Russel Walker, running for a seat in North Carolina's state house, proclaims "there is nothing wrong with being a racist" and that Jews are "descendants of Satan."

In Wisconsin, Paul Nehlen, the leading Republican running to fill the seat in Congress currently held by retiring Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, has emerged as a leader of the alt-right movement, someone who critics warn wants to provide white nationalists and anti-Semites a stronger foothold in US culture and politics.

And the campaign website for Tyler, a Trump supporter running for Congress in Tennessee, depicts the Confederate flag flying atop the White House. One of his campaign billboards read: "Make America White Again."

Experts say there is an unprecedented number of openly bigoted candidates this year, and that their chief enabler may well be the president of the United States himself.

"Trump's unorthodox use of racism-related and anti-Muslim stuff -- all of that bigoted language -- has opened a door in politics that wasn't there before," Heidi Beirich, who as an expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been tracking hate groups since 1999, told AFP.

"We've always had a smattering of neo-Nazis... but this is ratcheting the situation up much higher than it was before."

No more 'taboos'?

Overt bigotry by a candidate would spell his or her "death knell" up until recently, Beirich said. But in today's hyper partisan political environment, such rhetoric may no longer be a deal breaker.

"By blowing through those taboos, and winning the presidency, Trump has shown a path to electoral success that people assumed wouldn't work," she said.

This bigotry has spread into public life. Several incidents caught on video showing white people calling the police on African-Americans going about their business have gone viral.

One, which showed two young men dragged out of a Starbucks coffee shop in handcuffs, helped spark a national dialogue about race.