Why should mainstream political analysts have all the fun of covering wacky candidates. I promise not to analyze South Carolina Democratic Senate Candidate Alvin Greene who said he wanted to have his image made into action figures and ran despite a felony obscenity indictment, no job and no endorsement from his own party. And of course Delaware Republican "I'm not a witch" Christine O'Donnell who showed that in politics, the bar for labeling oneself a constitutional expert doesn't necessarily require great knowledge about those pesky amendments. In fairness, Delaware, the first state, joined the union in 1787, four full years before the small print of the Bill of Rights was snuck in on us!
No, I will concentrate on the losses endured by separatists, neo-Nazis, and segregationists.
In Arkansas, Russellville's own Billy Roper lost a hard fought race for governor of the Razorback state as a write-in candidate. After the 9/11 attacks Roper wrote, 'the enemy of our enemy is, for now at least, our friends...We may not want them marrying our daughters...but anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is alright by me. I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude..." After being on the losing end of a power struggle within the neo-Nazi National Alliance eight years ago, he founded his own group White Revolution. He has tried to affiliate with a Tea Party splinter.
Former Californian Tom Metzger lost his race to represent Indiana's 3rd congressional district despite being an Islamophobe! White guys just can't seem to get a break irrespective of which side of the religious divide they are on. The Congressional candidate, White Aryan Resistance founder, and former KKK Grand Dragon is no stranger to politics. In 1980 Metzger garnered 46, 361 votes or 13.4% of the vote running as a Democrat against San Diego Republican incumbent Congressman Clair Burgner. He got 76,000 votes or 2.8% of the vote in the Democratic primary race for a U.S. Senate seat two years later. Metzger and his organization were devastated in the 1990s after a Southern Poverty Law Center civil suit found him civilly liable for millions of dollars for his role encouraging Portland skinheads to attack blacks. Those skinheads murdered an Ethiopian immigrant with baseball bats leaving his young son orphaned.
In Westchester, New York's 18th Congressional District, Republican Jim Russell ran despite losing the endorsement of his party over his segregationist writings, interesting opinions about Jews and his publishing in racist journals. He got 38% of the vote against victor Nita Lowy. Here are some of his insights:
It has been demonstrated that finches raised by foster parents of a different species of finch will later exhibit a lifelong sexual attraction toward the alien species. One wonders how a child's sexual imprinting mechanism is affected by forcible racial integration and near continual exposure to media stimuli promoting interracial contact. The most serious implication of human sexual imprinting for our genetic future is that it would establish the destructiveness of school integration, especially in the middle and high-school years. One can only wonder to what degree the advocates of school integration, such as former NAACP attorney Jack Greenberg, were conscious of this scientific concept. It also compounds the culpability of media moguls who deliberately popularize miscegenation in films directed toward adolescents and pre-adolescents. In the midst of this onslaught against our youth, parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.
In Riverside, California neo-Nazi Jeff Hall lost his bid to join the water board, but he did garner 27.5% or almost 6,000 votes in the process. The director of the National Socialist Movement's California chapter fared better than another local candidate in the Inland Empire. Dan Schruender, former director, of the states Aryan Nations chapter came in last in a field of 6 with 1,355 or 10.2% of the vote in his bid for a seat on the Rialto school board. While I am heartened that solidly intolerant candidates went down in defeat, I never cease to be amazed that they make a showing at all. Democracy is indeed, hard work!