Wednesday, May 11, 2016
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Trump’s Campaign Names William D. Johnson, Racist Ex-Judicial Candidate, as GOP Delegate
Campaign Official Blames Computer Error for Submission of ‘White Nationalist’’s Name to Secretary of State
By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer
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WILLIAM D. JOHNSON Attorney |
The Donald Trump for President campaign has named Los Angeles attorney William Daniel Johnson—who ran for the Los Angeles Superior Court eight years ago as “Bill Johnson”—as one of its 169 prospective delegates from California to the Republican National Convention.
Johnson, who has a solo practice emphasizing corporate law, is a white supremacist who has advocated the deportation of non-whites from the United States. His 2008 candidacy for the trial court attracted 26 percent of the vote to 74 percent for James Bianco, who was a court commissioner at the time and still holds the seat.
The website of Mother Jones magazine was the first media outlet to report that Johnson’s name was on the list of delegate candidates released by state election officials Monday night. “I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody,” Mother Jones quoted Johnson as saying.
Johnson also told the publication he had received an email from Trump’s California delegate coordinator informing him of his selection.
But yesterday, the Los Angeles Times website quoted a statement from Trump campaign official Tim Clark:
“Upon careful review of computer records, the inclusion of a potential delegate that had previously been rejected and removed from the campaign’s list in February 2016, was discovered. This was immediately corrected and a final list, which does not include this individual, was submitted for certification.”
A spokesperson for the secretary of state could not be reached late yesterday for clarification.
Amendment Book
Johnson, using the pseudonym James O. Pace, published a book in 1985 called “Amendment to the Constitution,” proposing a federal constitutional amendment that would repeal the 14th and 15th Amendments.
The portion of the 14th Amendment that conflicts with Johnson’s plan is the first sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The two-sentence 15th Amendment provides, chiefly: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
The amendment would limit citizenship to persons of “white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is in the British Isles or Northwestern Europe.”
Johnson was actively involved in the 2008 presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who endorsed his judicial candidacy. But Paul withdrew the endorsement after learning of Johnson’s “past statements and associations,” a Paul spokesperson said at the time.
His judicial candidacy was not his first bid for public office.
Congressional Candidate
In 1989, he qualified as a candidate in a special election in Wyoming for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. That seat was being vacated by now-Vice President Dick Cheney when he resigned to become secretary of defense.
He told The Associated Press at the time:
“Whites don’t have a future here in this country, and that is...one of many issues that I am addressing.”
Johnson attracted about one-third of one percent of the vote. His campaign manager, according to the Daily News of Los Angeles, was John Abarr, a Ku Klux Klan organizer.
In 2006, Johnson again sought a congressional seat, this time in Arizona. Billing himself as “a traditional democrat—embracing the views and policies at the historical core of the party,” he competed with five others for the Democratic Party nomination, coming in a weak fifth in a campaign that emphasized stepped up efforts to send Mexicans back to Mexico, a position dovetailing with Trump’s calls to round up undocumented aliens and build a wall between the United States and Mexico.
Copyright 2016, Metropolitan News Company