A Republican House candidate in California is losing party support after a report unearthed troubling social media posts.
The wave of condemnation aimed at Ted Howze, who is running against Democratic freshman Rep. Josh Harder in the state’s 10th Congressional District, began after Politico found now-deleted posts and retweets in recent years demeaning Muslims, accusing prominent Democrats of murder, and mocking a survivor of the Parkland mass shooting.
One post accused Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign chairman John Podesta of murdering former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. Two others said Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters was “hitting the crack pipe too hard” and described the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a rapist and a pedophile.
A 2016 Facebook post regarding Muslims began with the question: “Can a Muslim ever truly be a good American citizen?”
Howze blamed the posts on other people he claimed had the passwords to his social media accounts. He said he did not agree with the “negative and ugly ideas” they contained.
Howze was removed from the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Young Guns website, which promotes GOP challengers to Democratic incumbents.
“These statements are unacceptable and not indicative of the Republican Party and what we are building here at the NRCC with our diverse slate of candidates,” Rep. Tom Emmer, chairman of the NRCC, said in a statement reported by the Hill. “We have pulled our support.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California who endorsed Howze earlier in the cycle, said he was disturbed by the posts.
“The content in question on Mr. Howze’s social media channels is disappointing and disturbing,” McCarthy said in a statement. “Bigotry and hateful rhetoric — in any form — have no place in the Republican Party. These posts are unacceptable and do not reflect the Mr. Howze that I have briefly interacted with.”
Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from Illinois who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, also took the opportunity to rebuke the candidate and the GOP.
“Ted Howze is the hand-picked candidate of Leader McCarthy and House Republican Leadership,” Bustos said. “Mr. McCarthy endorsed Howze before the primary, and the NRCC kept Howze on their list of preferred candidates more than two weeks after Politico first reported on his bigoted and hateful social media rhetoric.”
