White Supremacist Far Behind in Idaho Sheriff Race
A white supremacist who ran a long-shot campaign for sheriff in Idaho was trailing far behind his incumbent opponent late on Tuesday, according to early returns in the three-way race for the Republican nomination.
Shaun Winkler, an avowed Ku Klux Klan member and convicted batterer, had received only 40 votes in northern Idaho’s Bonner County, versus 1,072 votes for incumbent Sheriff Daryl Wheeler, with 10 of 33 precincts reporting.
Tim Fry, a police officer, had 353 votes.
Winkler, 33, attracted national attention for a campaign that culminated earlier this month with a cross burning on his northern Idaho property near Priest River and a pledge to crack down on sexual predators and illegal drugs.
Winkler’s supremacist sentiments, in which he has derided Jews and African-Americans, have sparked outrage in the Idaho Panhandle, where local leaders and human rights activists have struggled to shake off decades-old stereotypes of the area where the late Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler sought to establish a “white homeland.” Winkler was one of Butler’s trusted aides.