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Sen. Cruz Urges Illinois to Vote Against Nazi Running for Congress

[additional-authors]
June 29, 2018
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

An unabashed Nazi is running for Congress in Illinois as the Republican candidate – and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is urging Republicans in the district to vote against the Nazi candidate.

Arthur Jones, according to The New York Times, believes that the Holocaust was “a greatly overblown nonevent” and that it’s an “international extortion event.” He has told Politico that he’s hoping to defeat the “two-party, Jew-party, queer-party system.” He used to be a member of the American Nazi Party.

Despite all that, he won the Republican primary because the state party couldn’t find another candidate to run against him. The state party also couldn’t find a third-party candidate to run against Jones, prompting him to gloat to Politico, “I snookered them [the state GOP]!”

Now Cruz is calling on his fellow Republicans to take a stand against Jones.

“This is horrific. An avowed Nazi running for Congress,” Cruz tweeted. “To the good people of Illinois, you have two reasonable choices: write in another candidate, or vote for the Democrat. This bigoted fool should receive ZERO votes.”

The Illinois GOP has roundly condemned Jones’ views.

“Arthur Jones is not a real Republican — he is a Nazi whose disgusting, bigoted views have no place in our nation’s discourse,” Illinois Republican Party chairman Tim Schneider said in a March statement.

Illinois Republican Party spokesman Aaron DeGroot told Politico that the party will find a write-in candidate as an alternative to Jones.

Despite the state GOP’s repeated disavowal of Jones, Politico has detailed how some in the party are concerned that Jones will be an albatross weighing down state GOP candidates across the board in November.

The state party has had trouble finding someone to run against Jones because the district is expected to be a shoe-in for the Democrats. A third-party candidate would have required 14,600 signatures just to be on the ballot in November.

The Politico report also notes that Schneider has been criticized for not claiming that Jones’ signature petitions were invalid, which both parties in Illinois have done in the past to stamp out reprehensible candidates. The state GOP has claimed that they “couldn’t find a legal reason to challenge” Jones’ petition signatures.

Jones himself has refused to file documents with the Federal Elections Commission, telling Politico, “I’m not going to give the Jews an opportunity to harass my supporters until after the election.”

Jones is not the only candidate with Nazi views to receive national attention. Patrick Little ran for Senate in California on the platform to “free [America] from Jews.” Little lost, as the general election is between incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and California State Sen. Kevin de León (D).

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