GOP candidate for governor exposed in KKK cross-burning photos can stay on ballot: judge

18 May 2024

A judge has ruled that Darrell Leon McClanahan III can remain on the 2024 Republican primary ballot in Missouri's gubernatorial race, despite the party's efforts to remove him.

The Daily Beast reported that McClanahan, who was outed as a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) earlier this year, prevailed against the Missouri GOP's legal challenge on Friday after a ruling by Cole County Circuit Court Judge Cotton Walker. In his decision, Walker ruled that while Missouri Republicans were free to criticize McClanahan as much as they liked, he wouldn't grant their petition to strike him from the ballot based on their argument of not properly vetting him first.

"I’m not sure they ever actually intended to win this case,” Dave Roland, who is representing McClanahan, told the Associated Press. "I think the case got filed because the Republican Party wanted to make a very big public show that they don’t want to be associated with racism or antisemitism. And the best way that they could do that was filing a case that they knew was almost certain to lose."

McClanahan's ties to the KKK came out after the Missouri-based publication Riverfront Times published photos of him from 2019 using a white power gesture next to a hooded man with a burning cross in the background. A separate photo shows McClanahan standing next to a klansman while holding a copy of the KKK's newsletter. The gubernatorial hopeful has since distanced himself from the group, but maintains that he is "pro-white." The photos were initially obtained by the Anti-Defamation League.

"The Missouri GOP knew exactly who I am," McClanahan wrote in a tweet in response to a separate tweet from the Missouri GOP condemning him.

McClanahan suggested that state Republican leadership made racist remarks to him in confidence, namely that Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft — one of the eight other Republicans vying for the gubernatorial nomination — told him in 2020 that "the Blacks are a problem."

"I have forwarded my email communications with the GOP to media and will to any other media that request it," he added, alluding to "recorded conversations" he had with Missouri Republican leaders he decried as "a bunch of Anti-White hypocrites."

The far-right activist confirmed the photos of him at the cross-burning, but maintains that he was granted honorary membership in the KKK for one year but is no longer a member. He downplayed the photo of the event as a "private religious Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony falsely described as a cross burning."

Term-limited Missouri Governor Mike Parson (R) will not be seeking reelection this year, meaning the primary to replace him in the predominantly Republican state is particularly crowded. Other high-profile Republicans seeking the GOP nomination include Ashcroft, Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe and Missouri state senator Bill Eigel.

Missouri's gubernatorial primary election will be held on August 6.

Click here to read the Beast's full report (subscription required).

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