Josh Mandel Won’t Return White Supremacist Donation
Josh Mandel, the Jewish Ohio treasurer who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2012, will not return a campaign donation from a white supremacist.
An array of Republican candidates who have received donations from Earl Holt, the president of the Council of Conservative Citizens, are returning his donations in the wake of reports that the man alleged to have killed nine black worshippers in a church in Charleston, S.C. was inspired by the group.
Mandel, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2012, will not return the $1,500 his campaign received, Chris Berry, Mandel’s spokesman, told the Toledo Blade on Tuesday.
“The money he donated was spent over two and a half years ago, so it cannot be returned,” Berry said. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) was reelected in 2012.
Dylann Roof, the 21-year old in custody, is not known to have had any ties with Holt’s group.
A number of Republicans, including presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), have returned the funds to Holt or donated their equivalent to a charity, including one in memory of the nine victims.
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