Hoekstra Touring State Today with Extreme Congressman Who Suggested Last Week That Allowing non-“Male Landowners” to Vote has Caused Need to Put Things “Back in Order”

From Michigan Democratic Party

In Congressional hearing, Congressman also says allowing the jobless to vote means they’ll just vote themselves “more government benefits”

LANSING – Former Congressman, lobby firm employee and U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra is on a publicity tour in Michigan with Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) today, who is widely regarded as one of the most far right-wing extremists in Washington. Just last week Kingshocked spectators when he suggested in a House Judiciary Committee hearing that allowing citizens other than male property owners to vote had created an imbalance because these people do not “have skin in the game” and asked whether a balanced budget amendment could “help set some of that back in order, that was sought to be put in order when it was property owners that voted?” King went on to say that allowing people who don’t have a job to vote means the unemployed will vote themselves “more government benefits.”

King is also famous for defending torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib,erroneously claiming in 2006 while the Iraq War was still raging that American troops in Iraq were safer than a civilian in Washington, D.C., calling Joe McCarthy “a great American hero” and suggesting illegal immigrants could be treated similarly to “livestock.” (These and more of King’s “greatest hits” here.)

“Pete Hoekstra’s guest of honor is one of the most backwards and out of touch politicians in the country,” said Mark Brewer, Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. “Someone who suggests that problems were created once we started allowing people other than male land owners to vote should be denounced, not brought to Michigan to help you campaign. To bring a politician who says that unemployed people just vote to give themselves more government benefits to Michigan, where so many are struggling to find a job, is a total slap in the face. These comments are the latest in a string of bizarre and offensive statements from Congressman King, and King’s endorsement is the latest in a string of endorsements from shockingly extreme politicians.”

While it may normally seem odd for a candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan to seek out and want to publicize the endorsement of a Washington politician with views so out of the mainstream, Hoekstra’s touting of the King endorsement follows a pattern of wrapping himself in the endorsements of wildly extreme national figures. Hoekstra has also recently touted the endorsement of Michele Bachman,Sharon Angle and others whose views would alarm most Michiganders.