Keith Alexander (from a campaign poster)

The three Republicans vying for the head-of-the-ticket party position in Tuesday’s countywide party primary have all taken note of recent news disclosures of Republican assessor candidate Keith Alexander’s white nationalist background and statements. And all three GOP candidates for Shelby County Mayor — Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, Trustee David Lenoir, and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos — repudiated Alexander for the record.

As pointed out in The Commercial Appeal Sunday in a front-page story by Mark Perrusquia and on the paper’s editorial page, Alexander has taken extreme positions as a former talk-show host on the radio program “The Political Cesspool” and elsewhere.

Some of Alexander’s statements:

“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….[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.”

“[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 start destroying Western civilization and white heritage.” (The remark about “a certain religious persuasion” closely resembles a staple attitude frequently voiced by known anti-Semites.)

Reactions from the would-be Republican standard-bearers to Alexander:

Commissioner Roland: I don’t even take him seriously as a candidate. He doesn’t stand for what I stand for. My record in support of the black community speaks for itself. In these days, we need people who unite rather than divide.

Trustee Lenoir: It does not represent me or anybody else in the Republican party. It surely is not characteristic of what the party is all about.

Clerk Touliatos: I’m shocked that some in the party knew that his opinions existed and didn’t condemn them earlier. His comments and attitudes are not what the party of Lincoln stands for.