The West Virginia State Democratic Party is calling for the state’s GOP to condemn “anti-Semitic hate speech spread by Robert Karnes,” a Republican state senate candidate.
Karnes, a former West Virginia state senator, won the June 9 primary against incumbent Sen. John Pitsenbarger.
According to the Democratic Party in a Facebook post, Karnes, in a conversation with Mike Pushkin, a Democratic Jewish member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, “pushed a false conspiracy theory that George Soros made his fortune by ‘selling Jews to the Nazis.’ ”
Karnes said that since Pushkin was a Jew, like billionaire liberal activist Soros, Pushkin could “be like George.”
“This kind of hateful, anti-Semitic language has no place in West Virginia, and it certainly has no place in our state’s Capitol,” said West Virginia State Democratic Party chairwoman Belinda Biafore. “I hope chairwoman Melody Potter and the entire WV GOP will do the right thing, and denounce this awful rhetoric.”
