Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier who will appear on the November ballot as the GOP candidate against Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski, has become campaign fodder for Democrats. | Marcus DiPaola/Chicago Sun-Times via AP ‘I snookered them’: Illinois Nazi candidate creates GOP dumpster fire Republicans fear blowback from a Holocaust denier’s run for Congress.

CHICAGO — Illinois Republicans botched four opportunities to stop an avowed Nazi from representing their party in a Chicago-area congressional district. Now they’re paying the price.

Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier who will appear on the November ballot as the GOP candidate against Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski, has become campaign fodder for Democrats as they seek to defeat Gov. Bruce Rauner. And some Republicans even fear the taint from Jones‘ extremist views poses a threat to the party up and down the ticket.


“First, it’s morally wrong and I think it’s really harmful to the party. The guy’s a complete nutcase. He’s a Nazi,” said conservative GOP state Rep. David McSweeney. “This is an absolute political disaster.”

McSweeney’s comments come just days after the filing deadline passed for qualifying a third-party candidate for the general election — which could have provided a safe harbor for Illinois Republican votes. Prior to that, the party had also failed to recruit a candidate to challenge Jones in the primary election, failed to knock him off the primary ballot and wasn’t able to field a write-in candidate against him in the primary.

Running a third-party candidate against Jones in November was among the options left to Illinois Republicans after Jones clinched the GOP nomination by running unopposed. But the deadline came and went this week and that didn’t happen either.

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Jones, who told POLITICO he’s running to counter a “two-party, Jew-party, queer-party system,” laughed when he was informed the GOP was unable to put up a candidate against him.

“They didn’t put up a third-party candidate?” Jones asked when reached by phone Thursday. “That’s great! That’s fantastic!

“I snookered them,” he said of state Republicans. “I played by the rules, what can I say?”

Getting on the Illinois ballot as a third-party candidate is no small task. In the 3rd Congressional District, a candidate would have needed 14,600 valid signatures, a laborious and expensive endeavor and even then, there’s a slim chance of success against Lipinski.

“There were several individuals interested in running as independent candidates, but unfortunately they made the decision not to run after considering the incredibly large petition signature requirements in a relatively small geographic area and the amount of resources that would be required to mount a campaign in a district heavily favored for Democrats,” Illinois Republican Party spokesman Aaron DeGroot said.

On Thursday, DeGroot said the party instead plans to recruit and support a write-in candidate for the general election.

Still, Jones’ nomination has been an enormous embarrassment to the party — and to state party Chairman Tim Schneider — for months. When Schneider was faced with a formidable challenge to his chairmanship in May, some Republicans — including state Rep. Jeanne Ives, who ran unsuccessfully against Rauner in the primary — cited Jones’ candidacy as a reason to break from Schneider’s leadership. Schneider ended up surviving his challenge by bringing on his challenger as a co-chairman.

Some have questioned why Republicans also failed to oust Jones through the traditional Illinois way of knocking undesirables off the ballot — by challenging his signature petitions. Both parties here commonly employ the tactic to bloody up each other.

Democrats through petition challenges have more than once successfully sidelined a would-be Nazi candidate, Richard Mayers, who has attempted to run as a Green Party candidate in various congressional districts.

But no one tried it in Jones’ case. His signatures were examined but never challenged, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections. The GOP has said it reviewed the petitions but couldn’t find a legal reason to challenge them.

J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic nominee for governor who was instrumental in building the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, has called on Rauner to urge Jones to drop out. Rauner has condemned Jones and said there’s no room for him in American politics. But Pritzker said Rauner, who is the largest contributor to the Illinois GOP, hasn’t done enough.

“Bruce Rauner has cowered to the worst elements of our politics on more than one occasion, but I sincerely hope he would agree that a self-proclaimed Nazi and Holocaust denier has no place as a candidate for any office in Illinois,” Pritzker told POLITICO in a statement. “I urge Bruce Rauner to join me in calling on Arthur Jones to drop out.”

Republicans have indeed roundly rejected Jones, saying he had no place in their party, denounced his candidacy, ran robocalls against him at one point and even encouraged primary voters in the district to leave ballots blank rather than vote for Jones.

Yet the GOP never managed to offer those voters any alternative candidate to Jones.

“It’s not enough to denounce Jones … do something about it. They didn’t run a candidate against him in the primary. They’re not running against him in the general. And they’re not endorsing Lipinski. Then what are they doing?” asked Steve Sheffey, a pro-Israel activist who authors a Jewish newsletter in Chicago. “From now on, at every forum, at every endorsement session, Illinois Republicans should be asked point blank: ‘if you live in the 3rd Congressional District, who would you vote for: Dan Lipinski or Arthur Jones?”

Underlying the inaction against Jones is a widespread belief that neither he — nor any Republican — has a chance of winning against Lipinski in November in the solidly Democratic district. Other Republicans have pointed to partisan gerrymandering as a barrier to recruiting viable GOP candidates in the 3rd District. Still, the party needed only 603 signatures to run someone against Jones in the first place and U.S. law does not require candidates to live in the congressional district for which they are running.

Jones remains a long shot in the fall congressional race — he hasn’t even filed a report with the Federal Election Commission or disclosed any donors, a move he said was intentional.

“I’m not filing any reports. I’m not going to give the Jews an opportunity to harass my supporters until after the election,” he said. “Right now, I’m keeping all the names confidential.”

Asked how much money he raised, he said: “I’m not going to tell you.”

In the meantime, Republicans have one last chance to save face. They can mount a write-in challenge if that candidate notifies three counties in the district of their intent by Sept. 6.

“They didn’t run anyone against him in the primary. They didn’t file an objection to him, they didn’t find a write-in candidate and they didn’t run an independent candidate,” McSweeney said. “We’ve missed four opportunities. We better not miss the fifth.”

