Kansas Jewish college student, 19, defeats longtime State House incumbent
Aaron Coleman Image by youtube
(JTA) — A 19-year-old Jewish community college student has defeated a 13-year incumbent in the Democratic primary for a state House seat in Kansas.
But the party has disavowed Aaron Coleman, who has admitted to harassing girls online when he was in middle school.
Coleman, of Kansas City, defeated Stan Frownfelter, 823 to 809, in the 37th District. Frownfelter can call for a recount, and said he is mulling a write-in candidacy. There is no Republican candidate for the seat.
Coleman, the great-grandson of a Holocaust survivor, admitted to The Kansas City Star that he called one girl fat and told her to kill herself. She told the newspaper that she did, indeed, attempt suicide.
He blackmailed a second girl, threatening to send a nude photo of her to her family and friends unless she sent her more. When the girl did not comply, Coleman sent the photo he had. She told the newspaper that she doesn’t know how Coleman obtained the photo in the first place.
A third woman told the newspaper that he harassed her “for months.”
“I made serious mistakes in middle school and I deeply regret and apologize for them. I’ve grown up a great deal since then,” Coleman told The Star editorial board last week.
Coleman told The Jerusalem Post that he was “heavily inspired” by Bernie Sanders and his 2016 presidential campaign. He was also one of several teens who ran for Kansas governor in 2018 at the age of 17. Kansas has since passed a law setting 25 as the minimum age to run for governor.
“My Grandpa Charles’s mother was the only survivor of our family from Auschwitz. I have spent a great deal of time since my election victory this week reflecting on my family’s challenging journey from the Holocaust to the Kansas Legislature,” Coleman told The Jerusalem Post. “There is a certain pride to know that, if elected in November, I may be both the only Jewish representative and the youngest member of the Kansas House.”
The post Kansas Jewish college student, 19, defeats longtime incumbent in state House primary appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
