’s lead and had pulled a $1.3 million ad campaign begun earlier this week.

“Obviously, it’s a vote of confidence on their part about us,” Sullivan said, pointing to three non-campaign polls in the past week that have shown DeMint with a double-digit lead. DeMint’s own polls show the race is closer.

“It’s certainly far from over,” Sullivan said. “We’re not taking anything for granted.”

Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com.