Shelby GOP should disavow Alexander bid

Don’t let his generic red-and-white campaign signs fool you.

Keith Alexander, a candidate for Shelby County property assessor in Tuesday’s primary, is no generic red-state Republican.

The part-time right-wing radio host is a full-time race and religion bigot — as anyone who has had the misfortune of listening to his ignorant, hateful takes on the aptly named “The Political Cesspool” can attest.

Keith Alexander on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Martin Luther King was really a bad man. In fact, I doubt that very many people in the audience have within their circle of friends and acquaintances a man that was worse than Martin Luther King. He certainly is not as bad a man as Jack the Ripper or something like that, for example, or (serial killer) John Wayne Gacy or somebody like that. He is not a murderer. He is not somebody that did those types of things. But he did go to jail. And that’s really key.”

Keith Alexander on Dr. King and other “black ministers”:

“They (the Communists) had to give him plenty of money to keep him on task because if they hadn’t he would have just gone on into doing what so many black ministers do, which is, to, you know, preying on his congregation … and chasing after the women in his congregation, too.”

Keith Alexander on African-Americans and Jews who pushed for the removal of the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue from a Memphis park:

“They (African-Americans) can’t solve any real problems like infant mortality or high crime rates or functional illiteracy and illegitimacy, things like that. But they can with the help of certain enablers from a certain religious persuasion (Jews) start destroying Western civilization and white heritage.”

As reporter Marc Perrusquia found, records show Alexander served on the board of directors of the Missouri-based Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) as recently as 2015.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the civil rights watchdog group, describes the CCC as a “modern reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils” formed to battle school desegregation in the South.

SPLC identifies “The Political Cesspool” radio show as “overtly racist” and “anti-Semitic.” Promotional audio for the show describes it as “dedicated to the unapologetic advocacy on behalf of European Americans.”

Alexander claims he has severed ties with the CCC, which he now calls “probably too extreme,” and with “The Political Cesspool,” which he co-hosted as recently as December.

“I don’t consider myself a right-wing extremist,” said Alexander, 67.

That would have been true 100 years ago, when white supremacists erected Forrest’s Jim Crow monument and white lynch mobs terrorized AfricanAmericans, as well as Catholics, Jews and Pentecostals.

That might have been true 50 years ago, when Dr. King was assassinated here by a white racist. It’s not true now. Someone with Alexander’s publicly stated extremist views certainly can’t be trusted to accurately and fairly assess the property values of a majority of citizens in this county.

He certainly can’t be trusted to honestly and fairly supervise the good people who work in the assessor’s office.

More importantly, he shouldn’t be entrusted with any public office.

The Shelby County Republican Party and all other Republican candidates should disavow and renounce Alexander’s candidacy.

The good Republican voters of Shelby County should reject it outright.