Allen West, the Republican candidate for a swing House seat in Florida held by Democrat Ron Klein, is now under fire for saying that a Democratic tracker sent to tape him was guilty of “Gestapo-type intimidation tactics.” And as it turned out, the tracker is the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
Speaking at an event Thursday, the Miami Herald reports, West said: “I know here today we have a representative from the Florida Democratic party and he is here to film me and his whole purpose of filming me is to take what I say and allow other people to distort it so they can misrepresent me. You know if we allow those Gestapo-type intimidation tactics to prevail in the United States of America what happens to our liberties, what happens to our freedoms?”
Klein campaign spokeswoman Sarah Rothschild confirmed that the tracker does indeed work for the Florida Dems — and that he is the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
The Klein campaign said in a press release that West “has shown reckless disregard and appalling disrespect to Holocaust victims and survivors.”
West’s campaign manager Josh Grodin defended the remarks. “We are not apologizing for that,” said Grodin, saying that the event was attended by clergy, including rabbis. “What the Florida Democratic Party is doing is they are just using intimidation tactics. They are following West around everywhere.”
Grodin, who is Jewish, was asked by the paper whether West’s remarks could alienate Jewish voters. “Our Jewish supporters know where Allen West stands on Israel and they know exactly what he means by this,” Grodin responded.
West has become a star of the conservative movement as a result of his service in Iraq, where he was forced into retirement after torturing an Iraqi police officer for information. The man was beaten, and then West personally told the man he was going to kill him, pinned him to the ground and then fired his gun next to the man’s head.
West previously ran for the seat in 2008, losing by a margin of only 55%-45% in a district that was simultaneously carried by Barack Obama by 52%-48%.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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