Steve King, Congress's Most Shameless Racist, Has Won Reelection in Iowa

[babylonsister]

Steve King, Congress's Most Shameless Racist, Has Won Reelection in Iowa
How does this keep happening?
By Gabrielle Bruney
Nov 7, 2018


In the run-up to election day, Steve King reminded voters exactly who he is. The now nine-term representative is possibly the most openly racist member of congress, and, rather than attempt to distance himself from his bigoted history before the midterms, he decided to really double down. On Monday, he denounced the National Republican Congressional Committee for supporting a candidate who has “a sex-same partner that they put all over glossy mailers.”

“I don’t know if they were holding hands, or what was the deal,” he told his assembled constituents. “It’s hard to write a check to those guys when they do that.” That same day, he professed his hope that Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor “elope to Cuba.” Fresh off this spate of homophobia, King went on to eke out a narrow victory—50.4 percent to 47 percent of the vote—over his Democratic challenger, political newcomer J.D. Scholten.

King has never had much use for dog whistles or coded language. He simply says and does indisputably hateful things. Over the course of this election year alone, he gave an interview to a publication that was literally founded by a Nazi, endorsed a candidate for Toronto mayor who’s running on a platform of preventing “white genocide,” and said that he wouldn’t want Muslims working in his district’s pork plants.

And those are just his recent notable quotables—King’s greatest racist hits stretch back years, and include his saying that Dreamers have “calves the size of cantaloupes” from “hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” questioning where “any other subgroup” besides white people “contribute[d] to civilization,” and tweeting that we can’t restore our civilization with “somebody else’s babies.” He was a decade ahead of Donald Trump in advocating for a border barrier, but instead of a wall, he wanted to build an electric fence that would shock migrants who attempt to climb it. “We do that with livestock all the time,” he explained.

Indeed, King’s racism is a feature of his political life, not a bug. His sole achievement as a legislator was the renaming of a post office 15 years ago. He’s not out making change for Iowans; he’s busy traveling the world befriending white supremacists. As a public figure, King is a basically as irredeemable as it gets, and yet he was reelected.

more...

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a24752885/steve-king-reelected/

[jayschool2013]

1. Yes, it's a crime

However, 75 percent of Iowans are now represented by progressive Democrats in the U.S. House:

IA-1 Abby Finkenauer defeated incumbent R Rod Blum.
IA-2 Dave Loebsack retained his seat against R Chris Peters
IA-3 Cindy Axne defeated incumbent R Dave Young

Now, about those two Iowa U.S. Senate seats ...

[eleny]

2. Hope he enjoys his minority status in committee

And if he doesn't button up his nazi-speak he may face repercussions from House leadership.