A Republican candidate for governor in Missouri who has ties with the Ku Klux Klan was allowed to stay on the ballot, a judge ruled Friday. 

The Missouri judge’s decision was in response to a request from the Missouri GOP, who tried to get Darrell McClanahan booted from the Republican ticket ahead of the August Republican primary.

Mr. McClanahan has described himself as “pro-white,” but rejected that he was racist or antisemitic, the Associated Press reported. The Missouri GOP quickly disavowed him after a photo of Mr. McClanahan surfaced that appeared to show him doing the Nazi salute.

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He confirmed that the photo was accurate to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

Details of a previous lawsuit Mr. McClanahan filed against the Anti-Defamation League while running for the U.S. Senate in 2022 because the organization called him a white supremacist showed that he described himself as a “pro-white man,” but not a member of the Ku Klux Klan. 

Mr. McClanahan said that he received an honorary one-year membership to the hate group and that he attended a “private religious Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony falsely described as a cross burning.”

The Missouri GOP said they were unaware of his beliefs when he filed to run for governor, which Mr. McClanahan contended was untrue because he had previously run for office. 

Mr. McClanahan’s candidacy is nothing short of a long shot in a crowded field of much more popular contenders. He is running against Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, Missouri Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, state Sen. Bill Eigel and others for the GOP nomination. 

Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Kehoe lead the pack in most polls, while Mr. McClanahan has barely registered a percentage point of favorability from Missouri voters. 

Mr. McClanahan’s lawyer, Dave Roland, said that the ruling to allow his client to stay on the ballot ensures that the Missouri GOP does not have “unlimited” authority to decide who can and cannot appear on the Republican ticket. 

But Mr. Roland believed that the state Republican party never intended to win the lawsuit, but instead wanted to get a spotlight placed on Mr. McClanahan. 

“I’m not sure they ever actually intended to win this case,” he said. “I think the case got filed because the Republican Party wanted to make a very big public show that they don’t want to be associated with racism or anti-Semitism. And the best way that they could do that was filing a case that they knew was almost certain to lose.”

This article was based in part on wire services.