AP Reports on Neo-Nazi Ron Paul Delegate

The AP has picked up the story of a neo-Nazi leader who ran as a Ron Paul delegate and was a Ron Paul county campaign coordinator. Regular readers of this blog will remember that this story was originally broken here and here, by yours truly. Earlier posts about this with more background are available here and here and here and here.

The Ron Paul campaign now denies that they knew of Williams' racist politics (read below). This stretches credulity in light of the fact that they banned him from their internet forums in November, three months before letting him run on their slate of delegates in the Tennessee primary. The reason they banned him? He posted racist and anti-semitic messages. His racist background and his connection to the Paul campaign was discussed on several well-trafficked blogs such as the following (read here and here and here and here).

Is it too much to ask a candidate for the presidency to cut all ties with neo-Nazis? Was the Paul campaign more interested in hushing this up than with addressing the issue? Were they more interested in maintaining support from extremists than they were with keeping themselves free of the taint of racism?

Read the AP report below and ask yourself on more question:

Is including a neo-Nazi as a county campaign leader and delegate sanctionable by either the Republican Party or Congress? If so, then either the Republican Party or Congress should act swiftly to send a message that this is unacceptable.


from the AP: "White separatist ran as Ron Paul delegate in Tenn."
By ERIK SCHELZIG Associated Press Writer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A self-described white nationalist earned nearly 12,000 votes in Tennessee as a failed candidate to represent Ron Paul at the Republican National Convention.

Will Williams, who told The Associated Press he's "pro-white" and is against interracial marriages "because they can't make white babies," was an early organizer for the Texas congressman's campaign in northeast Tennessee.

"I have a world view that's ethnocentric, I believe my people are worth preserving," Williams said. "I think we need to have our living space, our breathing space. We need to protect our gene pool."

Williams, 60, of Mountain City, said he had no direct contact with Paul about his views before the campaign approved him to join the slate of 21 statewide candidates to be convention delegates.

"He didn't endorse me, he signed off on the list of volunteer delegates," Williams said.

Paul's signature is on the list of delegate candidates that Tennessee election officials used to draw up the ballot, but spokesman Jesse Benton said Wednesday that the campaign was unaware of Williams' views.

"We try to vet as carefully as possible. But unfortunately, as with all campaigns, undesirable people are able to weasel through, slip through, and become delegates," Benton said.

"Congressman Paul wants nothing to do with detestable people like that," he said.

Voters in last month's Republican primary picked a presidential candidate and up to 15 delegates to attend the September convention. Voters could choose from the entire delegate slate, not just those affiliated with the presidential candidate they supported.

Williams was listed on the Feb. 5 ballot only as a potential statewide delegate for Paul. Nothing identified him as a white separatist.

Most of the delegate candidates were political unknowns, since much of the Republican establishment had gravitated to Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator who had dropped out before the primary and came in fifth.

Only the delegates for the three candidates who received the most votes - Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Mitt Romney - will be seated at the convention. Paul's 30,955 votes placed him fourth, with 5.6 percent of the vote in Tennessee.

Williams, who was last in the alphabetical list of statewide delegates for Paul, got 11,808 votes. That placed him 14th among Paul delegates, whose vote totals ranged from more than 33,000 to less than 4,800.

Williams' anti-ethnic comments got him blocked from posting at an online networking site for Paul supporters by Meetup.com last year. He blamed his banishment on "a lot of complaints by a little cell of Jews."

Williams argued that his views shouldn't shut him out of the political process.

"Somebody who's pro-white, who does he vote for?" he said. "Does he just go back to the woods and just accept that white people don't have a say?"

He said he didn't regret being on the ballot, even though he expected "smears" from news accounts of his candidacy.

"It's been great," Williams said. "I've met a lot of pissed-off white Americans. Lots of them."

Williams said he joined the Army right out of high school in 1966 and served two tours in Vietnam. He said he later became a member of the West Virginia-based white separatist National Alliance and a protege of its late founder, William Pierce.

Pierce was the author of the novel "The Turner Diaries," which is believed to have inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"Dr. Pierce was a great man, I admired him greatly," Williams said. "And Dr. Paul is a great man."

The state Republican Party in 2006 stripped the GOP affiliation from a congressional candidate who supported the racist eugenics movement. James Hart, who advocated discouraging "less favored races" from reproducing or immigrating to the United States, had been the party's 2004 nominee against Democratic incumbent Rep. John Tanner.

Paul indicated last week that his long-shot campaign for the presidency is coming to an end, but he hasn't explicitly quit the race.

Williams said he's dissatisfied with the remaining candidates from both parties.

"I think I would vote for (Barack) Obama over McCain or (Hillary) Clinton," he said.

When pressed on whether he would really vote for a black presidential candidate, Williams acknowledged: "Probably not."

"I probably will go back to the woods," he said.