Jordan seeking GOP House leadership post despite odds Hate crimes rose 17% in 2017, FBI data show

Rep. Kevin McCarthy says he has votes to be minority leader.

Hate crimes WASHINGTON — in America rose 17 percent last year, the third consecutive year that such crimes increased, according to newly released FBI data.

Law enforcement agencies reported 7,175 hate crimes occurred in 2017, up from 6,121 in 2016. That increase was fueled in part by more police departments reporting hate crimes data to the FBI, but overall there is still a large number of departments that report no hate crimes to the federal database.

More than half of such crimes, about 3 of 5, targeted a person’s race or ethnicity, while about 1 of 5 targeted their religion.

Of the more than 7,000 incidents reported last year, 2,013 targeted black Americans, while 938 targeted Jewish Americans. Incidents targeting people for their sexual orientation accounted for 1,130 hate crimes, according to the FBI.

The FBI has urged local police departments to provide more complete infor- mation about hate crimes in their jurisdictions.

Of the more than 7,000 hate crime incidents in 2017, more than 4,000 were crimes against people, ranging from threats and intimidation to assault to murder. More than 3,000 were crimes against property, ranging from vandalism to robbery to arson.

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said the new figures are “a call to action — and we will heed that call. The Department of Justice’s top priority is to reduce violent crime in Amer- ica, and hate crimes are violent crimes. They are also despicable violations of our core values as Americans.”

Whitaker said he was “par- ticularly troubled by the increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes,” which are already the most common type of religious hate crime in the United States.

Anti-Semitic hate crimes rose 37 percent in 2017. Anti-Islamic hate crimes declined 11 percent last year, with 273 such incidents, the data show.

After years of WASHINGTON — bucking Republican Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan on everything from health care to approving spending bills to keep the federal government open, local Congressman Jim Jordan has launched a bid to become leader of the House Republicans.

Today, in a private meeting of House Republicans, Jordan will face Rep. Kevin McCa- rthy of California, the cur- rent House majority leader, who announced last weekend that he already has the votes to become House minority leader. Despite the odds against him, Jordan and his band of conservatives hope to persuade their colleagues that the Urbana Republican would make a scrappier leader for the party, which next year will be in the minority for the first time since 2010.

For Jordan, who did not respond to repeated requests for an interview, today’s vote is just the latest in a series of steps he has taken to nudge House Republicans to the right. If he were to succeed, he would be a heavy favorite to become the speaker of the House the next time Repub- licans seize control.

But many Republicans, most of whom insisted on speaking anonymously, insist that while Jordan is the face of the House conservative group he founded, the Free- dom Caucus, his quest to lead the House Republicans is an uphill battle.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” said one GOP operative, who said leader- ship elections are “a mix of popularity contests and a contest of who will be the most effective. On both of those counts,Ithink he loses out.”

A Republican adviser on Capitol Hill said Jordan “has enough Freedom Caucus peo- ple who would vote for him — and probably a handful of others — to launch a message to the current leadership, but I don’t see him getting anything beyond that.”

Others point to accusations that as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1987 to 1995 he ignored complaints from wrestlers that they were being sexually abused by a team doctor — a charge Jordan has vehemently denied.

Mike DiSabato, one of the former wrestlers accusing Jordan of ignoring the wrestlers’ complaints, said it takes “serious audacity” for Jordan to run for House leadership after such accusations.

Some see Jordan as the right person at the right time. Much like Newt Gingrich, who led a take no prisoners opposition to House Democrats when he was minority leader in 1993 and 1994, Jordan’s uncom- promising style might suit younger Republicans yearn- ing to fight the likely new House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California.

Jordan represents “a highly motivated, highly ideological wing of the Republican Party that has been desper- ately seeking power within the Republican Party for several years,” said David Cohen, a professor ofpolitical science at the University of Akron.

“Now that they no longer have to deal with a Republican speaker, what better time for the organization to flex its muscle than to try to get one of its own in the top leadership spots of the party?” Cohen said. “The only thing that the House minority leader can do is be an aggressive opposition. And Jim Jordan seems almost perfectly cast for that role.”

Tom Zawistowski, executive director of the Portage County Tea Party, said Jordan as minority leader “would give us a stronger voice. We trust him implicitly. Other than Donald Trump, he’s pretty much the only politician we’ve ever seen that does what he says. That’s pretty high praise.”

Working against Jordan may be his repeated unwillingness to compromise, with critics saying he personifies the concept that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Former Speaker Boehner, who Jordan helped topple from office in 2015, has dismissed Jordan and his conservative allies as “legislative terrorists” who are “for nothing.”

Mark Caleb Smith, the director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University, said while Jordan has a chance to be successful in his bid for majority leader, “I don’t think the odds are in his favor.”

But Smith said “if enough members are convinced that the way forward is to be bold, and side with the president aggressively, or to be more overtly conservative in matters, someone like Jordan may make sense.”

“If the GOP’s goal is to be a thorn in the side of the Democrats, Jordan will probably do that more consistently than McCarthy,” Smith said.