Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday that a new push by the NAACP to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina’s Statehouse won’t be a priority during his final years in office.

Trying to open the way for a compromise on the flag would require “a tremendous amount of political capital,” said Sanford, a two-term Republican, adding he has other priorities. “This administration is not going to be doing that.”

Dennis Courtland Hayes, interim president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Monday at the civil rights group’s national convention that it is planning an upcoming campaign against the flag.

The NAACP and other critics call the Confederate battle flag a symbol of slavery and racism. Advocates say it is an emblem of Southern pride and heritage.

The flag once flew atop the Capitol dome in South Carolina, but a 2000 compromise removed it to fly on Statehouse grounds near the Confederate Soldier Monument, not far from a busy Columbia intersection.

Hayes said the NAACP was undeterred by Sanford’s response.

“I know they don’t want to get into it, but we’re going to get into it,” Hayes said Tuesday. “That flag is not going to continue to fly in the face of our children.”

He said details of the NAACP campaign would be released later.

South Carolina NAACP President Lonnie Randolph said Tuesday that the civil rights group met this weekend with actors and at least one movie studio consultant to discuss plans that would discourage people from making films in the state until the flag is removed.

___

Associated Press Writer Dan Sewell in Cincinnati contributed to this report.