Kris Kobach
During the 2010 election cycle, the issue of immigration was a driving factor. Though many of the groups encompassed in the John Tanton Network are not legally allowed to endorse candidates, that hasn’t stopped members of the most powerful movement against immigrants from throwing their support behind hundreds of candidates. A few of the Tanton Network’s key leaders even entered themselves into races.
Below is an outline of how the seven politicians most closely aligned with the John Tanton Network, deemed the seven sisters, fared in last night’s election.
Kris Kobach is the new Secretary of State for Kansas. Until last night, Kobach was employed by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. During his campaign, Kobach used the issue of voter fraud to demonize immigrants. Like Kobach, Mike Hethmon is an IRLI lawyer. Hethmon lost his election as a Delegate for Maryland’s 27A district. IRLI’s primary purpose is to push legal causes that unfairly target immigrant communities. IRLI’s purpose is to undermine legal precedent by writing model legislation for Tanton Network organizations. IRLI also pushes xenophobic ordinances at the municipal level.
Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo lost his bid for the Colorado Governorship. Tancredo is the founder of the House Immigration Reform Caucus (IRC). IRC members have introduced punitive legislation that targets immigrants and played a key role in scuttling recent immigration reforms. Tancredo has strong connections to the Tanton Network. At the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, Tancredo spoke alongside Chad MacDonald and Roy Beck of Tanton’s mobilizing arm NumbersUSA. Tancredo also contributes to white nationalist John Tanton’s quarterly journal The Social Contract.
Daryl Metcalfe is the current leader of State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI). SLLI is a coalition of state-elected officials that serves as the legislative arm that works closely with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). When SLLI was formed, FAIR President Dan Stein sat with Metcalfe at the group’s first press conference. Earlier this year, Metcalfe was scheduled to speak with Daryl Klein at a National Security Conference in Hamilton, Ohio. Daryl Klein is a member of the Oath Keepers of Ohio. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Oath Keepers are “a Patriot outfit formed last year that suggests, in thinly veiled language, that the government has secret plans to declare martial law and intern patriotic Americans in concentration camps.”
Representing Iowa’s 5th district, Steve King handily won reelection last night. Besides bashing immigrants, King is also extremely critical of the IRS. During his speech at the 2010 CPAC Conference in Washington DC, King said that he could “empathize” with the man who crashed into the IRS building in Texas. King’s comments didn’t go unnoticed. When asked to clarify his statements, King neither apologized nor retracted his previous statement; in fact, he went even further, stating that he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people “implode” their local IRS office.
The final two Tanton Network candidates, Brian Bilbray and Russell Pearce, also both won reelection. Bilbray, of California, is the leader of IRC and a former Lobbyist for FAIR. Pearce is an Arizona state legislator who was instrumental in passing Arizona’s draconian SB1070 law.
The election of five of the seven sisters poses not only a threat to the millions of immigrants in the United States but to our society as a whole. Though the sisters and the network claim that they are only interested in the issue of immigration, the network are only interested in keeping America a white nation. As John Tanton once said, “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”
Indeed, what the seven sisters seem to represent is a network of extremists bent on perpetuating fear, not democracy.