Constituents applauded Republican Rep. Steve King on Saturday at the Iowa congressman's first public event since being rebuked by his House colleagues over racist comments he had made to a newspaper earlier this month.

King told the roughly 75 people who showed up for the first of 39 planned town hall meetings in his sprawling district that he doesn't adhere to a white supremacist ideology and he repeated his assertion that he's not racist.

Although King's recent comments drew a relatively large media contingent to Saturday's meeting, none of the constituents who were on hand said anything critical about the controversy and a couple expressed their support, telling King they think he's doing a great job. In the few instances in which King's history of insensitive comments and his most recent statements arose, the audience seemed supportive, and they stood twice during the gathering to applaud him.