Proud Boy school board candidate gets into tense confrontation with another candidate over 'hate group' claims

A Proud Boys member confronted a California school board candidate who compared the right-wing militant group to the Ku Klux Klan.

Jeffrey Perrine went with a photographer to a candidate event Saturday for Ben Avey, who is running for San Juan Unified school board and posted criticism of the group he called the "modern day Klan," reported the Sacramento Bee.

“Conservative, Independent, or Progressive, we must reject hate groups and their members when they seek public office," wrote Avey, who left the Republican Party in 2020. "There is no place for the Proud Boys on the San Juan Unified school board,”

Perrine is also running for school board but isn't directly competing against Avey, and a six-minute video posted online by Perrine shows him approaching the other man calmly, but a shorter version posted by Avey shows the Proud Boy taking an aggressive posture.

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“[He] compared me to the Klan, and to neo-Nazis, and that’s not who I am, or what I believe in or how I act,” Perrine said. “Just so you know bro, you’re scared of me for a reason, and I am not going to go away. You don’t call me a member of the Klan.”

Avey said Perrine used derogatory language toward him before his sister started recording the encounter, and he filed a report with Sacramento police.

“People tried to connect us via text, and I said very clearly I want nothing to do with him,” Avey said.

Perrine was expelled from an elected position on the Sacramento County Republican Party’s central committee in 2021 after the newspaper exposed his ties to the Proud Boys, and local Republicans have made clear they don't support his school board campaign.

“Part of the reason I am running is I want parents more involved in school boards, and you hear the same from him,” Avey said. “But it doesn’t mean we are the same. We have radically different opinions about what people should do with schools.”