Faced with boycott threats, the Land O'Lakes company has announced it will no longer donate to the re-election campaign of U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa through its political action committee. Land O' Lakes follows tech corporation Intel in divesting from the far-right Republican's campaign war chest over recent statements King has made disparaging minorities and endorsing a white supremacist.
For about as long as he's held political office, Steve King has been making a thinly veiled case for making America white again. And he's been in office, first in the Iowa Legislature and now in Congress, for 22 years. Not only have Iowans continued to re-elect him in spite of that, but the Republican Party has kept quiet as he has publicly tweeted and mouthed those abhorrent views.
But this year, there are cracks in his armor. National standard-bearers in his party are calling King out for race-baiting. The chairman of the Republican National Congressional Committee, Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, also this week disavowed him. Maybe they're realizing you can't keep building a career on demonizing a minority that is poised to soon become the majority.
In a strongly worded Oct. 24 piece, the conservative Washington Examiner called King's endorsement of Toronto mayoral candidate Faith Goldy, who claims white Canadians are victims of genocide, "exactly what it looks like: a shameful endorsement of white nationalism."
It was a reference to King's Oct. 16 tweet heralding Goldy as, among other things, "Pro Western Civilization and a fighter for our values." Goldy was at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where hooded Klansmen marched. She promotes 1930s propaganda to eliminate "the Jewish menace."
"This latest development, coupled with his past of controversial statements, should be enough for Republicans to finally reject Steve King and call for his resignation," wrote The Examiner's Lindsay Marchello.
In the conservative Weekly Standard, under the headline, "Steve King: America's most deplorable Congressman," writer Adam Rubenstein said King and Goldy "are both animated by the same brand of race-based identity-politics that consumes the alt-right. King's focus on race and ethnicity is so consuming that it has become the core of his politics."
Then last week it was reported that during an August visit to Europe paid for a Holocaust memorial non-profit group, King met with an Austrian far-right party with ties to Neo-Nazis. He also disparaged diversity in an interview with its publication, bemoaning the decline of Western civilization because of immigration.
King was asked by the host of a Des Moines TV political newscast why he'd go to bat for Goldy. He said he was defending her freedom to express her views because her TV ads were barred, and she was excluded from debates. "This is about freedom of speech," he said. "I'm a strong defender of speech and when I see it's being policed by the politically correct, I speak out, wherever in the world it is."
That's ironic because King has yet to condemn an Oct. 19 anti-abortion, anti-gay activist's burning of LGBTQ-themed books from a public library in his own district. The activist Paul Dorr, who was irked by an Orange City gay pride event, made a Facebook Live video of himself doing it, while declaring, "Orange City Library, you won't be peddling this one anymore! You should all be ashamed of yourselves and repent."
Asked by Dave Price of the ABC affiliate, WHO-TV, if he's a racist, King said, "That's what they say. The people who know me don't say that." But he didn't directly answer the question. And he seemed not to understand why white supremacy is considered a derogatory term, claiming it wasn't two or three years ago.
King has long decried the prospect of America losing its cultural continuity due to an influx of people from other races, religions and ethnic groups. He has derided migrants from south of the border as drug-runners and violent criminals. So when Price asked him about the reliance of agricultural empoyers in his district on immigrant labor, King had what at first seemed a reasonable answer. To keep Americans in those jobs, he said, "We would have adjusted their wages and the benefits." In Storm Lake, he said, agricultural employers used to pay what teachers make, but now pay half that.
King's opponent, J.D. Scholten, wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $15. Yet King has repeatedly voted against hiking it above $7.25, where it stands today in Iowa. He has argued against even having a minimum wage. When the U.S. House voted in 2006 to raise it by $2.10, King argued it would hurt small businesses and "price low-wage workers, the very people it is intended to help, out of the labor market."
King's rhetoric, though hypocritical, seems to work for him because he's not some firebrand speaker rallying masses with appeals to their basest instincts. He speaks calmly and directly, meeting gazes with twinkling eyes and an endearing smile. His arguments might sound reasonable at first, until you understand what he's really claiming or calling for.
But that appeal may finally be ebbing. Even magazines like Esquire, Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan have joined in the chorus of voices denouncing him. And a U.S. House colleague, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, told CNN recently, "I think there's a good chance that Steve King doesn't come back to Congress in January." Castro was on the air responding to King's recent accusation that he and his brother, Julian, learned Spanish "to qualify as retroactive Hispanics" � whatever that means.
That's up to the voters in western Iowa's District 4, whether they're listening and if they're finally ashamed of their Representative's relentless attacks on people who can't defend themselves.
