It was one year ago, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” ran its original profile of Clay Higgins, the U.S. House Representative from Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District after an improbable win in the 2016 elections where he finished second in the “jungle primary”, but came from behind to defeat fellow Republican Scott Angelle with 56% of the vote. That won Higgins, a guy nicknamed “the Cajun John Wayne”, the right to go to Washington, D.C. and replace Congressman Charles Boustany, (whose own bid for U.S. Senate failed, due to the unsavory rumors about him soliciting prostitutes that popped up).
Anyway, when we say that Clay Higgins’ victory in the 2016 elections was improbable, we aren’t joking around. Scott Angelle was considered a favorite in that race for months, and as of February of 2016, Higgins was still serving as a sheriff in St. Landry Parish, making appearances on the “Crime Stoppers” show where he would not just ask the community for help in finding felons, but would start berating and mocking them in segments on the show. That got him some notoriety, particularly from the right, because over time, Higgins’ rants started to get… well, a little alarming, and kind of racist. So, of course he had a few guest spots on Fox and Friends in 2015. But as Higgins continued to get more and more over-the-top in his segments on Crime Stoppers, he went viral when he asked for help with “The Gremlins gang”, seventeen individuals who just so happened to be African Americans who he referred to as “heathens”, “thugs” and “animals” while threatening them to turn themselves in with a contingent of officers in SWAT gear and with rifles because, “You will be hunted, you will be tracked. And if you raise your weapon to a man like me, we’ll return fire with superior fire.”
Making things even more troubling was that the seventeen men had their annoyed families come forward to wonder why the hell the Cajun John Wayne was threatening their loved ones, because they weren’t even aware of their family being in any “Gremlins” gang, saying that it may have been referring to an attempt by some of them to start a rap group years earlier. Higgins tried defending the police’s information on the “gang” by saying his department had “read it on the internet”, which sounds a lot like Donald Trump, come to think of it. Oh, he also insisted his video wasn’t racist because each of the officers in it also was standing near an African American community leader (similar to the “we have black friends” defense). Well, after his boss let Higgins know he’d gone too far, he gave a public resignation, saying he “don’t do well reined in” and that he would “rather die” than sacrifice his principles by… I guess conducting himself professionally? Fox and Friends and other right-wing allies began to rally around poor, poor Clay Higgins for having his free speech quelled (even though the First Amendment doesn’t allow you the right to speak without punishment from your employer on television while representing them). He parlayed the criticism against him into being the victim and started his campaign for Congress instead.
And then, once Clay Higgins advanced to the final two in the GOP Primary, partially due to receiving a large contribution from fellow fascist-lunatic and former Congressman Allen West, the local media started doing its job, and digging at the sudden political star that could end up in Washington, D.C. They noted that back in 2007, Clay Higgins previously had resigned from the Opelousas Police Department to avoid receiving disciplinary measures after he was accused of using excessive force, and giving false statements in the ensuing investigation. But even more damning was when a public records request was made with the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office that discovered Higgins wasn’t just dismissed because of the “Gremlins Gang” video… his superiors had become appalled at how Higgins had begun trying to exploit his appearances on Crime Stoppers as a new means of getting revenue, using government e-mail to sell mugs and t-shirts with his likeness to fans of the show, and book himself on whatever talk shows would have him on to appear… as long as they paid him in cash. The “cash preferred” nature of his bookings was because Higgins had the IRS garnishing money from his wages to pay back taxes and keeping payments off the books would prevent the IRS from getting their hands on it. Higgins even had dreams of appearing on his own reality show called “American Justice” where they would carry out SWAT raids, with him leading the charge, and talking trash to the crooks as they brought them in.
Okay… so that’s a month before the election. There’s Scott Angelle, a moderate Republican, and Clay Higgins, an arguably pretty racist, over-aggressive, fame-seeking, wannabe-fascist nut who seems to want to evade paying taxes. In 2016… that’s the same formula that got Donald Trump elected, and Louisiana’s 3rd followed suit when presented with the same kind of candidate to represent them in the U.S. House of Representatives. Higgins’ website featured issue stances that were a hot bed of crazy, including an argument against all gun control because it didn’t really exist prior to the 1960s (it did, and a need from rifles available to the public tending more towards the semi-automatic and automatic), and referring to the Affordable Care Act as follows:
”2,800 pages of unintelligible psychobabble. It’s the most egregious seizure of power and treasure from the American people in history. It’s the worst idea in an elaborate history of bad ideas. It’s a book of lies, based on lies, sold by liars. Obamacare must be repealed. Period.”
Louisiana’s 3rd District choosing an “outsider” has not served them well:
- February 16th, 2017: Higgins votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
- March 16th, 2017: Clay Higgins votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge’s written order. We feel safer already.
- March 28th, 2017: Rep. Higgins votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers’ internet usage to businesses. Well, so much for privacy.
- May 4th, 2017: Higgins votes for the GOP’s healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, postpartum depression, and sexual assault as “pre-existing conditions”. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Higgins would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
- June 8th, 2017: Clay Higgins votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
- October 3rd, 2017: Higgins votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
- February 18th, 2018: Higgins and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.
Now, here’s the thing… the “Gremlins gang” video was a pretty clear indicator that Clay Higgins might be a bit of a bigot, and that he would overreact to threats. Well, if anyone had any doubts of if that was a fluke, we can be pretty sure it isn’t now, because after a terror attack in London in June 2017, Clay Higgins responded a day later by calling for Christendom to go to war against “Radical Islam”, and giving the level-headed assessment that we should just “kill them all”.
“The free world… all of Christendom… is at war with Islamic horror. Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identity them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”
Rep. Higgins made no apologies after people were shocked, and blamed the negativity towards his comments on “political correctness”. Because of course he did. He’s still not done, though. As of three days ago, he drew the ire of Jewish groups by filming a political video in the Auschwitz gas chambers without the permission of the museum, using the symbol of the Holocaust as a prop to defend his desire to increase United States military spending. Jewish leaders are, predictably, not pleased. On the upside, for all their long-standing grievances, at least Muslims and Jews can come together and agree, Clay Higgins is an ***hole.
So now, we can add to our original look at Clay Higgins from last year, by noting that he has also outed himself as a climate change denier in August of 2017.Somehow, going into a potential 2018 Blue Wave election, Clay Higgins has found himself in the middle of a proxy war between Donald Trump and Trump’s current legal representative, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Higgins has gotten Trump’s backing on Twitter, and meanwhile, Giuliani came out of nowhere to support one of Higgins’ Republican opponents in this year’s “jungle primary” in Louisiana, Josh Guillory. Now, normally, you would think the endorsement of a sitting president would easily outweigh Giuliani’s, but then again, Donald Trump is an idiot, and in his Twitter endorsement, linked to a student currently at Georgia Tech named Clay Higgins, and not the former sheriff.
As we mentioned in our opening, in 2016, Democrats were shut out of the general election after Clay Higgins and Scott Angelle advanced out of the “jungle primary” for this seat. This year, Higgins and Guillory are looking to repeat that feat, but there are three Democrats who hopefully will not split the vote between them too much, and have one at least advance to the general election in November. If they do, they face a big hurdle to replace Higgins as Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District has a +20 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.We’ll have to see if any of Higgin’s Auschwitz antics, or saying “Kill them All” about Muslims end up costing him a second term in Washington, D.C. That’s apparently up to his constituents to decide.
One Year Ago, July 7th, 2017: Clay Higgins (LA)… Original Profile
Two Year Ago, July 7th, 2016: Christopher Shank (MD)…2016 Update
Three Years Ago, July 7th, 2015: Christopher Shank (MD)… Original Profile