November 10, 2010
In 2010, a number of extremists ran for office, including white supremacists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. Some of the white supremacists running had hopes of influencing their communities by advocating a racist and anti-Semitic agenda. Most did not think they could actually be elected, but sought the free publicity that comes with being a candidate. Often they did not take the time and expense to get on the ballot, but ran merely as write-in candidates.
Not surprisingly, the candidates who openly advocated a white supremacist agenda lost by huge margins in races around the country. Neo-Nazi candidates Billy Roper, who ran for governor of Arkansas, and Frazier Glenn Miller, who ran for U.S. Senate in Missouri (both as write-in candidates), received just two votes each in their respective races. White supremacist Tom Metzger, who in the 1980s received considerable notoriety for running for office, received only 9 votes as a write-in candidate in his bid for U.S. Congress in Indiana.
A few white supremacists made more active attempts at winning election. These included two neo-Nazis candidates who ran for local offices in California. Jeff Hall, a leader in the National Socialist Movement who hoped to get elected to a seat on the Western Riverside Municipal Water District, received almost 28% of the vote (6,738 votes). Daniel Schruender, a member of an Aryan Nations faction, received almost 10% of the vote (1,807 votes) in his run for a seat on the Rialto, California, school board.
Two Ohio candidates, James Condit, Jr., and James Traficant, who have both expressed anti-Semitic views, lost in their bids to represent their districts in Congress. Condit received only 1.69% of the vote, whereas Traficant, a disgraced former Congressman who was sent to prison for seven years on various charges during his last stint in Congress, received 16.05% of the vote.
Jim Russell, who ran as a Republican Congressional candidate in New York, won 38% of the vote despite revelations that he had spoken at a white supremacist conference and was on the editorial advisory board of a racist journal.
Jim Rizoli, a Massachusetts Holocaust denier and anti-immigrant activist who ran for state representative in Framingham, picked up just 9% of the vote (1,219 votes).
More information on the candidates follows:
ARKANSAS
Billy Roper, the chairman of the neo-Nazi group White Revolution (it only has a handful of members at best), ran for governor of Arkansas as a write-in candidate. Roper received only two votes.
Roper tried to present himself as a Tea Party candidate and, in fact, claimed to recruit at numerous Tea Party events.
In the past, White Revolution has coordinated rallies and protests--often in conjunction with other groups--that attracted a wide array of racist participants, ranging from young racist skinheads to Christian identity adherents to neo-Nazis and Klansmen. In the early 2000s, Roper was an organizer for the National Alliance, which at that time was the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States. Roper was eventually kicked out of the National Alliance and founded White Revolution in 2002. Overall, White Revolution has been mostly inactive in recent years; Roper has no particular following.
CALIFORNIA
Jeff Hall, the Southwest states regional director of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) and head of its California chapter, ran for a seat on the board of the Western Riverside Municipal Water District. Hall managed to garner 27.79% of the vote (6,738 votes). The NSM is the largest neo-Nazi group in the country, though it only has a few hundred members. The day after the election, the NSM gloated on its Web site about the percentage of votes that Hall won.
Daniel Schruender, who is a member of the neo-Nazi American National Socialist Party (formerly a faction of Aryan Nations until a recent factional split and name change) came in last of a group of six people who ran for a seat on the Rialto school board. He received 9.64% of the vote (1,807 votes).
INDIANA
Tom Metzger ran as a write-in candidate for U.S. Congress in Indiana's 3rd District. He received only 9 votes, a far cry from the 75,000-plus votes he received when he ran for U.S. Senate in California in 1982 and the 35,000-plus votes he received when he ran for U.S. Congress in California in 1980 (Metzger was a pioneer in the extremist tactic of winning Democratic or Republican party nominations by running in primaries for "safe seat" elections in which no reputable candidates emerge to seek the nomination because their chances of unseating the incumbent would be nill).
Metzger, a Warsaw, Indiana-based racist and anti-Semite, has been a leader in the white supremacist movement for more than 30 years. He pushes a fierce brand of anti-Semitic, racist and anti-immigrant invective and has been widely acknowledged as the principal mentor of the neo-Nazi skinhead movement in America from the mid-1980s through the 1990s.
Metzger has affiliated himself with a number of extremist groups throughout his career, including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and the Christian Identity movement. For a while he headed the now-defunct white supremacist organization White Aryan Resistance (WAR). Metzger is now active primarily on the Internet, where he runs a Web site and online newspaper called The Insurgent, sells extremist paraphernalia, and broadcasts radio segments.
MASSACHUSETTS
Jim Rizoli a Holocaust denier and an anti-immigrant activist, lost his bid to become the state representative in the 6th Middlesex District in Framingham, Massachusetts. He received 1,219 votes or about 9% of the vote.
Although Jim Rizoli denies charges of anti-Semitism by claiming that he is merely "anti-Zionist," his Holocaust denial activities and references to a "Zionist controlled government" reveal his anti-Semitism.
During an October 2009 segment of his public access television show in Framingham, Rizoli delivered a lengthy diatribe promoting Holocaust denial. He defended Holocaust denier and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, instructed viewers to conduct their own research on the Holocaust to discover the alleged "truth," and directed people to visit Web sites that advance Holocaust denial. Jim Rizoli's public access cable show, which he did with his twin brother Joe, was taken off the air in June 2010 after the cable station cited the Rizolis for 26 policy violations.
MISSOURI
Frazier Glenn Miller ran for the United States Senate in Missouri on a blatantly anti-Semitic platform. Miller received only two votes in the election.
Miller is a former marine and longtime white supremacist who, according to his Web site, has spent "43 years actively working for rights for white people." Miller promotes virulently anti-Semitic views and claims that Jews are in control of the American government and manipulate public opinion by using the media to spread propaganda.
On his Web site, Miller specifically outlined what he would do if he were elected to office. His number one political goal was "to secure the existence of my people and a future for White children." Miller's tirades targeted Jews more than any group. He praised white supremacist and anti-Semite David Duke and linked to two neo-Nazi outfits—the National Alliance and Vanguard News Network--on his Web site. His Web site also featured an anti-Semitic screed, "Who Rules America?", originally written by the late neo-Nazi leader William Pierce. He ran anti-Semitic and racist radio ads during his campaign.
NEW YORK
James C. Russell, also known as Jim Russell, ran as the Republican and Conservative candidate in the 18th Congressional District in New York. Russell won 38% of the vote (46,547 votes).
Despite his denial that he is racist or anti-Semitic, Russell has voiced white supremacist and anti-Semitic views in print and was a speaker at the 2002 conference held by American Renaissance, a white supremacist journal. He was also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of The Occidental Quarterly, a racist journal, up through the Summer 2009 issue.
OHIO
James "Jim" Condit, Jr., ran for U.S. Congress in Ohio's 8th district as a candidate from the Constitution Party, a right-wing extremist fringe political party. He received only 1.69% of the vote (6,738 votes).
Jim Condit has attempted Congressional runs many times before, including in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008. In 2005, Condit broadcast ads that linked the 9/11 attacks to Israel. He is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist who alleges Jewish manipulation of major American institutions and historical events. He often blames the Jews for major world problems.
James Traficant ran for U.S. Congress in Ohio's 17th district as an Independent. He won 16.05% of the vote (29,969 votes). Traficant, a former Congressman from Youngstown, was convicted in 2002 on various federal charges, including bribery, fraud, racketeering and tax evasion, and spent seven years in prison.
Traficant, who is known for his long-time support of former Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, has made a number of anti-Semitic statements. In a 2009 interview in the conspiracy-oriented, anti-Semitic newspaper American Free Press (AFP), he alleged that "the Israeli lobby has a stranglehold on the United States" and "over government," and that the United States is under a resultant threat of implosion. In 2002, he insisted that Jews not be included in the pool of jurors for his trial that year. Since his release from prison, Traficant has been writing a regular column for the AFP.
WEST VIRGINIA
Harry Bertram, a long-time white supremacist, who had ties to the American Third Position (A3P), a white supremacist political party formed in early 2010, won 14.09% of the vote (2,582 votes) in his bid to gain a seat on the Board of Education in Monongalia County, West Virginia. He came in last out of the three candidates running. Bertram has run for office as a state representative in West Virginia twice in previous years.
Bertram ran for the Board of Education this year on an open white supremacist, A3P platform and urged "a return to Eurocentric traditional teaching methods and curricula," according to the A3P. During the weekend before the November 2 election, A3P volunteers claimed to go door to door in Monongalia County to encourage people to vote for Bertram.
In a March 2010 interview on the "The Jamie Kelso Show," a white supremacist Internet radio show, Bertram said that he had been a member of two racist, anti-Semitic parties that were active in earlier decades, the National States Rights Party and the Populist Party. Bertram also claims that he has given away free copies of The Nationalist Times, a white supremacist publication published by A3P leader Don Wassall, to people in his community since 1985.