Washington state Republicans are distancing themselves from an alt-right personality who won an uncontested local GOP post following Daily Beast exposing him.
James Allsup, an alt-righter who marched at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last summer, won an uncontested election for a role in Whitman County, Washington’s Republican Party. Allsup is a member of Identity Evropa, a “pro-white,” anti-immigrant group, and said in a podcast episode that he wanted to further the group’s goals through his post in the GOP. But while they’ve disavowed him, it’s unclear whether local Republicans will block him from the post.
“I was disappointed today when I heard the news that James Allsup is being allowed to represent the Whitman County GOP,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. “I don’t have a relationship with him, but I know what he stands for. His actions and words do not reflect the values of the Republican party or Eastern Washington.”
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Art Swannack, a Whitman County Commissioner and committee member for the county’s GOP, told Washington’s The Inlander that local Republicans were examining whether any bylaws would allow them to block Allsup’s appointment."The executive committee is going to meet and see if we have the ability to not seat him," Swannack told the paper. "My understanding is he won the election, but the party has the right to choose whether or not we have to seat him." The county GOP could have avoided the situation by tapping even a single other person to run for the seat after Allsup filed for candidacy: Allsup won the seat by default after running unopposed."I'm concerned with most of the things that James Allsup has said since the Charlottesville incident," Swannack told The Inlander. "I don't believe he represents the Republican party."
The Whitman County GOP has not returned The Daily Beast’s requests for comment from Monday.
The Republican National Committee denounced Allsup earlier this week.“We condemn this individual and his hateful, racist views in the strongest possible terms,” an RNC spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “There’s no place for it in the Republican Party.”The Washington State Republican Party’s chairman told The Daily Beast on Monday that the GOP doesn’t “condone identity politics, in any form, whatsoever. It is antithetical to our core values and stands counter to our goal of getting Washington back on the right track. We condemned this hateful ideology before, we condemn it today, and will continue to condemn it in the future.”
Allsup, who has not returned The Daily Beast’s request for comment, responded in a series of Facebook posts detailing why the backlash against him, was good, actually. At one point he suggested “leftist baby boomers” were cowardly because they would not fight him at the restaurant Chili’s.
Allsup also posted two pictures of himself drinking a beer captioned, “Me caring deeply about your ‘disavowals.’”
He was wearing a Make America Great Again hat and sunglasses, but the sun had set behind him and he was sitting in partial darkness on a condominium balcony.
