SAN DIEGO — It was 40 years ago when Republican Congressman Clair W. Burgener was campaigning for reelection in a northern San Diego district . A popular moderate, considered unbeatable by many in the Democratic party, Burgener seemed likely to run unopposed, when suddenly before the deadline for taking out nominating papers, Tom Metzger, former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, surprised the local political world by declaring he would seek the Democratic party nomination for Congress, opposing Burgener.
At first, television stations and other news outlets didn’t understand the import of an ex-Klansman, neo-Nazi grabbing by default the nomination of a major political party. The media initially treated the story as a human interest piece, a kooky feature story of the “man bites dog” variety, in which they could report that, imagine, an actual Klansman was running for political office here in San Diego.
However, neither the Jewish community, nor its friends in both political parties, thought the Metzger candidacy to be humorous. They saw in a Metzger candidacy a stain on the good name of San Diego County, an insult to all the World War II veterans from San Diego who had risked or sacrificed their lives to defeat Adolf Hitler and his fellow Nazis, and a slap to the faces of all the Holocaust survivors who had after World War II come to San Diego as refugees.
Although I was then registered as a Democrat (today I’m registered non-partisan), I was offered the opportunity to run the media campaign for Burgener, a campaign that was built on bipartisanship. No mainstream personalities in San Diego politics wanted to be identified with Nazis–or what Metzger later fashioned into the White Aryan Resistance — and the thrust of Burgener’s media campaign was to say so, loud and clear.
Accordingly, we rolled out what we called the “Hatfield and McCoy” strategy — named for the two East Coast mountain families whose feud ran so long few participants even remembered how it started. We had political figures who in normal times were known political rivals, from opposite sides of the aisle, holding joint press conferences together at which they said, yes, of course, we have our differences, but on at least one thing, we agree. There is no room in San Diego County politics for hatred, bigotry, racism, and the antisemitism espoused by Tom Metzger.
Come this year, and we were suddenly notified in a press release sent out by the campaign of Marni von Wilpert, a candidate for San Diego City Council in the 5th District, that Tony Krvaric, the soon-to-retire chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party, had appeared in a video as a young man that made light of Hitler, Nazism, and all that it represented. The thrust of the press release was that Joe Leventhal, the candidate opposing von Wilpert for the council seat, had received a $1,200 contribution from Krvaric and ought to immediately repudiate Krvaric and Nazism, and return Krvaric’s donation. The press release was based on a news story carried by KPBS-Television, which Leventhal said he hadn’t even seen, before his opponent let loose with the press release.
For the von Wilpert campaign, this was not a time for the kind of bipartisanship that typified the Burgener campaign. No one reached out to the Leventhal campaign to say, ‘hey, there might be a problem here that goes beyond normal politics.’ Instead, it was viewed as a “gotcha” moment: a chance to embarrass Leventhal about having a supporter who at the very least, as a youth, had been insensitive to Nazism, and perhaps even worse.
Leventhal’s initial reaction was anger: “As someone of Jewish heritage, I forcefully condemn anti-Semitism of all forms, including the recent video reported by KPBS and anyone involved in making the video,” he said. “Any attempt to insinuate otherwise by my opponent is misleading and offensive.”
Having had the opportunity by Monday to check further into the matter, Leventhal messaged in response to questions from San Diego Jewish World: “Tony Krvaric regularly supports Jewish causes, including routinely providing financial support at the annual IDF (Israel Defense Force) dinners. He supported me over my non-Jewish primary opponent. My understanding is that Tony Krvaric was not involved in the making of the video that contains his image, that it’s 30 years old, and is inconsistent with who I know Tony to be. So I have no intention of returning his contribution unless and until I learn otherwise. It would be wrong to turn my back on someone who has been a vocal supporter of Israel because of political pressure from my opponent.”
Our request for comment from the von Wilpert campaign received no immediate reply.
Krvaric, meanwhile, issued two statements on Twitter. The first said, “To go back 30 years to when I was a teenage computer nerd to smear me is low, running a shopped around story, rejected by more reputable outlets, about a computer animation programmed by someone else on a computer that’s been defunct for three decades. KPBS ought to be ashamed.”
In a subsequent tweet, he wrote: “For the record, any Nazi imagery is disgusting. I didn’t create the computer animation, didn’t choose the graphics, and I obviously don’t support anything like that. Which would be obvious had KPBS bothered to talk to anyone that knows me or looked up my statements over the years.”
In her statement calling upon Leventhal to repudiate Krvaric, von Wilpert said: ““There’s no place in our community — or in any respectable American political party — for joking about genocide, anti-Semitism and Nazism.”
Nor, we should add, is there any place for alleged Nazism to be the subject of divisive, partisan attacks, without consulting the opposition candidate. Just as in the case of Burgener’s campaign, there are times when mainstream political figures like von Wilpert and Leventhal should consult with each other about the veracity of issues, especially those that can create emotional havoc among Holocaust survivors, their children, and grandchildren, as well as among the few remaining World War II veterans who fought Nazism.
Although in the heat of political battle, candidates and their staffs may feel that there is nothing more important than scoring points against their opponents, that simply is not true. Kind, considerate, compassionate handling of highly emotional issues is far more important.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com