KC-area voters endorsed hate, bigotry in primaries. Why would they back these candidates?

Ever wonder where the nation’s poisonous political sludge springs from? Well, some of it oozes forth right here at home.

In fact, voters just rewarded two of the Kansas City area’s worst offenders with apparent primary election wins.

Steve West, whose vile racist and homophobic utterings prompted even his own family to campaign against him, won the Missouri House District 15 Republican primary Tuesday 1,342 to 1,281, according to unofficial election results.

If only his family were larger.

Meanwhile, on the Kansas side of the metro, Democrat Aaron Coleman reacted with delight to prominent Republican Herman Cain’s death from COVID-19. And he told a former Kansas Republican lawmaker and talk show host that he’d “laugh and giggle when you get COVID and die.” Nonetheless, Coleman is winning his District 37 Kansas House primary by one vote. His lead, though still not secure, grew to 807-801 on Friday, according to the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office.

Even if he ends up losing, he never should have come this far.

How on earth, and in the year 2020, can bile such as theirs seep under the door of an election, much less be allowed to creep so close to the statehouse doors? What the heck, if anything, were voters thinking?

It’s not like these two ambassadors of antipathy took great pains to hide their polluted thinking.

West, in particular, should be well known to the district’s electorate: He also won the nomination in 2018, despite having said in 2017, “Looking back in history, unfortunately, Hitler was right about what was taking place in Germany. And who was behind it.”

Jews, he said, “shouldn’t have the right to serve in any elected office, they shouldn’t have the right to contribute to political campaigns, because they are trying to poison this country for the benefit of Israel.”

He once savaged the godly work of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital by saying society is “getting these kids sick through vaccines and other means and then they’re torturing them with these anti-cancer drugs … all for a little PR for the Jewish cabal.” He’s linked pedophilia to homosexuality and has called women’s sports a “breeding ground for lesbianism.”

Surely someone in the district must have noticed that it made national news in 2018 after two of West’s children warned The Star’s readers about their father.

“My dad’s a fanatic. He must be stopped,” son Andy West said at the time. “His ideology is pure hatred. It’s totally insane.”

This year, his family circulated 700 flyers warning voters, “Let’s stop the circus. Don’t vote for Steve.” There’s even a website called stopsteve.org detailing yet more of his disqualifying rhetoric.

Yet he gets a second straight nomination to the Missouri legislature. Would billboards work better next time? What would it take to wake voters up to the hate?

As for Coleman, his venom for Republicans narrowly exceeds his loathing for police and his vitriol toward the pro-life community.

“Let’s disband the police and abolish prisons,” he wrote in a series of tweets. “We can replace them with more compassionate options. …

“Do you want the police to have ten bullets for every man, woman and child? …

“Let me say it louder for those in the back: F—- the police.” The latter screed is followed by hashtags #f—-12 and #12gottago, the number 12 being shorthand for law enforcement.

On life, he tweeted, “It could be murder and I wouldn’t care. … I don’t respect fetuses, or their ‘life,’ and will permit them to be terminated at any point, up to the day before labour (sic).”

Coleman’s campaign Twitter account was taken down after the offensive statements drew public attention outside his followers. It returned Friday, but the offending tweets have been deleted, mercifully. He is just 19, and has apologized for his COVID remarks. But neither fact mitigates the hate.

Will Kansas City-area voters continue to fan the flames of hatred in November? How could they have done so Tuesday?

To their credit, Democratic and Republican officials have strongly rebuked the two men’s views. But it’s a little late for either party to try disavowing this pair: Party leaders will have a hard time socially or politically distancing themselves from such naked hatred if either of these two arrives for work next January at their respective legislatures.

It’s not a hypothetical dilemma: While West has a Democratic opponent in November, Coleman has no Republican opposition in the general election, and will likely be a member of the Kansas Legislature next year if he is declared the winner in Tuesday’s primary.

In both cases, the parties failed their voters utterly by not doing more to warn them about this highly avoidable electoral disaster.

This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "KC-area voters endorsed hate, bigotry in primaries. Why would they back these candidates?."