The Land O’Lakes dairy company, after coming under fire for a $2,500 donation to Iowa Congressmember Steve King, announced on October 30 that it would no longer provide financial support to the rabidly anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ Republican.
In the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, even Republicans, including Steve Stivers, who heads up the Republican House congressional campaign effort, are criticizing King for a history of consorting with white supremacists.
The same day as the Pittsburgh murders, King defended his recent meeting with the far-right neo-Nazi party in Austria, saying its members would be right at home in the US Republican Party. And he’s had high praise for Toronto mayoral candidate Faith Goldy, a white nationalist who was part of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville that went horribly wrong last year. Goldy recently quoted white supremacist David Lane, who murdered a Jewish radio host in 1984 and wrote from prison, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” And she promoted a book by a Romanian writer who called for “the elimination of Jews.”
King also displays a Confederate flag on his desk, despite being a representative from a state whose soldiers fought and died to defeat the slave-owning South.
The Sioux City Journal, in a break from its past posture, has endorsed King’s Democratic opponent, J.D. Scholten.
Land O’Lakes new CEO is Beth Ford, the first out lesbian CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, who assumed her post this past summer. Despite the break with King, the company has a pattern of corporate giving favoring the GOP, with 64 percent of its donations going to Republicans.
