Tea party candidate in NC shunned by GOP for believing he is the Messiah, and other things
Tim D’Annunzio, a congressional candidate in North Carolina’s most competitive district, has run an anti-establishment campaign with vows to dismantle entire branches of the federal government. His ideas have drawn support from tea party activists, and he has raised more money from individuals than his GOP rival while also contributing more than $1 million to his own campaign.
Republican leaders in both Raleigh and Washington, however, are worried about his electability in November if he wins a primary runoff next month. They’re publicizing court documents about D’Annunzio’s past legal, martial and business troubles and denouncing him as unfit for office.“Mr. D’Annunzio has disqualified himself by his background, his record and his behavior,” said Tom Fetzer, North Carolina’s Republican Party chairman. He said the GOP embraces the tea party but doesn’t believe a person with such a checkered past should be the party’s nominee.
In Hoke County divorce records, his wife said in 1995 that D’Annunzio had claimed to be the Messiah, had traveled to New Jersey to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. A doctor’s evaluation the following month said D’Annunzio used marijuana almost daily, had been living with another woman for several months, had once been in drug treatment for heroin dependence and was jailed a couple times as a teenager.
The doctor concluded that his religious beliefs were not delusional. A judge wrote in a child support ruling a few years later that D’Annunzio was a self-described “religious zealot” who believed the government was the “Antichrist.” The judge said he was willfully failing to make child support payments.