CHICAGO — Illinois Republicans botched four opportunities to stop an avowed Nazi from representing their party in a Chicago-area congressional district. Now they’re paying the price.
Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier who will appear on the November ballot as the GOP candidate against Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski, has become campaign fodder for Democrats as they seek to defeat Gov. Bruce Rauner. And some Republicans even fear the taint from Jones‘ extremist views poses a threat to the party up and down the ticket.
“First, it’s morally wrong and I think it’s really harmful to the party. The guy’s a complete nutcase. He’s a Nazi,” said conservative GOP state Rep. David McSweeney. “This is an absolute political disaster.”
McSweeney’s comments come just days after the filing deadline passed for qualifying a third-party candidate for the general election — which could have provided a safe harbor for Illinois Republican votes. Prior to that, the party had also failed to recruit a candidate to challenge Jones in the primary election, failed to knock him off the primary ballot and wasn’t able to field a write-in candidate against him in the primary.
Running a third-party candidate against Jones in November was among the options left to Illinois Republicans after Jones clinched the GOP nomination by running unopposed. But the deadline came and went this week and that didn’t happen either.
Jones, who told POLITICO he’s running to counter a “two-party, Jew-party, *****-party system,” laughed when he was informed the GOP was unable to put up a candidate against him.
“They didn’t put up a third-party candidate?” Jones asked when reached by phone Thursday. “That’s great! That’s fantastic!
“I snookered them,” he said of state Republicans. “I played by the rules, what can I say?”
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