Skip to content Skip to footer

Iowa Republicans Vote Out Rep. Steve King Amid Protests for Racial Justice

Widely known as the most overtly racist member of Congress, King was defeated in the Republican primary on Tuesday.

Rep. Steve King listens during a press conference on abortion legislation on August 23, 2019, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Rep. Steve King, widely known as the most overtly racist member of Congress, was defeated Tuesday in the Republican primary battle for Iowa’s 4th district.

Challenger Randy Feenstra, a state senator, officially beat King by a margin of 36,797 to 28,977 votes, with 100% of precincts reporting, according to The New York Times. Feenstra, who won by a margin of just under 10 points, will go on to face Democrat J.D. Scholten in November.

King, who was stripped of his committee assignments after expressing sympathy for white nationalists and white supremacists, later denounced the ideologies. But King already had a long and established history of racist comments under his belt.

The congressman’s loss comes amid historic protests for racial justice from coast to coast for following the death of unarmed black man George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police. The timing did not go unnoticed by political commentators.

“For Rep Steve King, master of racism in Congress, to lose his GOP primary tonight, seems somehow fitting?” MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell tweeted after the race was called.

King’s loss was cheered by both sides of the political aisle, including freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Known by her initials, AOC was voted into the most diverse Congress ever in the 2018 midterm elections.

“Goodbye, Rep. Steve King. You are certainly not the only white supremacist in federal government, but you were among the most prominent,” she tweeted. “It’s a shame Republicans held you up as long as they did.”

Meghan McCain, the daughter of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain who sits in the conservative seat on “The View,” also did not mince words.

“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out,” she wrote on Twitter.

King’s fate was sealed as President Donald Trump faced mounting criticism after police backed by the National Guard unleashed tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang shells against peaceful protesters to clear a path for the president’s photo-op taken holding a Bible in front of historic St. John’s Episcopal Church.

King had been almost universally denounced after he questioned criticisms of terms used to identify white racists.

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” King asked during a controversial interview with the Times in January 2019.

But King was only stripped of his committee assignments last year after questioning whether there would “be any population of the world left” without rape or incest. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., had called for his resignation and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested he “find another line of work.” As King’s influence deteriorated, his campaign chest dried up amid struggles to attract donors.

King has also been criticized for bragging that water from a sink attached to a toilet at a migrant detention facility tasted “pretty good” amid a national outcry over squalid conditions at the centers. He once joked about imprisoned Muslims who were forced to eat pork in China.

In addition to his comments about white supremacy, King had previously said that “our civilization” can’t be restored with “somebody else’s babies.” He also predicted that “Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other” before non-whites outnumber whites, and had speculated that black people could more easily afford abortions if they stopped buying iPhones.

Salon’s Matthew Rozsa contributed to this report.

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.