Extremist candidates appear on ballots around U.S.

Jones and his wife are founding (and possibly sole) members of the neo-Nazi America First Committee, which operates under the Nationalist Front umbrella. He often attends events organized by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM), including the April 2017 rally in Pikeville, Kentucky.

Jones has run for office, always unsuccessfully, since the 1970s.

While few believe Jones has any chance of winning the 3rd, where voters have elected a Democrat in 24 of the last 25 Congressional races, as a major-party candidate for a statewide seat, Jones will have a significant platform for his hateful views. The candidate’s website pairs “America First” language with outright Holocaust denial, including a “Holocaust Racket” diatribe that blames “Organized World Jewry” for perpetrating “the biggest, blackest lie in history.”

Responding to Jones’s candidacy, Tim Schneider, chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, issued the following statement: “The Illinois Republican Party and our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones. We strongly oppose his racist views and his candidacy for any public office, including the 3rd Congressional District.” State party officials are attempting to identify an alternative write-in candidate.

John Fitzgerald, Republican (U.S. House of Representatives, California-11): Anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist John Fitzgerald won enough votes in the state’s June primary to advance to the general election. CA-11, which encompasses a swath of the East Bay, has elected a Democrat to its House seat in the last three elections. Fitzgerald, a small business owner and perennial (unsuccessful) candidate for this seat, is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who often “questions” facts about the Holocaust and defends Holocaust deniers.

Staunchly anti-Israel, Fitzgerald also makes frequent (false) references to Jewish Americans having “dual citizenship” with Israel, which is a common anti-Semitic trope. He promulgates some of the most common right-wing conspiracy theories about chem trails, the Federal Reserve, FEMA internment camps for U.S. citizens, vaccines and GMOs, and believes that Planned Parenthood is working in concert with the United Nations to “sexualize” the nation’s public-school children.

In July, a robocall targeting East Bay voters urged them to, “End the Jewish takeover of America and restore our democracy by voting John Fitzgerald for U.S. Congress,” adding, “….Your vote for John Fitzgerald means no more U.S. wars for Israel based on their lies, like the Jewish conducted attack on 9/11. Your vote for John Fitzgerald means no more sacrificing the lives and limbs of our children for Israel. Your vote for John Fitzgerald means no more killing for Israel…”

The robocall, sponsored by right wing extremist website Road to Power, prompted a quick response from Fitzgerald, who issued a statement denouncing the message, and emphatically stating that he did not authorize or approve the call. Road to Power issued a similar call earlier this year in support of anti-Semite Patrick Little’s failed candidacy for Dianne Feinstein’s U.S. Senate seat.

Paul Nehlen, Republican (U.S. House of Representatives, Wisconsin-1): Nehlen, who hopes to replace outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, spent much of the past year broadcasting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and unapologetically racist views from his official Twitter account and on white supremacist podcasts. His Twitter account has been suspended and re-upped several times.

Nehlen, a businessman with no political experience, continues to post overtly anti-Semitic, racist and anti-immigrant messages, many of which have been promoted widely by accounts linked to alt righters and other white supremacists, including Richard Spencer and David Duke.

Corey Stewart, Republican (U.S. Senate, Virginia): The GOP candidate for U.S. Senate referred to Paul Nehlen as one of his “personal heroes” at a political event in February 2017. In a video obtained by CNN, Stewart praised Nehlen again in November 2017, after Nehlen had made his anti-Semitic, white supremacist positions public. In the exchange, Stewart expresses support for Nehlen’s candidacy and refers to him as a “real conservative.”

Stewart, who is running for Democrat Tim Kaine’s seat after an unsuccessful 2017 bid for governor, was an outspoken supporter of the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and has appeared publicly several times with its local organizer, Jason Kessler. A recent Stewart campaign email praised “volunteer of the week” Ian MacDonald, whose Facebook page includes memes of American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell.

Harry V. Bertram, American Freedom Union Party (West Virginia State House of Representatives, District 51): Bertram, a white supremacist, is a perennial candidate in West Virginia; he ran unsuccessfully in 2011, 2012 and 2014 for various state positions.

Rick Tyler, Independent (Governor of Tennessee and U.S. House of Representatives, Tennessee-3): White supremacist Rick Tyler is running simultaneously for Congress and to be the next Governor of Tennessee. Tyler, who lives in Polk County, helped plan the June 2018 Nationalist Solutions conference, which attracted high profile white supremacists including David Duke, Kevin MacDonald and many others.

Seth Grossman, Republican (U.S. House of Representatives, New Jersey-2): Grossman has praised racist opinion pieces that appeared on white supremacist websites, including American Renaissance and VDare. According to CNN, Grossman has said “diversity leads to Muslims killing Christians,” and “Kwanzaa is a fake holiday made by black racists to divide America.” He has also written (on Facebook) that faithful Muslims cannot be good Americans; Islam is a cancer; and gay men with HIV should have been quarantined in the 1980s. While the National Republican Congressional Committee has condemned Grossman and asked him to abandon his candidacy, a local GOP Chairman refuses to do the same. “You can say many things about Seth Grossman, but the man doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,” Atlantic County Republican Chairman Keith Davis said in a statement.

Russell Walker, Republican (North Carolina State House of Representatives, District 48): On Walker’s campaign website, the white supremacist candidate opines on the “superiority” of white people and declares there is “no such thing as equality.” Walker has used a racial slur in reference to Martin Luther King, Jr., and stated that Jews are descendants of Satan. State and local GOP officials have repeatedly denounced Walker’s candidacy.

Earlier in 2018
In California, outspoken anti-Semite and Republican Patrick Little hoped to challenge Democrat Dianne Feinstein for her U.S. Senate seat, but won just 1.4 percent of the vote (or about 61,000 votes) in the state’s 5 June party-blind primary. The day after the primary, Little took to social media to demand a recount, claiming that he’d come in first or second, but that votes were being suppressed by “Jewish supremacists and Zionists.”

Little, who attended the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and told Newsweek he “admires” Adolf Hitler, has been publicly denounced by the California Republican Party. 

Little’s Gab (social media) account is littered with anti-Semitic comments, including his oft-repeated pledge to help create a government “free from Jews.”

Outspoken white nationalist Sean Donahue was hoping to replace U.S. Representative Lou Barletta, but he doesn’t appear to have gotten enough signatures to make it onto the ballot, and isn’t currently listed as a candidate for the recently-redrawn Pennsylvania’s recently redrawn 11th congressional district. Donahue, who was running as a Republican, told a reporter from The Nation, “The United States was intended to be white…. I don’t see why we had to have the Fair Housing Act.” He previously ran for office as a member of the white supremacist American Freedom Party.

In a local Tennessee race, Keith Alexander, who served on the board of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) and has co-hosted the right-wing extremist radio show “The Political Cesspool,” was on the ballot 1 May as the Republican candidate for Shelby County Assessor. (Alexander lost the primary, earning 38 percent of the vote). A member of the local GOP denounced Alexander, who told the Commercial Appeal newspaper, “I don’t believe in racism or white nationalism or any of those things. OK? …The idea of having any racially homogeneous nation, that ship has sailed.” 

Alexander claims he’s no longer associated with the CCC, which he characterized as “probably too extreme,” or with his former “Cesspool” co-host, the well-known white supremacist and anti-Semite James Edwards. Alexander last co-hosted the show on 30 December 2017, according to the Commercial Appeal.

In June, white supremacist activist and Identity Evropa member James Orien Allsup went unchallenged in his campaign to become a Whitman County (Washington) Republican Precinct Committee Officer. The local GOP immediately denounced Allsup and members are reportedly examining their bylaws for a way to remove him from the position. 

Allsup is best known for his far-right podcasts and as the former president of the College Republican chapter at Washington State University. In March 2018, Allsup spoke at Identity Evropa’s national conference in Tennessee. In 2017, he participated in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Maria Estrada
Maria Estrada, Democrat running for a seat on the California State Assembly (63rd District), has attacked Zionism and Israel in a manner that raises concerns about anti-Semitism, and has expressed troubling support for notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

The ADL says that it is impossible to ignore the undercurrent of anti-Semitism running through a number of Estrada’s comments about Zionism and Israel. Although criticism of Israel is entirely legitimate and is not inherently anti-Semitic, Estrada consistently ignores the difference between Israelis and Jews, and has argued that Israeli policies and Zionism more generally are inspired by a sense of Jewish supremacism and disregard for others. For example, on 8 December 2017, in reaction to Israeli actions in Gaza, Estrada wrote, “These are God’s ‘chosen people,’” referring (presumably ironically) to a biblical term for Jews. She continued, “Zionism, like any other religious fanaticism is wrong [sic].” This type of anti-Zionist rhetoric has been used by many anti-Semites as an attack on the Jewish religion as a whole.

In another post captured and archived by an activist group, she went even further, writing, “Anyone who believes they are one of ‘God’s chosen people’ automatically feels superior and justified and all they do [sic]. Religious fanaticism is used to justify apartheid and crimes against Palestinians and no one should be ok with it.”

On 14 May 2018, after calling on her “Jewish friends” to denounce “the terrorism being inflicted on the Palestinian people in the name of Zionism,” she wrote, “Zionists are the f—-ing worst.” In November 2017 she wrote that “Zionists in America should have to immediately give up their land to whatever tribe it originally belonged to.”

“Estrada’s repeated insinuations that support for Israel is a form of religious chauvinism is offensive and demeaning to the large number of American Jews for whom some form of Zionism is part of their cultural identity,” the ADL says.

Estrada has also posted social media comments allegedly expressing admiration for well-known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. While those comments are no longer available publicly, Estrada has confirmed in the media that she made them, including a post stating that she “enjoys listening to Farrakhan’s sermons.” She prevaricated on the issue of Farrakhan and anti-Semitism, writing that “listening to Farrakhan doesn’t equate to being anti-Semitic. There is no doubt he is wrong on many issues, including Judaism. Listen to him speak on the American media, imperialism and several other issues.” This denial rings hollow, given that Farrakhan routinely alleges that Jews control the American media and foreign policy.