Ted Cruz urges voters to boycott ‘avowed Nazi’ candidate, elect Democrat instead
Illinois GOP fails to keep Arthur Jones off ballot after reportedly deciding not to make effort in heavily Democratic area
Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz on Friday urged voters in the Chicago area to boycott the self-proclaimed Nazi and Holocaust denier running for Congress, and if necessary, vote for his Democratic opponent instead.
In a tweet, Cruz said it was “horrific” that Arthur Jones was running for office on the Republican ballot in Chicago’s Third Congressional District in the upcoming Illinois general election.
“To the good people of Illinois, you have two reasonable choices: write in another candidate, or vote for the Democrat. This bigoted fool should receive ZERO votes,” he posted.
By Saturday morning, Cruz’s tweet had garnered nearly 22,000 likes and 9,000 retweets.
His Friday remark came shortly after Politico reported that the Illinois Republican Party missed the deadline to run a third party candidate in the November vote.
Jones won the primary for Chicago’s heavily Democratic Third Congressional District earlier this year, where Republicans are all but guaranteed to lose in the November Midterms.
The 70-year-old retired insurance salesman has been a perennial candidate for Illinois’ 3rd Congressional district since the 1990s, but didn’t make headlines until this year when he emerged as the sole Republican candidate to appear on the ballot.
Jones is a vehement Holocaust denier and former chair of the American Nazi Party; he has referred to the Jewish state as “racist criminal Zionist Israel”; and he is known to orchestrate an annual “family friendly” dinner commemorating Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
In a 2012 interview with a local news site, the Oak Lawn Patch, he accused Israel and the American Jewish lobby of masterminding the September 11 attacks and called the Holocaust “the blackest lie in history” and a Jewish “international extortion racket.”
Those views have not receded. On his current campaign website, he has a page devoted to “The Holocaust Racket,” espousing bilious anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and calling Jews “blood-thirsty criminal vampires.”
This is horrific. An avowed Nazi running for Congress. To the good people of Illinois, you have two reasonable choices: write in another candidate, or vote for the Democrat. This bigoted fool should receive ZERO votes. https://t.co/9WYlvCMKaF
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 29, 2018
Jones has little use for US President Donald Trump, who he calls “a Jew-loving fool” who has “surrounded himself with hoards of Jews including a Jew in his own family, that punk named Jared Kushner.”
During a February interview with CNN, Jones called the Holocaust “poppycock” and “a scam” run by Jews “to bleed, blackmail, extort and terrorize their enemies.”
After clinching the nomination, the Illinois Republican Party disavowed Jones, calling a him a Nazi, and said the GOP “strongly oppose[s] his racist views and his candidacy for any public office.”
But Politico’s report said the the Illinois GOP had numerous opportunities to keep Jones off the ballot, but ultimately decided not to make the effort in such a heavily Democratic area.
It said that in the run up to the primary, the GOP failed to recruit a candidate to challenge Jones in the vote where he went unopposed, or offer voters an alternative a write-in candidate.
This week, Illinois Republicans let the deadline for write-in candidates expire without submitting an alternative for Jones, Politico said. The ballot requirements — including obtaining 14,000 signatures — were reportedly too costly and burdensome to pursue a district dominated by Democrats.
On Friday, Jones bragged to Politico that he sidelined the Republicans, telling the news site “I snookered them.”
The Illinois general election will be held on November 6, 2018.
