‘Racist implications’: Republican Ted Howze removes more problematic Facebook posts
Republican congressional candidate Ted Howze until Wednesday had posts on his personal Facebook page that likened welfare recipients to animals and insulted supporters of former President Barack Obama three weeks after he lost endorsements of key GOP leaders because of other problematic social media messages.
The messages, reviewed by McClatchy, showed that Howze also had not deleted the posts that cost him support of GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, such as posts comparing immigrant Dreamers to pedophiles, insulting the Black Lives Matter movement and denigrating Muslim people.
As of this week, those posts could still be accessed by Howze’s Facebook friends, though they had been hidden from his timeline.
Howze is challenging Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, who was elected to Congress in 2018 after defeating Republican Rep. Jeff Denham. Howze was listed as one of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s top candidates until Howze’s Facebook posts were brought to light.
Harder has called Howze the GOP’s “most racist candidate” in emails to Democratic supporters, citing the social media posts.
“Ted is a typical lying politician who says one thing in public and another in private and then tries to cover it up,” said Ian Lee, a spokesman for Harder’s campaign. “He’s embarrassed the valley once again and he has no business representing it.“
Howze has previously denied that he was the author of any of the posts and has accused the media of participating in a “campaign smear.” He told a local conservative media outlet that the screenshots of the posts were “clearly” “photoshopped.”
In response to several questions about those posts and his different explanations for past posts on his social media, Howze said: “Not everything is about race despite how hard the media tries, sometimes bad policy is just bad policy; and we’ve answered all this before.”
A Facebook friend of Howze who declined to be identified allowed McClatchy to use their account to review the posts. McClatchy accessed the posts as late as Wednesday morning, but they were removed hours after McClatchy reached out to Howze’s campaign for comment.
One post left on his timeline was an image comparing welfare recipients to animals.
It says that the federal government is “pleased to currently be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever in our nation’s history.”
Beside it is an image of a bear with text saying the National Parks Service “asks us ’Please do not feed the animals’ as the animals may grow dependent on these handouts and not learn to take care of themselves.”
“Makes you think,” Howze captioned the image, which is dated November 2012.
Another post was also a caption on an image, this one saying: “A million people attended Obama’s inauguration and only 14 missed work.”
“Sad but true,” Howze wrote in January 2013.
Those images represented “racial innuendo,” according to Jack Glaser, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination.
“He may believe their racial innuendo is plausibly deniable — just that Obama supporters in general tend to be unemployed, and food stamp recipients should be regarded as subhuman not because of race, but something else?” Glaser said. “But the stereotypes associating Blacks with unemployment and social welfare programs are pervasive (even though the majority of recipients are White). In today’s climate, to not at least be attuned to the racist implications of these posts — to post them anyway — indicates a degree of ignorance and indifference.”
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 8:00 AM with the headline "‘Racist implications’: Republican Ted Howze removes more problematic Facebook posts."
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