Steve King, Congress's Most Shameless Racist, Has Won Reelection in Iowa
Steve King, Congress's Most Shameless Racist, Has Won Reelection in Iowa
How does this keep happening?
By Gabrielle Bruney
Nov 7, 2018
In the run-up to election day, Steve King reminded voters exactly who he is. The now nine-term representative is possibly the most openly racist member of congress, and, rather than attempt to distance himself from his bigoted history before the midterms, he decided to really double down. On Monday, he denounced the National Republican Congressional Committee for supporting a candidate who has a sex-same partner that they put all over glossy mailers.
I dont know if they were holding hands, or what was the deal, he told his assembled constituents. Its hard to write a check to those guys when they do that. That same day, he professed his hope that Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor elope to Cuba. Fresh off this spate of homophobia, King went on to eke out a narrow victory50.4 percent to 47 percent of the voteover his Democratic challenger, political newcomer J.D. Scholten.
King has never had much use for dog whistles or coded language. He simply says and does indisputably hateful things. Over the course of this election year alone, he gave an interview to a publication that was literally founded by a Nazi, endorsed a candidate for Toronto mayor whos running on a platform of preventing white genocide, and said that he wouldnt want Muslims working in his districts pork plants.
And those are just his recent notable quotablesKings greatest racist hits stretch back years, and include his saying that Dreamers have calves the size of cantaloupes from hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert, questioning where any other subgroup besides white people contribute[d] to civilization, and tweeting that we cant restore our civilization with somebody elses babies. He was a decade ahead of Donald Trump in advocating for a border barrier, but instead of a wall, he wanted to build an electric fence that would shock migrants who attempt to climb it. We do that with livestock all the time, he explained.
Indeed,
Kings racism is a feature of his political life, not a bug. His sole achievement as a legislator was the renaming of a post office 15 years ago. Hes not out making change for Iowans; hes busy traveling the world befriending white supremacists. As a public figure, King is a basically as irredeemable as it gets, and yet he was reelected.
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https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a24752885/steve-king-reelected/