Stephen King is making a personal appeal to Iowans: Vote Steve King out so people won't confuse the two of them anymore.

The best-selling author tweeted Sunday morning about his exhaustion at being confused with Iowa's controversial 4th District Republican congressman.

"Iowans, for personal reasons I hope you'll vote Steve King out. I'm tired of being confused with this racist dumbbell," King, the author, wrote on Twitter.

Steve King, an eight-term Republican from Kiron, has a long history of stirring controversy with inflammatory statements about race, immigration, LGBTQ issues and climate change.

More:Iowa's Steve King has a history of controversial remarks. Here are some that riled people up.

He faces a new round of criticism after the massacre of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh sparked a national conversation about hate speech and its role in facilitating violence, antisemitism and other forms of extremism.

In August, King reportedly met with members of the Freedom Party, a political organization founded by a former Nazi SS officer, and sat for an interview with a Freedom Party-aligned publication. In recent days, he's been condemned by Iowa Jewish leaders, criticized by national Republican leaders and seen three prominent companies announce they would no longer donate to his re-election campaign.

He angrily faced down criticism at a candidate forum last week sponsored by the Greater Des Moines Partnership, calling accusations few anti-Semitism false.

"There is no party that is stronger, pushing back against anti-Semites, than the Freedom Party," King claimed.

Stephen King has made headlines for his political tweets before. In June 2017, the author tweeted that President Donald Trump had blocked him on Twitter and said sarcastically "I may have to kill myself."

The author has also tweeted criticism of Trump's Cabinet, his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and wrote that it's "time to start talking impeachment."

Steve King's challenger in Tuesday's election, Democrat J.D. Scholten, has been riding a wave of national press and fundraising since the latest round of Steve King headlines. Scholten's campaign reported raising $900,000 between Monday and Friday last week alone, enough for him to blanket the airwaves of the Fourth District with a biographical ad.

King began airing his first ad of the campaign five days before Election Day.

A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll of the district shows that on a generic ballot a Republican candidate leads a Democratic candidate by 4 percentage points. With the exception of a 2012 race against former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack, King has won each of his other races by at least 22 percentage points.

A New York Times poll conducted from Oct. 31 to Nov. 4 shows King with a 5-point lead, with 47 percent to Scholten's 42 percent.

More:Is northwest Iowa's 4th District still Steve King country after a week of controversy?