A Missouri judge ruled Friday that an avowed “honorary” former member of the Ku Klux Klan can remain in the state’s Republican primary election for governor, despite Missouri Republicans trying to keep him off the ballot.
“Plaintiff has not presented the Court with any evidence that having McClanahan in the primary election would cause him any harm,” District Court Judge Cotton Walker wrote in a ruling. “McClanahan’s presence in the primary election is not necessarily an endorsement of the party’s candidate.”
The state Republican Party said in February it was working to remove unlikely candidate Darrell Leon McClanahan III from the Republican primary for governor’s race after the 2022 Anti-Defamation League published an article detailing McClanahan’s extremist history. The article also included photos showing the candidate apparently giving a Nazi salute in front of a burning cross and alongside members of the KKK.
The Missouri Republican Party said in February that McClanahan’s KKK affiliation “fundamentally contradicts our party’s values and platform.”
NBC News has not independently verified McClanahan’s photos, but the candidate confirmed their accuracy to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, according to a February report.
“They have a bad picture of me,” McClanahan told the outlet about the photo of him in front of the cross, stating that he was “not a Nazi.” Post-dispatch.
In a more than 1,100-word response to NBC News’ request for comment on the judge’s ruling, McClanahan said he is “not racist” and “not anti-Semitic.”
“Please report some real news,” McClanahan said in a block of text without ending punctuation. “You’re just looking for the hashtag KKK, it’s an invisible empire that would admit to being a member of the KKK.”
The Missouri Republican Party did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment Saturday on the judge’s ruling.
McClanahan said in court documents that he was never a member of the KKK. However, he said he “received a 1-year honorary membership” from a KKK Missouri coordinator.
In the same court documents, McClanahan said he “participated in 2019 in a private religious Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony, falsely described as a cross burning.”
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