Ohio GOP candidate caught dressing up in Nazi garb

The Upshot

An Ohio GOP congressional candidate once viewed as a rising star in the party is under fire this weekend after photos surfaced of him participating in a Nazi reenactment group.

As first reported by The Atlantic's Josh Green, Rich Iott, the GOP candidate in Ohio's 9th U.S. House district, was involved with a group called Wiking that pays tribute to the exploits of the lethal German Waffen SS unit during World War II. Iott, a tea party-backed candidate, admitted he was once a member of the group but only out of "purely historical interest" and that he wasn't trying to offend anyone.

"They have to take it in context. There's reenactors out there who do everything. You couldn't do Civil War re-enacting if somebody didn't play the role of the Confederates," Iott told The Atlantic. "[This] is something that's definitely way in the past. ... [I hope voters] take it in context and see it for what it is, an interest in World War II history. And that's strictly all."

But Democrats seized on the Iott photos, citing them as evidence that the GOP has embraced "fringe" candidates. Iott, who is challenging Rep. Marcy Kaptur, had been a member of over the National Republican Congressional Committee's Young Guns program, a list of the GOP's top recruits. But as TPM's Brian Beutler notices, Iott's name was removed from the list yesterday.

Iott told the Toledo Blade that he wouldn't apologize for the photos. In a statement released to reporters yesterday, he condemned the "blatant distortions" as a hit piece engineered by Kaptur. "The despicable accusations and distortions of the truth that have been leveled at me, sadly exemplify why people have lost faith in the political process and with the media as well," Iott said in the statement.

The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, which represents about 80,000 families, told the Washington Post's Felicia Sonmez that Iott's "failure to apologize is particularly shameful" since one of the SS's most notorious crimes was the killing of American POWs.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, who is Jewish, distanced himself from Iott. "I would absolutely repudiate that and do not support an individual who would do something like that," Cantor said of Iott's history with the Nazi reenactment group.

(Photo of Iott, second from the right, courtesy of The Atlantic.)