There He Goes Again: Iowa's Steve King Endorses Canadian Neo-Nazi
SIOUX CITY, IA — Republican Steve King, a longtime Iowa congressman who faces his toughest re-election challenge yet in the 2018 midterm elections on Nov. 6, has endorsed a neo-Nazi sympathizer in the upcoming mayoral election in Toronto, Canada.
Faith Goldy, a Canadian political commentator, has been described as a far right white nationalist. She was at the center of live coverage of the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, reporting for The Rebel Media.
King, who represents Iowa’s 4th District, said in a tweet Tuesday that Goldy is an “excellent candidate” to lead Toronto.
He described her as “pro Rule of Law, pro Make Canada Safe Again, pro balanced budget, &…BEST of all, Pro Western Civilization and a fighter for our values.” Goldy “will not be silenced,” he wrote.
Democrat J.D. Scholten, a former professional baseball player from Sioux City who is challenging eight-term congressman, struck back.
“Who wants to tell @SteveKingIA that Toronto isn’t in the U.S.?” Scholten tweeted. “Once again, Steve King spends more time supporting far-right leaders in other countries than he does focusing on the needs of the people of our district.”
Goldy was fired by Rebel Media, a far-right Canadian news outlet, after appearing on a show hosted by the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer. Among her comments, Goldy said neo-Nazis offer “robust” and “well thought-out ideas” on the “JQ” — shorthand for the “Jewish question,” which has been used by anti-Semitic movements since the 1800s and is currently at the center of a conspiracy theory about Jewish people controlling many aspects of society.
She stirred more controversy last year when she claimed in a video from Bethlehem that the holy city’s “Christian population has been ethnically cleansed” by Islam.
King’s endorsement of Goldy is another there-he-goes-again moment for his political enemies, who say he is racist and xenophobic.
He has claimed most undocumented immigrants are “drug mules” with “calves the size of cantaloupes” from ferrying drugs across the border with Mexico, retweeted Nazi sympathizer from Great Britain who described himself as an admirer of Adolf Hitler, and was blistered by members of Congress last year for retweeting far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, noting in his own comments that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
King has displayed a Confederate battle flag on his desk in Washington and has questioned the historical contributions of “non-white subgroups.” This year, he sparked widespread anger when he mocked Emma González, the Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor whose face has become synonymous with the #NeverAgain student movement demanding common-sense gun laws.
King is unapologetic and claims voters in his part of Iowa are solidly behind him. And they have been for the most part, re-electing him by wide margins since his first election in 2002.
“I share beliefs with the super-majority of this 4th Congressional District as reflected by election results going all the way back to 2002,” King told the Des Moines Register. “They know I haven’t changed. They know I always give them the straight, truthful answer. I don’t equivocate. Some people don’t like hearing the straight, truthful, unequivocating answer. But they always know where I stand.”
The Kiron Republican is the favorite in the race, but Scholten says his internal polling puts him in striking distance for an upset in the sprawling, rural district in central and northwest Iowa, the most Republican of the state’s four congressional districts. If an upset happens, it would be one of the most stunning outcomes in the midterm elections.
A September Emerson College Poll in September showed King leading by 10 points.
Scholten is counting on independents — who number 172,404 registered voters in the district, which includes 39 counties — to join the district’s 120,023 Democrats in voting for him. Republicans dominate the district with 172,404 registered voters, and Libertarians have 2,362 registered voters, according to the most recent statistics.
Scholten has already defeated King in one way that counts — fundraising. Federal Election Commission reports show that in the three-month reporting period that ended Sept. 30, Scholten raised $661,013, more than four times the $161,673 King reported for the period, according to the Sioux City Journal.
It was the fourth-consecutive quarter in which Scholten has outraised King. Since the last quarter of 2017, Scholten has raised $1.38 million, compared to $515,000 raised by the incumbent.
That gives Scholten plenty of cash to spend in an advertising blitz in the three weeks remaining before the election.
“Anyone who doesn’t think we can win this race hasn’t been paying attention,” Scholten said Tuesday in a news release. “Increasing our fundraising numbers for a fourth quarter in a row shows the momentum our campaign is building.”
Lead photo of Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Steve King by Drew Angerer/Getty Images