20,000 Republicans just voted for an actual Nazi

The former head of the American Nazi Party ran for the Republican nomination of Congress in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District. No Republican stepped up to oppose him.

On Tuesday, despite his vocal Holocaust denial, his anti-Semitic rhetoric, and his white supremacist views, 20,339 Illinois Republicans, according to preliminary totals, cast their ballots for Arthur Jones.

Jones’ Nazi-sympathies were not a secret going into election day. His campaign website features a slideshow of pictures of him speaking at white nationalist events. He is a perennial candidate who has previously run for U.S. House, Chicago alderman, and mayor of Chicago, and even mayor of Milwaukee. Chicagomedia extensively covered the race. The Anti-Defamation League warned voters of his record. The chairman of Illinois Republican Party even disavowed him, saying “The Illinois Republican Party and our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones. We strongly oppose his racist views and his candidacy for any public office, including the 3rd Congressional District.”

Still, a stunning portion of the GOP primary electorate opted to cast their ballot for Jones rather than nobody. This includes, according to unofficial totals as of Wednesday morning, 13,158 voters in suburban Cook County (more than 70 percent of 18,595 GOP primary ballots cast),  4,093 voters in Will County, 3,023voters in the City of Chicago, and 65 voters in DuPage County.

While the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of the House GOP, dismissed Jones last month as “a fringe candidate who has been doing this for over a decade with with no real connection to the GOP,” his campaign platform mirrors President Trump’s agenda. Jones’ campaign website promises to “put America first” with border protections, the elimination of “Sanctuary Cities”, no “amnesty for illegal aliens,” gun rights, and a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Jones will face incumbent Democratic Congressman Daniel Lipinski, a social conservative, who narrowly won renomination on Tuesday.