The Republican State Leadership Committee has yet to denounce state Rep. Mark Finchem’s comments
By Jenavieve Hatch | The Huffington Post
Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem (R) claimed in a newly resurfaced 2017 blog post that the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that year was led not by neo-Nazis and other members of the alt-right, but by “two Democrat mobs fighting for control and narrative foundation.”
The blog post, which was unearthed by Phoenix New Timeslast week, is one of many controversial statements by Finchem, a three-term member of the Arizona House who also belongs to the extremist anti-government group Oath Keepers.
But so far, his support for conspiracy theories hasn’t cost him his legislative seat or the backing of national Republicans. The Republican State Leadership Committee, which financially backs GOP candidates in state elections ― including in Arizona ― has been silent on Finchem and other far-right politicians who make similar comments. The organization contributed $25,000 to the Arizona Republican Party between 2014 and 2016. Finchem ran and was first elected in 2014. Neither he nor the committee responded to HuffPost’s requests for comment on Monday.
Finchem wrote that Charlottesville post just three days after the Unite the Right rally, where one woman was killed and several others were injured by swastika-bearing neo-Nazis.
After the rally, he claimed, journalists were “peddling the story that ‘far right’ and the far left are at each others throats, and that they are behind the violence that erupted in Charlottesville.”
