Pedophile And Hitler Fan Running For Congress Makes Ballot

FAUQUIER COUNTY, VA — In an election cycle that has already seen controversial political want-to-bes like teen-predator Judge Roy Moore in Alabama and an Illinois Holocaust denier who threw birthday parties for Hitler, a Virginia man seeking a Congressional seat has already won the contest for most outside-the-mainstream candidate in 2018 — and probably any other election year.

His name: Nathan Larson.

His outsider "credentials": He's a convicted felon, Hitler worshipper, admitted rapist and open supporter of incest, pedophilia and categorizing women as property.

Larson, a 37-year-old Fauquier County accountant, entered the national spotlight by filing as an independent candidate for Virginia's 10th congressional district in the November general election and answering candidate questions that divulged his views. He admits to supporting pedophilia and raping his late ex-wife, who later took her own life. These viewpoints were enough to get him a Snopes fact-check page and coverage in media outlets from The Huffington Post to The Washington Post and The Independent in Great Britain. His name is not on the June 12 primary ballot but will be on the November general election slate.

Larson hasn't exactly been keeping his viewpoints on the down low, which he told Patch he's received blowback for espousing. In a campaign manifesto, Larson says Adolf Hitler was a "white supremacist hero" and calls for a system that categorizes women as property. And in a recent interview with WUSA9, he spoke about wanting to legalize incest and have sex with his 3-year-old daughter, whom he gave up custody. He's also served prison time for threatening to kill the president in 2008.

"I've gotten both positive and negative emails," Larson told Patch in a phone interview about the reaction since his candidacy began receiving national attention. But he's unsure how many of those negative reactions are from people in the 10th congressional district.

He's previously shared his views in a candidate survey on Ballotpedia during his 2017 run for state delegate, which is visible to anyone browsing through its 10th congressional district election guide. "I believe patriarchy is the natural order and that the laws should reflect that," he writes in the survey. "Nobody has come up with a better system for ensuring happiness and familial stability than the old-fashioned order of treating women as the property of first their fathers and later their husbands."

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Here are his most unconventional views:

• Larson wants to repeal the repeal the Violence Against Women Act and make women the property of their fathers or husbands. He believes feminism ruins families and relationships, leaves children fatherless and "undermines husbands' authority over their wives. In many marriages, the husband and wife bicker constantly because he lacks the power to use his pimp hand to put her in her place," reads his campaign manifesto. He even blames feminism for school shootings: "Guns don't kill people — feminists do."
• He said he wants to legalize possessing and distributing child pornography in his Ballotpedia questionnaire. He believes the laws are vague about what constitutes child pornography and that they restrict freedom of speech. In his campaign manifesto, he likens child pornography to an "art form."
• Larson says that white people must overcome Jewish people in the "fight for supremacy" in the United States. "Of course, they can't resist trying to take over that government; but if they were to succeed in attaining complete supremacy, then they would destroy what made this country worth living in," reads his campaign manifesto.
• He uses animals as an analogy to describe the treatment of non-white people in his campaign manifesto: "It's probably true that we could survive without them, but there can be a benefit sometimes to keeping around animals to whom we're superior rather than driving them extinct," he writes.

To become eligible to run as an independent candidate, Larson had to submit 1,000 signatures on his nomination papers. So how was such a controversial candidate with views contrary to most voters able to gather that level of support?

Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak was on the right track: "Maybe all of them hadn’t read up on his pedophilia beliefs or the court case in Colorado when he was denied all visitation with his young daughter. Maybe they didn’t know about his admission that he raped his late ex-wife, or that he was locked up for threatening to kill President Barack Obama."

Larson tells Patch he went door to door and approached people in public places to collect the signatures, mostly in Loudoun County. He acknowledged that he spoke mainly about his main policy goals, such as slashing regulations, getting America out of foreign wars, and ending the War on Drugs. While he openly talks about his positions on pedophilia and women when asked, he did not bring these up when collecting signatures.

But Larson says it's possible some people may have known from a Washington Post article on his 2017 Virginia House of Delegates run. He believes the petition signers could claim they were unaware of his unconventional positions.

"It's to their advantage to say they didn't know so they can't be subjected to persecution," he told Patch.

Larson hadn't been able to run for office until then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored rights for hundreds of thousands of convicted felons. According to Larson's campaign filing, he became eligible to run in January 2017.

But when he last ran for office — seeking a seat in Virginia House of Delegates District 31 — he received just 481 votes, or 1.68 percent. The self-described "quasi-neoreactionary libertarian" had run as an independent after being denounced by the Libertarian Party of Virginia.

"I think there can be a lot of votes for an independent like me because they don't like either choice," Larson told Patch. He cites the 2016 election and last year's "blue wave" as examples of the "mood for voting for protest candidates."

Political experts say these types of candidates have a slim chance of winning the elected office they're aiming for.

"They’re not usually as blatantly oddball as we seem to be seeing this year, but there’s always people like that who want to get in,” Rich Galen, who was press secretary under former Vice President Dan Quayle and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, told The Independent. “Mostly it’s to get publicity, and, unfortunately, they appear to be getting that attention.”

On the other hand, "because this huge cultural shift that invites guys like Larson out of the basement, other nontraditional candidates are coming out, too," notes The Post's Dvorak. A record-high 575 women are running for Congress or governor in 2018.

Larson tells Patch only the general election will tell how many people are quietly supporting him. "It remains to be seen what those voters want to do."

Stuart Stevens, a strategist for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, told The Independent, "Until they start winning, I think it’s not great cause for alarm. But, you know, Roy Moore won the primary, and that was great cause for alarm.”

Virginia's 10th Congressional race has been one of the midterm elections to watch as Rep. Barbara Comstock tries to get re-elected in what's considered a swing district. The district encompasses Clarke, Frederick, and Loudoun Counties, parts of Fairfax, and Prince William Counties and the cities of Manassas, Manassas Park and Winchester.

Image via Aldrich Hanssen/Wikimedia Commons, used with permission