Stunningly Racist Email Backs Sheriff David Clarke For Senate

MILWAUKEE, WI — There are several things you should know about a fundraising email pumping up controversial Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. as a challenger to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a liberal Democrat from Madison. For starters, it didn’t come from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and second, unless you’re a Jim Crow throwback, you’re most likely going to be offended.

The real author of the no-holds-barred email is Jack Daly, a conservative lawyer and founder of the draft Sheriff Clarke for Senate effort, a legal super PAC registered with the Federal Elections Commission. Clarke hasn’t said he’s a candidate for Senate, or for re-election as sheriff, for that matter.

Daly claims his son, a “gentle boy,” was attacked for supporting President Donald Trump by “dreadlock-wearing punks” who insulted him for being white; urges black voters to leave the “Democratic plantation”; and calls Baldwin an “in-your-face lesbian” and “screaming feminist.”

The draft Sheriff Clarke for Senate email continues: “Barack Obama has many blacks, Muslims, and illegal aliens feeling they have the right to attack Trump supporters, cops, businesses, white kids — anything and anybody — without going to jail or getting deported.”

The April 5 email showed that it came from Giuliani, Mother Jones reported, but in fact the address goes to the website Daly created.

Clarke, according to Daly, is a voice of reason, albeit outspoken.

“Milwaukee’s conservative black Sheriff CORRECTLY says ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ is a terrorist movement, a hate group, and calls it ‘Black LIES Matter.” Daly reportedly called civil rights activist Al Sharpton a “charlatan” and said he “should shut up and go back into the gutter.”

The website to draft the sheriff to run against Baldwin calls him the “black Rush Limbaugh with a badge" but is not authorized by Clarke. Daly claims to know Clarke is “chomping at the bit for a bigger stage” and claims Clarke has “got a shot” at unseating Baldwin.

“This is a golden opportunity, my friend, and David Clarke is, for us conservatives, a golden unicorn. The perfect man at the perfect time,” Daly wrote. “How sweet would it be for a black John Wayne to take out a screaming lesbian extremist with control of the Senate up for grabs?”

A February Magellan strategies poll suggests Baldwin would defeat Clarke by 14 points, 49 percent to 35 percent, in a general election. That assumes that Clarke would switch parties as a Republican. Though conservative, he has won re-election four times as a Democrat in Milwaukee County.

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Clarke has a long history of incendiary remarks, including calling Trump protesters “anarchists” who “must be quelled.” He boasted “you heard it here first” in an October 2015 tweet speculating the “Black Lives Matter will join forces with ISIS to bring down our constituted republic.” He's also a member of an anti-government extremist group, Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the organization that keeps track of hate groups.

Clarke has not only survived the criticism but seems to invite it, if only to bolster his status as an authentic American hero among law-and-order conservatives. A surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail, Clarke was a speaker at the Republican National Convention. He is a regular on Fox News and has the backing of the powerful National Rifle Association, whose members cheered Clarke’s suggestion in a keynote address to add an assault rifle to the national seal.

But as his profile has soared nationally, he has been embroiled in controversy at home, including four in-custody deaths, one an inmate’s newborn, at the Milwaukee County Jail between April and November 2016. And this week, attorneys for a woman whose unborn child died in her womb filed notice of an intent to sue the sheriff’s office — the fifth such notice of a claim against the agency Clarke heads. In that case, Jennifer Jawson said the jail staff withheld her prescriptions during the week she spent in jail.

Taking a hard line against immigration, he asked the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to immediately give Milwaukee County Jail correctional officers the authority to enforce immigration laws earlier this year under what’s known as the 287(g) program. The request put him in conflict with Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, who isn’t planning to deputize his officers for immigration enforcement. Even conservative Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has said problems could result if cities and counties take conflicting approaches to immigration enforcement.

In one of the more bizarre incidents involving Clarke, a 24-year-old Milwaukee man was detained at General Mitchell International Airport earlier this year for shaking his head at Clarke while both were aboard a Dallas-Fort Worth to Milwaukee flight. Clarke interpreted the gesture as menacing, writing on the sheriff’s office Facebook page that he doesn’t have to wait “for some goof” to assault him and that he “reserves the reasonable right to preempt a possible assault.”

The incident occurred the same day Wisconsin’s Green Bay Packers were playing the Dallas Cowboys in the run-up to the Super Bowl. The head-shaker, Don Black, said he was merely surprised that Clarke was wearing Dallas Cowboys gear instead of supporting the Packers.

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke leaves Trump Tower on November 28, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images News/Getty Images)