Meet the White Supremacist Who’s About to Be Nevada’s House Speaker

Ira Hansen, the Nevada Republican assemblyman slated to become the chamber’s next speaker, has put forth a litany of white supremecist, misogynist and homophobic views, statements that have been chronicled by the Reno News Review. 

In newspaper writings over the years, Speaker-designate Hansen has assailed Jews, Israel, women who see themselves as more than vessels for delivering children, fellow Republicans deemed insufficiently conservative, civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., critics of the Confederate flag, and gay men, whom he falsely alleges are disproportionately likely to be child molesters.

In his columns attacking King, Hansen wrote that “King’s private life was trashy at best. … King Jr. is as low as it gets, a hypocrite, a liar, a phony, and a fraud.” Such language eerily echoes a 1964 letter the FBI sent King in unsuccessful attempt to convince the civil rights leader to commit suicide.

Weighing in on the school voucher debate, Hansen wrote, “[t]he relationship of Negroes and Democrats is truly a master-slave relationship, with the benevolent master knowing what’s best for his simple minded darkies.”

Maintaining the tradition of flying the Confederate stars and bars, Hansen said he does so “proudly in honor and in memory of a great cause and my brave ancestors who fought for that cause.” Meanwhile, he  “tends to use the term ‘Negro’ and often does not capitalize it.”