According to a new report by The American Independent, Republican House candidate Scott Baugh’s political career has been bankrolled by Howard Ahmanson Jr., a conservative mega donor who has spent decades on the board of a foundation that advocates for ‘biblical law’ – including death by stoning as a punishment for gay and lesbian people. In interviews, Ahmanson has made that objective clear, stating that his “purpose is total integration of biblical law into our lives.”
DCCC Spokesperson Dan Gottlieb:
“Birds of a feather flock together, and Scott Baugh has made his views evident by the friends he keeps — and the money he accepts. Baugh has had his political career bankrolled by wealthy megadonors seeking to ban abortion and marriage equality, and it’s clear that he would bring those same dangerous and discriminatory values to the the halls of Congress.”
The American Independent: GOP US House candidate Scott Baugh bankrolled by right-wing advocate for biblical law
Josh Israel | October 16, 2023
- Republican former California Assembly Member Scott Baugh, who lost a 2022 congressional race to Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, is running for her open House seat in 2024. Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson Jr., a right-wing megadonor and longtime advocate for strict biblical law, has been a top donor throughout Baugh’s political career.
- [Ahmanson] was a top donor to the group behind California’s unconstitutional Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that took away the right of same-sex couples to marry, and backed CareNet, which operates anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers infamous for misleading patients about the procedure. According to the Daily Beast, he funded a $1 million smear campaign against openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson in the early 2000s.
- Ahmanson spent decades donating to and serving on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, a tax-exempt organization founded by the late Rousas John Rushdoony that asserts “all things are to be ‘reconstructed’ according to God’s revealed will in Scripture.” Rushdoony urged laws based on “faith, not reason,” including death by stoning for gay and lesbian people and others as laid out in the Book of Leviticus.
- While Ahmanson told the Center for Public Integrity in 2006 that he did not personally endorse “the stoning or execution of homosexuals,” he told the Orange County Register in 1985: “My purpose is total integration of biblical law into our lives.”
- Baugh has not returned Ahmanson’s donations and appears to share at least some of his far-right views
- In 1998, Baugh told the Los Angeles Times, “I do not support abortion in any form.”
- In his 2022 campaign, he opposed legislation to codify federal abortion rights protections and to codify federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. “I believe life begins at conception,” he told NBC News in August 2022. “Fundamentally I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I have no problem with social arrangements or social contracts and all that.”
- In a June video for the tax-exempt International Christian Ambassadors Association, first published by HuffPost, Baugh argued that “wokism” is the greatest threat facing religious liberty.
- “What’s the greatest threat to religious freedom? We were born in the Revolutionary War. We survived civil wars, World War II, World War I, a lot of wars, 9/11,” Baugh said. “None of those were that threatening to our country compared to the war that we’re fighting now. That war is about wokism and the lack of common sense.”
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