ADL Concerned over 75,000 Votes Received by Two Racist Candidates

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith expressed “deep concern” over the results of two Congressional races in which avowedly racist and anti-Semitic candidates received a total of over 75,000 votes, in last week’s national elections.

Nathan Perlmutter, ADL’s national director was referring to two contests — one in California’s 43rd Congressional District where Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Metzger, running as a Democrat, received 35,000 votes, or 14 percent of those cast, and the other in Michigan’s 15th C.D., where farmer Klansman and neo-Nazi Gerald Carlson won 53,000 votes on the GOP line, or about 32 percent. The Democratic Party had disavowed the candidacy of Metzger; the Republican Party had disavowed Carlson.

While we are gratified that these two candidates were soundly rejected by the vast majority of the voters in their districts as a whole,” Perlmutter said, “we still find it of deep concern that so many Americans considered it acceptable to cast their votes for individuals who have openly proclaimed racist and anti-Semitic views. “Their extremist views, he declared, “rather than offering any hope of solving social and economic problems, promise only fear, disruption and community polarization.”

Perlmutter pointed out that after these two candidates had won nomination in their respective primaries, “their views and extremist affiliations received wide publicity both locally and nationally, and therefore many of the thousands who cast their votes for them, while certainly not supporters of Klan or neo-Nazi activities, were not totally ignorant of the records of these men. “

He said that ADL, after “fully analyzing this disturbing phenomenon, will work with leaders of these and other communities throughout the country in dealing with problems presented by the exploitation of the political process by extremists and hatemongers.”