In a ‘tea party’ year, a brew of gaffes, groans

On the spectrum of political mistakes, being photographed in a Nazi uniform may top the list.

That’s the error that threatens to engulf the upstart campaign of Ohio Republican House candidate Rich Iott, whose past participation in a World War II reenactment group was reported Friday by the Atlantic, complete with photos of a grinning Iott dressed as a member of a German SS division.

Iott is not the only insurgent candidate trying to clamber back onto safe ground: In New York, Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino insisted he is not anti-gay after telling an Orthodox Jewish congregation that children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option.” The fact that his remarks came right after New York police arrested members of a gang accused of torturing men they thought were gay has not helped his cause.

The predicaments of both men spotlight a side effect of this year’s anti-incumbency fever, which has produced a new class of untested nominees, many backed by the “tea party” movement, with positions and backgrounds out of the mainstream.

In Nevada, GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle has raised the prospect of “2nd Amendment remedies” and talked about young rape victims making “a lemon situation into lemonade.”

Christine O’Donnell, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, opened her first ad by declaring, “I am not a witch,” in an effort to put to rest stories about her past admission that she “dabbled” in witchcraft in high school.

Colorado’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Dan Maes, called Denver’s bike-swap program a United Nations plot and lost support from party leaders after the Denver Post revealed that he embellished his role as a young police officer in Kansas.

And Rand Paul, the GOP Senate nominee in Kentucky, caused a furor this spring when he questioned whether the federal government should force private businesses to follow civil rights laws. (He later issued a statement saying he strongly backs the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)

Republicans don’t have a monopoly on off-the-wall candidates, of course. Alvin Greene, the surprise Democratic nominee for Senate in South Carolina, is unemployed and facing pornography charges. Alan Grayson, the outspoken Democratic congressman from Florida, has been sharply criticized for running a campaign commercial in which he dubbed his opponent “Taliban Dan” because of his conservative views about marriage.

But the spate of head-snapping GOP nominees in this year’s election worries some Republican strategists, who fear their unorthodox rhetoric and ideological extremism could turn off voters.

“All revolutions have their whack jobs,” said Mark McKinnon, a former advisor to President George W. Bush who is supporting an effort to promote moderate candidates. “Paladino happens to be the GOP’s latest.”

In trying to harness the burgeoning tea party movement, the GOP must contend with political novices, he said.

“Hopefully, most of the real problems, like Paladino, will lose their general elections. If not, it really poses a long-term brand problem for Republicans.”

The challenge posed by such candidates was evident in the tepid statement released Monday by Ed Cox, New York’s Republican Party chairman, after Paladino deplored gay pride parades with “people in bikini-type outfits grinding at each other.”

“Our Republican gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino, is more than capable of speaking for himself on the matters he addressed on air this morning and to Orthodox Jewish leaders on Sunday,” Cox said. “We condemn any remarks that can be construed as homophobic.”

Meanwhile, GOP leaders such as House Minority Whip Eric Cantor have distanced themselves from Iott, a Toledo businessman and first-time candidate, who said he participated in a Nazi reenactment group out of historic interest, not sympathy for their cause.

Republican strategist Scott Reed said he did not think such flaps would have resonance outside of the candidates’ districts, noting that the tea party has imbued the GOP with newfound energy.

“The one thing you can’t ever buy in politics is intensity, and right now the Republicans have that,” Reed said. “People are upset and they’re looking forward to voting.”

Sal Russo, strategist for the Tea Party Express, which is supporting candidates such as Angle and O’Donnell, said efforts to portray them as extreme were unfair.

“We have to make difficult choices, and you have the cheap-shot artists who try to make anyone who wants to cut anything look like a monster,” Russo said.

Prospective 2012 presidential candidates are now offering their own unvarnished proclamations to match the mood of the moment, such as Newt Gingrich’s recent assertion that President Obama must be understood through his “Kenyan, anti-colonial” point of view.

Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University who studies party realignment, said Republicans have learned they need to appeal to the tea party movement rather than try to circumvent it.

“Look at what happened in Delaware, where the party came in and tried desperately to influence the primary there and it didn’t work,” he said. “I think it’s very hard to control once that genie is out of the bottle.”

matea.gold@latimes.com