He makes no secret of his views. The Anti-Defamation League has flagged him as a “longtime neo-Nazi.” His campaign website features sections including “News” and “Contribute” and “Holocaust?” He told me that he was disappointed in President Trump for appointing so many Jewish people to his Cabinet. (Plus, he said, “there’s a whole layer of other Jews that you don’t see that actually make the policy.”)

The state GOP has offered a full-throated condemnation of Jones’s candidacy. “The Illinois Republican Party and our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones,” said Illinois Republican Party Chairman Tim Schneider in a statement. “We strongly oppose his racist views and his candidacy for any public office, including the 3rd Congressional District.” The state’s Republican National Committee members, Demetra DeMonte and Richard Porter, declined to comment on Jones’s candidacy.

This is the closest Jones has gotten to elected office. When he ran in 1998, the Cook County Republican Central Committee denounced his candidacy, saying it would be a “national embarrassment” if he was nominated. That year, the GOP nominated Robert Marshall for the seat—who once called drunk driving a “grossly overblown” problem and began a League of Men Voters to advocate for fathers in custody battles. (Marshall lost.) Most recently, Jones filed to run in the 2016 Republican primary, but the Illinois State Election Board threw out his petition in response to a GOP challenge, citing invalid signatures.

This year, the 70-year-old Jones went door to door gathering more than 800 petition signatures himself. He told me that when he introduced himself to voters, he stressed his foreign-policy views, rather than his thoughts on race. He was the only Republican to turn in the paperwork by the December filing deadline. So Jones’s name will be the only one on the Republican primary ballot on March 10, as the deadline for entering the race—even as a write-in candidate—has passed.

Of course, even if Jones wins the nomination, it’s not likely that he’ll win the seat: While Illinois’s third district is relatively conservative on social issues, its voters have elected Democrats to Congress in 24 of the last 25 elections and chosen the Democratic candidate in the last four presidential elections. Even so, the fact remains that the GOP nominee for a U.S. House race will almost certainly be a former Nazi who told me he believes “all men aren’t created equal.” It’s the “national embarrassment” the GOP feared, and compounds the electoral challenges for a party whose leader just six months ago said there were “some very fine people” among a group of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia—and who continues to face accusations of racism after he reportedly referred to African nations as “shithole countries.”