‘Be Ashamed’: Jeffries Accuses GOP-Backed PAC of Boosting Virulently Anti-Semitic Dem Candidate

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) demanded this week that Republicans must stop “propping up” a virulently anti-Semitic candidate in Texas, who is running as a Democrat for Congress.

Congressional candidate Maureen Galindo (D-TX) drew bipartisan condemnation this week after she vowed to convert an ICE detention center into a “prison for American Zionists.” Galindo, who is running Texas’s recently redrawn 35th district, added in the Instagram post from last week that her new prison would perform castrations on pedophiles, meaning “most of the Zionists.”

Jeffries released a statement with DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene on Tuesday, saying, “House Republican leadership must immediately cease propping up this antisemitic candidacy, pull spending in the race and forcefully condemn these comments. This vile language by her is disqualifying and has no place in American politics, and certainly not in the Democratic Party. To embrace and uplift a fringe candidate with antisemitic — and extremely dangerous — rhetoric and views in order to win an election is beyond the pale.”

“MAGA extremists should be ashamed of themselves. Texans will not be fooled and will reject her at the ballot box next week,” concluded the statement.

The Democratic Party leadership is supporting Galindo’s opponent, Johnny Garcia, in the May 26th runoff.

The New York Times reported earlier in the month on the PAC supporting Galindo’s candidacy and linked it to Republican donors. The Times’s Shane Goldmacher reported that “Republican fingerprints are detectable” all over the “new group called Lead Left PAC, which has a scant online presence and was created so recently that it has not had to disclose any donors yet.”

Goldmacher explained the PAC’s efforts to conceal its origins noting it “was registered to a treasurer who has not previously registered a political committee, with an address that matched that of a Staples office supply store in Tallahassee, Fla. The spending so far has flowed through limited liability corporations with little disclosure.”

He explains however that it mirrors previous efforts from GOP operatives, “The ads the group has run in Nebraska closely mirror the messaging in ads previously paid for by a nonprofit group that is linked to House Republican leadership, called the American Action Network. And the metadata of the Lead Left PAC’s website includes links to WinRed, a prominent Republican donation-processing firm, as Punchbowl News previously reported. The metadata reference was later removed.”

Parties propping up extreme candidates in the opposing party is not a new practice. Nancy Pelosi defended the practice in 2020 after it was revealed Democrats were promoting far-right MAGA candidates in GOP primaries in an effort to tank Republican chances in general elections.

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