Politics

Wisc. Dem Gubernatorial Candidate To Hand Out KKK Hoods At Republican Convention

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Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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A Democratic Wisconsin assemblyman and candidate for governor plans to hand out Ku Klux Klan hoods — which he calls “Republican party hats” — at the state’s GOP convention this weekend.

Brett Hulsey, a two-term assemblyman, said that he spent $1 on the KKK hoods and fashioned them using his daughter’s sewing machine, according to the Associated Press.

He also posted a picture of one of the homemade hoods on his Twitter account.

Hulsey, who is challenging Mary Burke for the Democratic nomination, has also sought out Confederate Civil War re-enactors ahead of the convention to draw attention to what he considers a racist Republican Party and its state leader, Gov. Scott Walker.

“What I find offensive is Gov. Walker and the Republicans’ racist record,” Hulsey told the Wisconsin State Journal. “They’re the ones considering the resolution to leave the United States.”

Hulsey was referring to a resolution – one of 23 – that will be up for debate at this weekend’s convention. The resolution, which would allow Wisconsin to secede from the U.S. “under extreme conditions,” worked its way up through a regional caucus and was accepted for consideration in a split vote.

But most top Republicans, including Walker, oppose the measure.

“I don’t think that one aligns with where most Republican officials are in the state of Wisconsin — certainly not with me,” Walker said last month, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

That has not deterred Hulsey.

“I want to bid Governor Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans farewell, and hope they enjoy the Confederacy,” Hulsey said in a statement posted at his blog. “I have lived and worked in the South and would rather they leave Wisconsin than take us backward and turn us into Wississippi.”

“Wississippi” is a neologism that Hulsey often uses in his writings to refer to his home state.

Hulsey, who was issued a disorderly conduct citation in 2012 after he flipped a 9-year-old boy off of an inner tube, accuses Walker of “tolerating racist staff comments, making it harder for women and Native Americans to address discrimination, taking $1.5 billion from 2.6 million Wisconsin school children, students, and public servants, making it harder to vote, taking away healthcare from over 90,000 working people, ending studies on racial profiling, and others.”

“We may disagree with the policies of this Republican Party,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate in a statement, “but this type of behavior is completely unacceptable and grossly inappropriate.”

“Brett Hulsey’s actions amount to nothing more than a reprehensible, vile stunt and everyone should be outraged,” read a tweet from the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

Hulsey’s antics are part of a recent trend. Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson likened the tea party to the KKK in a campaign email last year. And last month, Hall of Fame baseball player Hank Aaron compared the GOP to the domestic terror group, saying that Republicans who oppose President Obama wear “neckties and starched shirts” instead of hoods.

Hulsey did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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