Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask.
Dinah Sykes, the Democratic minority leader in the state senate, told the Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news site: “Political violence of any kind is vile and wrong, and we cannot afford to brush it under the rug when others encourage it.”
Footage posted to social media showed attendees at the Johnson county Republican event kicking and beating the dummy, which was wearing a Biden mask and a T-shirt displaying the slogan “Let’s go Brandon”, a rightwing meme meant to disparage Biden.
Sykes called for state Republican leaders to take action against those responsible.
Mike Brown, the Kansas Republican party chair, told the Kansas City Star he was not at the event, which was not organised by the state party, though he sent emails to promote it.
Mike Kuckelman, a former state Republican chair, condemned the event.
“This conduct is shameful, and it is WRONG,” Kuckelman wrote on Facebook. “Brown and [Johnson county GOP chair Maria] Holiday must resign. Republicans, especially elected Republicans, must demand [this]. Silence is complicity in this case.”
Citing Republican uproar in 2017 when the comedian Kathy Griffin posed with an effigy of Donald Trump’s severed head, Kuckelman added: “I don’t agree with President Biden’s policies, but he is a fellow human being. No one should condone or defend this horrific and shameful conduct.
“We are Republicans, and we are better than this.”
Holiday told the Star the dummy was part of a booth run by a karate school, promoting self-defence. She also said Kuckelman’s post was inaccurate but did not explain how, the Star said.
Kuckelman told the Star the stunt was “just gross”. The paper’s editorial board agreed, but took issue with his claim that Republicans were “better” than the behaviour displayed in Johnson county.
“That’s unfortunately no longer true,” the Star said, citing Trump’s campaign-trail mockery of Biden’s stutter; his refusal to stop attacking the writer E Jean Carroll, who he was ordered to pay $83.3m for defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”; and his advocacy of violence against migrants, protesters and political opponents.
“So while it’s great that there are still Republicans out there who expect better,” the paper said, “it’s their own leader who encourages worse …
“If more Republicans in Kansas and beyond really believed that juvenile, disrespectful behavior were inexcusable, Donald Trump would not be running their party, and bringing out the worst in their partisans.”
