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Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington earlier this year. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)
Eli Rosenberg
General appointment reporter national covering and breaking news
November 1 at 6:35 PM
Republican Rep. Steve King, a member of Congress frequently criticized as aligned with the themes of white nationalism, is in the midst of a surprisingly tense reelection race.
At least one poll shows his Democratic challenger, J.D. Scholten, within striking distance, though FiveThirtyEight still gives King a nearly 83 percent chance of winning.
And growing attention to his affiliation with far-right groups and figures, including a Nazi sympathizer, has culminated with the possible beginnings of a donor boycott. A handful of corporations, including Intel and the dairy company Land O'Lakes, have announced that they will no longer support King financially. Even the Republican Party issued a sharp rebuke of King that stopped short of saying he promoted white supremacy.
The interview with the audience was conducted in the afternoon of September 14th, 2010, at 11:00 pm responsible for his "people" being "slaughtered."
Video of the Iowa Circulation Behind Iowa Starting Line, a political blog in Iowa.
A question in the room read statements from Bowers and King, and then said he thought King shared the shooter's ideology regarding immigration.
"No, do not you do that," said King, cutting the man off. "Do not badociate me with that shooter. I knew you were an ambusher when you walked in the room. But there's no basis for that. "
King's ideology. But the congressman cut him off.
"You're done. You crossed the line. It's not tolerable to accuse me to a guy who shot 11 people in Pittsburgh, "said King. "This is over, if you do not stop talking."
It is not immediately clear that the person who is confronted is a member of the political system.
King spokesman John Kennedy said that they were calling in the aftermath of the convention.
In an email to The Washington Post, Kennedy lambasted "Leftist Media Lies," though he did not respond when asked to give specific examples.
The Washington Post reported that he was in a state of war with the Nazi party in Austria while he was on his way to Holocaust memorial group.
[Rep. King met with far-right Austrians on trip funded by Holocaust memorial group]
At the forum in Iowa on Thursday, King defended the Austrian political group, saying that the party had purged to train Nazis more than 50 years ago, except one with "a little youthful affiliation." The party is now led by Heinz-Christian Strache, who was active in neo-Nazi circles as a youth.
King spoke about touring Holocaust sites in Poland before he flew to Vienna, an experience he said was moving.
His past statements – King has badailed immigrants, retweeted to Nazi sympathizer, and said that "We can not restore our civilization with somebody else's babies," Saturday's shooting.
Last month, King's decision to endorse Faith Goldy, a white nationalist candidate for Toronto mayor who appeared on a neo-Nazi podcast around the Charlottesville rally and later publicly recited a white supremacist slogan, also drew uproar.
King Blamed The Washington Post for the attention, saying on the forum on Thursday that "the whole fiasco that you've seen in the state for the last three days" was based on the report last week about the Austria trip.
King's relationship with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) – King was co-chair of Cruz's presidential campaign in Iowa – has also come under question as the senator faces a tight reelection race in one of the country's most racially diverse states. Cruz called King on Wednesday to express his support, Bloomberg News reported.
Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.
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