A Republican congressional candidate in a reliably blue California district managed to capture nearly a quarter of votes cast in the states open primary last month just after the state Republican Party caught wind of his anti-Semitic comments and rescinded its automatic endorsement.
The candidate, John Fitzgerald, urged people on his campaign website to pay attention to Jewish supremacism, among other anti-Semitic views, which led party leaders to rescind their support in May, about two months after the official endorsement.
In the weeks since, Mr. Fitzgerald has increased the frequency of his anti-Semitic statements and has appeared on podcasts in which he claimed the Holocaust was a fabrication.
Everything weve been told about the Holocaust is a lie, Mr. Fitzgerald said last week on a radio show hosted by Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, an anti-Semitic commentator who has glorified Hitler.
My entire campaign, for the most part, is about exposing this lie, Mr. Fitzgerald said.
The brief endorsement of a Holocaust denier by a major political party in California has prompted Republican leaders there to take candidate vetting more seriously, and comes at a time when extremist and anti-Semitic candidates are receiving increased exposure on the national political stage.
Mr. Fitzgerald received 23 percent of the vote to finish second in the 11th Congressional Districts June primary, which is open to all candidates regardless of party and allows the top two finishers to qualify for the general election. He is running against Representative Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat, in a district northeast of San Francisco that has not elected a Republican to the House since 2004.
The states Republican Party automatically endorsed Mr. Fitzgerald in March because party rules say the organization will automatically back the only Republican in the field, said Matt Fleming, a spokesman for the California Republican Party. The party reversed its decision in May and issued a statement denouncing his candidacy. ... The comments that alerted the party to Mr. Fitzgeralds views were in a post on his campaign website asserting that Jewish people played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade and urging awareness of Jewish supremacism. Scholars have countered historical claims that Jewish people dominated the slave trade with research showing that their role was marginal.
Mr. Fleming said the initial endorsement of Mr. Fitzgerald was preceded by minimal vetting of his views. Now, he said, the party is bolstering its vetting process by thoroughly surveying candidates public comments and the content of their campaign websites.
Mr. Fitzgeralds qualification for the states general election makes him the latest in a series of high-profile extremist candidates across the nation including Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier described as a Nazi by the Illinois Republican Party. Mr. Jones won the Republican congressional primary in March in a heavily Democratic district that includes part of Chicago. In Wisconsin, a white nationalist and anti-Semite, Paul Nehlen, is running for Speaker Paul D. Ryans vacated House seat.
In both instances, the state Republican Party distanced itself from the candidate and condemned his views.
Mr. Fitzgerald ran for Congress in California as a Democrat in 2010 and 2012, but did not receive the partys endorsement in either case. He is running as a Republican in November but said he identifies more as an independent.
Am I a Republican? Mr. Fitzgerald said. What is a Republican anymore?