Missouri GOP Backs Away From ‘Honorary’ KKK Member Running for Governor

The Missouri GOP Party is disavowing a man running for governor as a Republican after images resurfaced of him standing alongside Ku Klux Klan members and throwing up a Nazi salute. The state GOP acknowledged on Thursday that Darrell Leon McClanahan, a longshot in the crowded gubernatorial race, boasted a KKK affiliation that “fundamentally contradicts our party’s values and platform,” and that party officials had begun the process of scrubbing his name from the ballot. In response, McClanahan fired back that “the Missouri GOP knew exactly who I am…” adding in a lengthy social media statement, “What a bunch of Anti-White hypocrites.” In a lawsuit he filed against the Anti-Defamation League last year, McClanahan accused the organization of defaming him by referring to him online as a white supremacist. He was instead, he argued, a “Pro-White man, horseman, politician, political prisoner-activists who is dedicated to traditional Christian values.” McClanahan also argued that he wasn’t a fully-fledged member of the KKK, and had only been granted an “honorary one-year membership.” The lawsuit was dismissed late last year by a federal judge, who wrote that it “reflects that Plaintiff holds the views ascribed to him by the ADL article,” according to the Associated Press.