Anti-Semitism in the U.S. State of Missouri
Anti-Semitism is alive and well among Republicans in the U.S. state of Missouri.
The details about the last minutes leading up to the tragic suicide of a promising Missouri politician, a serious candidate for governor, emerged on Thursday, March 26, 2015. Moments before Missouri State Auditor Tom Schweich shot and killed himself, he was upset, as he had been for days, focused on untrue remarks that had been made about his religion, namely that he was Jewish. He was actually an Episcopalian.
He spoke on the phone to an aide to former Missouri senator John Danforth, who was concerned about him. He told her that he was outraged over the rumors and was thinking about how to handle them. Then, he threatened to take his life, the Kansas City Star newspaper reported. He passed the phone to his wife, Kathy, and while she was talking to the aide, Schweich committed suicide. Seconds later, I heard Kathy say, ‘He shot himself!’, Martha Fitz, the aide, told the newspaper on Thursday in a written statement. Kathy then called 911 on another line while I stayed on the first line with her until the paramedics arrived, she added. Danforth, a former Missouri attorney general as well as a U.S. senator and ordained Episcopal priest, was a mentor to Schweich.
What apparently set Schweich off was what he called a “whisper campaign” by Missouri Republican Party chairman John Hancock that Schweich feared was designed to hurt his gubernatorial run in Missouri. He said Hancock told donors he was a Jew.
Last month, Schweich, 54, announced he was seeking the Republican nomination for governor in 2016 against contender Catherine Hanaway, a former Missouri House speaker. He was polling well but, in the past few weeks, he seemed to be growing agitated over what he considered political dirty tricks.
He alleged that Hancock made anti-Semitic comments about him and calling him a Jew in order to smear his name before a primary in which many voters are evangelical Christians. He said his grandfather was Jewish and he taught him to never allow any anti-Semitism go unpunished, St.Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page editor Tony Messenger said last week in a written statement.
Then, a political action committee called Citizens for Fairness aired a radio advertisement comparing Schweich to the Barney Fife character played by Don Knotts in The Andy Griffith Show and calling him a weak contender for the Republican party. For a politician, he had very thin skin. He didn’t take criticism well, Messenger, who knew Schweich some six years, told The Washington Post in a telephone interview last week. If something was on his mind and he wanted to say it, he said it, he added.
Earlier in the morning on February 26, Schweich called two reporters from the Associated Press and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and invited them to a press conference at his home that afternoon. He said he wanted to clear things up. He never did.
Since then, Hancock has said he does not have a “specific recollection” about any religious comments, but that if he did say Schweich was Jewish, it wasn’t meant in an anti-Semitic way. It’s plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion, he told the Associated Press.
The story does not end here. The tragedy in the office of late Missouri state auditor Tom Schweich has deepened. A month after Schweich died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound amid an alleged political smear campaign focused on his faith, a top aide of Schweich also committed suicide by the same means. Robert “Spence” Jackson, age 44 and who served as Schweich’s media director, was found dead in his bedroom on Sunday, March 29. Police said on Monday that they recovered a revolver and a note at the scene.
It was Jackson who officially announced Schweich’s death in an e-mail to reporters last month, writing: “It is with great sadness that I confirm the passing of Missouri state Auditor Tom Schweich today. Please keep in mind his wife, Kathy, and two children.” In the wake of the Schweich suicide, Jackson was outspoken about his boss’s critics- specifically Missouri Republican Party Chairman John Hancock who was accused of engaging in a whisper campaign to tell donors that Schweich was Jewish. And Jackson was one of the first to publicly call for Hancock’s resignation after Schweich’s funeral this month. It is unconscionable to think that the Missouri GOP can be successful in 2016 with John Hancock as the chairman, Jackson told the blog PoliticMo.
At Schweich’s funeral, Danforth slammed the toxic whispers of “anti-Semitism” that he said led to Schweich’s death. The death of Tom Schweich is the natural consequence of what politics has become. I believe deep in my heart that it’s now our duty, yours and mine, to turn politics into something much better than its now so miserable state, Danforth said in the eulogy.
As Senator, Danforth was political moderate and Missouri was a heavily Democratic Party state. He was once quoted as saying he joined the Republican Party for the same reason you sometimes choose which movie to see- (it is) the one with the shortest line.