The GOP Continues To Be Plagued With Racist Candidates. I Can't Imagine Why

Whether on the air or here at DWT, whenever I want an example of the worst of the worst DCCC recruits for Congress, I invariably turn to south Jersey (NJ-02) and state Senator Jeff Van Drew. He has no saving grace... other than his ability to placate conservatives. That's because he is one himself. Next year, when he's in Congress, there will be virtually no crucial issues on which you will find Van Drew voting with the Democrats. And he will most certainly be in Congress next year.

NJ-02 is the very swingy district the DCCC has given away to Republican moderate Frank LoBiondo year after year, cycle after cycle. It has an R+1 PVI but voted for Obama both times he ran (with 53% each time) and went for Trump only because Hillary was such a bad candidate for white working class districts like this. It goes from the tip of the state at Cape May all the way up the coast, past Ocean City and Atlantic City to Little Egg Harbor and Long Beach Township and heads west through Millville to the Delaware River across from Wilmington and the exurbs south of Philly.

In a 4-person primary, Van Drew won with 55.41%, his closest opponent drawing just 19.16%. LoBiondo is retiring-- Van Drew wouldn't be running otherwise-- and the GOP narrowly selected Seth Grossman as its candidate, also in a 4-person race.

• Seth Grossman- 10,101 (39.0%)
• Hirsh Singh- 7,893 (30.5%)
• Sam Fiocchi- 6,068 (23.4%)
• Robert Turkavage- 1,839 (7.1%)

28,233 voters showed up for the Democratic primary, only 25,901 for the Republican primary. As of the May 15 FEC reporting deadline, Van Drew had raised $631,540 and had $412,156 cash-on-hand, compared to the $22,529 Grossman had raised, with just $10,810 cash-on-hand. As if that weren't a bad enough context for the GOP, the NRCC withdrew its support for Grossman Monday evening, after he exposed himself as a racist.

The offense was that-- on several occasions-- he didn't have the sense to hide his racism. He shared a post from a white supremacist website calling blacks a "threat to all who cross their paths." NRCC chair Steve Stivers: "Bigotry has no place in society-- let alone the U.S. House of Representatives... The NRCC withdraws our support of Seth Grossman and calls on him to reconsider his candidacy. The people of New Jersey's 2nd District deserve an inclusive Republican candidate who will be a trusted conservative voice in Congress." That's probably a mortal wound for a Republican candidate, especially when Republicans know that Van Drew will represent their points of view-- as he's been doing very well in the state Senate-- perfectly well. A Blue Dog extremist, Van Drew has virtually nothing to do with Democratic Party values or ideals.

Grossman's campaign said the candidate does not intend withdraw from the race and did not endorse what was said in the post.

Grossman, who won the June 5 Republican primary to succeed the retiring Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd-Dist, while promising to support President Donald Trump, earlier described diversity as "a bunch of crap and un-American."

The NRCC was silent on Grossman's earlier comments about diversity, which he made during a Republican debate. But Stivers reacted to a report by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters about Grossman linking to the article that ran on a white supremacist website.

Written by someone claiming to be  "public defender in a large southern metropolitan area," the post concluded: "Blacks are different by almost any measure to all other people. They cannot reason as well. They cannot communicate as well. They cannot control their impulses as well. They are a threat to all who cross their paths, black and non-black alike."

Media Matters said Grossman called attention to the article in a Dec. 29, 2014 Facebook post, commenting: "Oy vay! What so many people, black, white and Hispanic, whisper to me privately but never dare say out loud publicly. Back in the Old Country, people were very careful about what they said for fear of retaliation. At one time, America was a free country and people were not afraid to express their true thoughts. Am just posting this as an individual and not on behalf of any organization."

Grossman, an attorney, seems to think that screeching that he supports Trump is a defense. The real problem Stivers and his colleagues should be sealing with isn't only about Grossman though. They ought to be asking themselves what is it about Trump's GOP that keeps attacking Nazis and racists and what is it about the Trump base that keeps nominating them to represent the GOP in primaries all over the country. Hint: rhymes with dump, rump and thump.