Nazi Reenactor Causing Bad Headlines For GOP…Again

Former Republican Congressional candidate Rich Iott
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The Ohio Nazi reenactor who briefly captured the political world’s imagination when he ran for Congress in Ohio last year is back.

And once again, he’s causing trouble for his fellow Republicans. One of them being the Speaker of the House.

A refresher: Rich Iott is a wealthy former grocery chain CEO who won the GOP nomination to run against Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) in 2010. He’s tea party-aligned, Republican and rich: a good combo for a GOP trying (successfully it turned out) to channel tea party frustration into flipping the House. There’s only one problem: he spent some of his weekends dressing up like a Nazi as a member of the “5th SS Wiking Panzer Division,” a group of Nazi reenactors.

One expert Josh Green — who broke the story last year — interviewed described the groups like Iott’s as “so unhistorical and so apologetic [to Nazis] that you don’t know to what degree they’ve simply caught up innocent war memorabilia enthusiasts who love putting on uniforms.”

Needless to say, this caused a bit of a stir. Iott said he didn’t mean to offend anybody, Democrats condemned him, the NRCC scrubbed his name from their “Young Guns” website and then-House Minority Whip Eric Cantor also condemned him.

But fellow Buckeye and then-House Minority Leader John Boehner declined to abandon Iott, campaigning with him near the end of the race Iott eventually lost to Kaptur.

Now, it seems, Iott is returning the favor. The Washington Jewish Week reports Iott gave the maximum legally allowed ($2,400) to Boehner’s PAC in the last FEC filing period. The paper’s Adam Kredo asked, “given what we know about Iott’s pastime, should a leader like Boehner keep the contribution?”

The answer to some Jewish Democrats is certainly no. On Tuesday, the National Jewish Democratic Council called on Boehner to return the money. A request for comment from Boehner’s PAC was not immediately returned.

Boehner is not the only Ohio Republican to face awkward questions surrounding Iott’s cash. A Democratic-aligned group, ProgressOhio, made headlines yesterday when they called on Josh Mandel, the Ohio Treasurer and a likely candidate vying for the chance to take on Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) next year, to donate the $1,000 Iott gave his campaign to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The whole thing is doubly awkward for Mandel because he’s Jewish, and was once on the board of Cleveland Jewish News, which hit him with this less-than-flattering story last week.

Once again having to explain how a Nazi hobbyist made it onto their list of top House prospects in 2010 is probably not something Republicans reeling from record-low Congressional approval ratings want to do as they spool up their effort to defend their majority in 2012. Yet thanks to Iott’s checkbook, they could find themselves doing just that.

This post was updated to include the NJDC press release and properly cite Adam Kredo.

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