A man running for governor of Missouri whose ties to the Ku Klux Klan were recently made public said that the state Republicans who are now working to oust him from the race were already familiar with his beliefs.
“The Missouri GOP knew exactly who I am,” Darrell McClanahan III wrote on X. “What a bunch of Anti-White hypocrites.”
McClanahan is one of the contenders gunning for the Republican nomination in the Missouri gubernatorial primary election.
After the Missouri GOP tweeted that 279 Republicans submitted their bids on the first day of candidate filing, former Republican state Rep. Shamed Dogan responded with a pair of unsettling photos showing McClanahan with official KKK members and standing next to a hooded member doing a Nazi salute in front of a burning cross.
While McClanahan confirmed he is in the photos, he told the Riverfront Times that he was never in the KKK and sent the outlet a statement that Dogan’s claim he is “a cross-burning KKK member and white supremacist is false and damaging” to his reputation.
Yet, what’s bizarre about McClanahan’s reproach against Dogan is that he once stated in a lawsuit he brought against the Anti-Defamation League in 2022 that he is a “Pro-White man, horseman, politician, political prisoner-activist who is dedicated to traditional Christian values” and had a one-year “honorary membership” in the Knight’s Party Ku Klux Klan.
He also stated that he attended a “private religious Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony falsely described as a cross burning.”
A judge dismissed that lawsuit against the ADL, which McClanahan filed over an alleged defamatory article. The judge wrote that the statements McClanahan wrote about himself in the complaint reflect “the views ascribed to him by the ADL article.”
The Missouri Republican Party tweeted on Thursday that party officials had been “made aware” that McClanahan filed his candidacy “despite his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan.”
The party said his affiliation “fundamentally contradicts” the party’s values and platform. The process to remove McClanahan from the race is currently underway.
“We condemn any association with hate groups and are taking immediate action to rectify this situation,” party officials wrote on X. “Our party upholds respect for all individuals, and we’re dedicated to addressing any challenges to these principles decisively.”
McClanahan directly replied to the post stating twice, “The Missouri GOP knew exactly who I am,” adding that Missouri GOP Party Chairman Nick Myers learned of McClanahan’s allegiance to the Christian Identity theology when McClanahan ran for U.S. Senate in 2022.
Myers just told him at the time that he was not to “say anything bad about the Jews.”
The Christian Identity movement circulates the racist, anti-semitic belief that white people, not Jewish people, are the true Israelites favored by God.
McClanahan wasn’t a well-known candidate in the governor’s race. He would have been up against Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, and state Sen. Bill Eigel who are all vying to replace outgoing Gov. Mike Parsons.
McClanahan said that Ashcroft once told him, “The Blacks are a problem.”
In his run for U.S. Senate, McClanahan lost the GOP primary with .2% of the vote, The Associated Press reports.
McClanahan isn’t the only person with KKK affiliations to run for governor’s office.
David Duke, one of the more widely known white supremacists who is a former Klan leader, held office at one point. He was elected to Louisiana’s House of Representatives in 1989 and nearly won the Louisiana governor’s race in 1991.
