The New York Times has an extraordinary story today of a candidate for the Texas State Board of Education who was the top-vote getter in the recent GOP primary though she is pushing the bounds of far-right politics.
Mary Lou Bruner believes that President Obama had worked as a gay prostitute in his youth, that the United States should ban Islam, that the Democratic Party had John F. Kennedy killed, and that the United Nations had hatched a plot to depopulate the world.
Though the 68-year-old former kindergarten teacher made these views public on Facebook – and though her comments created a firestorm of controversy – she received 48 percent of the primary vote and now faces a May 24 GOP runoff election.
Here’s what one voter who supported Bruner told a Times reporter:
“I would not discount her on the basis of having those beliefs. It convinces me, though, that she’s quite conservative, and if I were going to err either way, I would want to err toward the side of the conservative.”
A Republican Party county chair in intensely conservative East Texas, Bruner’s home base, gladly defends the candidate: “At the end of the day, is Mary Lou a wacko extremist? No. She’s a nice older lady who doesn’t understand social media and the impact that it can have. I’m still going to vote for Mary Lou, and I’m going to encourage people to do the same.”
Manny Fernandez of the Times draws this conclusion:
Ms. Bruner’s anti-Obama, anti-Islam, anti-evolution and anti-gay Facebook posts have generated national headlines and turned an obscure school board election into a glimpse of the outer limits of Texas politics. In a part of the state dominated by conservative Christians and Tea Party activists, Ms. Bruner’s candidacy has posed a question no one can answer with any certainty — how far to the fringe is too far for Texas Republicans?
