Missouri Democrat drops out of AG’s race, attacks opponent with antisemitic smear
A Missouri Democratic state lawmaker who has shared bizarre conspiracy theories on social media and posted a photo with a man accused of denying the Holocaust announced on Thursday that she was dropping out of the race for attorney general.
State Rep. Sarah Unsicker from Shrewsbury in St. Louis County posted her decision to end her campaign in a lengthy statement on social media that included an antisemitic attack against her Democratic opponent in the race, Elad Gross, a former assistant state attorney general who is Jewish.
“In recent days, it has become increasingly clear just how broken our political system has become,” Unsicker wrote, also calling on Gross to drop out. “Manipulation of the media surrounding my professional and personal relationships is only one such example.”
In her statement on Thursday, Unsicker made an antisemitic attack against Gross, claiming without evidence that he was a foreign agent to Israel. Her statement referenced a “criminal complaint” alleging that Gross failed to register as a foreign agent and that she forwarded the complaint to Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office.
Gross, in a phone call, said he would not drop out of the race, saying “the entire thing is detached from reality. There’s no truth to this registration allegation at all.”
“I have never represented a foreign entity,” he said. “I guess I’m Jewish so maybe that’s enough for them. It’s not true at all.”
Unsicker’s decision to drop out of the race comes as her online behavior has sparked calls for her to resign from office. House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat running for governor, last week stripped Unsicker of her committee assignments after a series of social media posts, including a photo in which Unsicker posed with a hard-right activist accused of denying the Holocaust.
In recent days, Unsicker’s social media posts have raised the possibility that Democrats might expel her from their caucus.
The most public call for Unsicker’s removal from the caucus came earlier this week from state Rep. Keri Ingle, a Lee’s Summit Democrat, who said in a statement that her “actions and words have helped propagate hateful, anti-Semitic, and conspiratorial and racist rhetoric which has hurt people and sparked online harassment campaigns.”
The strange controversy surrounding Unsicker appears to have started earlier this month, when she posted a series of tweets on X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming that social media criticism over legislation to make cashew chicken the official state dish was part of a “distraction campaign.”
In two separate tweet threads, Unsicker posted a photo of herself with Charles Johnson, a right wing activist whom the Anti-Defamation League condemns as a “Holocaust denier and alt-right troll” who asserted in a since-deleted 2017 Reddit post that the number of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust was false.
Since those posts, Unsicker has remained active on social media, including sharing a statement on X as well as with all House lawmakers alleging without evidence “credible allegations recently regarding foreign interference in elections in Missouri.”
