GOP candidate for governor outed as KKK member after cross burning photo emerges

29 February 2024

In Missouri, far-right activist Darrell Leon McClanahan III has been seeking the GOP nomination in Missouri's 2024 gubernatorial race. But the Missouri Republican Party has announced that it is taking steps to remove McClanahan from the ballot in response to reports that McClanahan has been active in the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

According to Riverfront Times reporter Ryan Krull, a 2019 photo shows McClanahan standing next to a KKK member in front of a burning cross. McClanahan was wearing street clothes in the photo, while the person standing next to him was in full KKK attire.

McClanahan has filed a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which published the photo on their website in 2022 along with an article. McClanahan argued, in the lawsuit, that he was strictly an "honorary" KKK member — not a full member — and that the photo showed a "Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony" instead of a full-fledged KKK cross burning ceremony.

McClanahan's name, Krull reports, appears on the Missouri ballot along with better known Republican gubernatorial candidates such Mike Kehoe and Jay Ashcroft.

The photo has also been posted online by former Missouri State Rep. Shamed Dogan, a Republican.

In a February 28 post on X, formerly Twitter, Dogan wrote, "Hey @MissouriGOP I just learned the candidate listed first on our primary ballot for Governor is a cross-burning KKK member who ran for US Senate 2 years ago and freely admits his KKK membership & white supremacist beliefs."

In a separate tweet, Dogan slammed McClanahan as a "racist loser."

McClanahan acknowledged to the River Front Times that he was in the 2019 photo but denied being a full KKK member.

The Times quotes McClanahan as telling Dogan, "Shamed Dogan, I would like to respectfully request that you cease and desist from making defamatory statements about me on the X platform. Your statement about me being a cross-burning KKK member and white supremacist is false and damaging to my reputation.”

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