(JTA) — The children of a Missouri Republican running for the state legislature has called on voters in his district not to vote for him due to his extreme views.
The children of Steve West, who promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on a radio show he hosts, want to prevent their father from winning a seat in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the General Assembly, they said in interviews with the Kansas City Star.
“A lot of his views are just very out there,” Emily West told the newspaper. “He’s made multiple comments that are racist and homophobic and how he doesn’t like the Jews.”
“My dad’s a fanatic. He must be stopped,” Andy West, the middle of the candidate’s three children, told the Star. “His ideology is pure hatred. It’s totally insane. If he gets elected, it would legitimize him. Then he would become a state official, and he’s saying that Jews shouldn’t even have civil rights.”
West has spoken on his radio show, “The Hard Truth with Jack Justice,” of “Jewish cabals” that are “harvesting baby parts” from Planned Parenthood and who abuse children and control the Republican Party. West also has a YouTube channel on which he has made homophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and racist statements.
On Monday, Steve West condemned the shooting attack at a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 worshippers dead and told the Star that he is “absolutely not anti-Semitic.”
But Andrew West said that “certainly the terrorist that engaged in that synagogue shooting and my father have the same objective. That objective is the removal of Jews from America. And certainly, if somebody who is already unstable gets the kind of message that he’s preaching, it’s all bad.”
Emily West told the Star that shortly after the August primary, which Steve West won with 49.5 percent of the vote, she asked her father to drop out of the race. He told his daughter that “everything in his life has come to this moment and it’s the most important thing. And I said, ‘OK, then I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want you to be a part of my life.’ And I haven’t talked to him since.”
West blamed his ex-wife for his children’s attitudes toward his candidacy, the newspaper reported.
West will face the Democratic incumbent, Jon Carpenter, in Tuesday’s election.
