A candidate for governor of Missouri with alleged ties to the Ku Klux Klan can remain on the ballot as a Republican, a judge in Cole County ruled Friday.
Circuit Court Judge Cotton Walker dismissed a lawsuit from the Republican Party of Missouri to remove the long-awaited candidate, Darrell Leon McClanahan III, from the August primary.
Walker wrote in his order that the state Republican party “willingly created the association about which it now complains” by accepting McClanahan’s filing fee to run for office.
“Plaintiff could have chosen to avoid potentially undesirable associations by disclaiming filing fees for statewide candidates. That didn’t happen,” Walker wrote.
McClanahan, who lives in Milo, a small town in Vernon County about 90 minutes south of Kansas City, filed for governor as a Republican and paid his $500 filing fee in February. The state party later disavowed McClanahan after an online photo emerged of him saluting in front of a burning cross next to a person wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe with a hood.
David Roland, an attorney for McClanahan, said in a statement Sunday that Walker did the right thing. Once a party accepts a candidate’s filing fee, “they no longer have the right to ask the court to relieve them of the responsibility for their choice,” he said.
“A party can reject candidates they believe do not represent the party’s values, but the ultimate choice should be left to the party’s own voters,” Roland said.
A spokesperson for the Missouri GOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A lawyer for the party argued during a one-day trial earlier this month that the Republican Party had chosen to distance itself from McClanahan, saying he had a racist past.
“The only reason the party does not want him on the ballot is his outspoken membership and support of the principles of the Ku Klux Klan,” Lowell Pearson, an attorney for the party, said during the trial.
After Friday’s ruling, McClanahan’s name is poised to appear at the top of the ballot in the Republican primary for governor, according to the unofficial list of candidates on the Missouri Secretary of State Office website.
The push to oust McClanahan comes as Missouri Republicans seek to maintain control of the governor’s office following Gov. Mike Parson’s resignation. Major Republican candidates include Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring.
The Missouri GOP’s lawsuit included McClanahan’s photo in front of the burning cross, social media posts “using Nazi imagery,” and a social media post using the phrase “White Power.”
However, while the state party argued it knew nothing about McClanahan’s past, this was not the first time McClanahan has run for elected office as a Republican in Missouri.
The Anti-Defamation League wrote about McClanahan’s photo in front of the burning cross in 2022 after he ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
In response, McClanahan filed a defamation suit against the organization last year to have the article removed.
In court filings, McClanahan described himself as a “pro-white male” who is “committed to traditional Christian values.” He said in the lawsuit that he was never a member of the KKK, but was instead given a “one-year honorary membership” by a Missouri coordinator.
McClanahan told The Star in a text message in March that he had received a one-year honorary membership in the League of the South — which condemns the ADL as a white supremacist group.
A federal magistrate judge dismissed the lawsuit last year, finding McClanahan had not sufficiently asserted a claim against the organization.
“The complaint itself reflects that Plaintiff holds the views attributed to him by the ADL article, i.e., the characterization of his social media presence and views as anti-Semitic, white supremacist, anti-government, and bigoted,” the judge wrote in the order.
In a separate case involving Vernon County Republicans this month, a circuit court judge sided with the county’s Republican committee and ruled that eight Republicans should not be allowed to run in Republican elections. They had refused to participate in the commission’s “moral values” survey, so the commission refused to collect the filing fees from the candidates.
