Kim Crockett, who won her party’s endorsement Friday to become the Republican nominee for secretary of state, is being condemned for campaign imagery she used at the state GOP convention showing George Soros as a puppet master, an old antisemitic theme.
The headline in the Jerusalem Post reads “GOP-backed Minnesota politician: Jewish incumbent is controlled by Soros.”
Jacob Millner, Upper Midwest regional director for the American Jewish Committee, issued a statement:
“Criticizing George Soros and his politics is one matter. But portraying him in a video as a puppet master controlling elections is a vicious antisemitic trope … It’s made worse by the fact that the puppet strings appear connected to Steve Simon and Mark Elias, both of whom are Jewish. Kim Crockett must immediately apologize and repudiate this bigotry.”
Crockett did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This isn’t the first time Crockett has been called out on allegations of bigotry. She previously apologized for comments she made to a New York Times reporter about East African immigrants coming to Minnesota.
“These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible,” she said in 2019, in an article that led her to leaving her post at the local conservative outfit Center of the American Experiment.
However, in a recent video posted by former GOP operative Michael Brodkorb, Crockett disavowed earlier apologies. “I would say everything today that I said in 2019,” she said. Her comments were merely taken out of context, she said.
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