Nazi-saluting candidate decamps for Illinois governor race after failed congressional bids

A candidate who keeps adding a Nazi salute to his ballot name and losing is once again running for office.

Richard Mayers filed to run for Illinois governor and asked that he be listed on the statewide ballots as "Richard Benedict (Sieg Heil) Mayers" and listed his party as the "Germanic Aryan Supremacy Smokers, Gamblers," according to local reporting.

The Democratic and Republican Parties of Illinois teamed up earlier this week to petition against his nomination, according to the State Journal-Register, an Illinois newspaper.

Mayers previously ran for Congress with the same ballot name. He was removed from the ballot for the First District of Indiana in February after he failed to appear for a hearing challenging his candidacy, Indiana's Post-Tribune reported.

In 2000, Mayers filed ballot referendums in Cook County, Illinois, to urge constitutional amendments that would ban interracial marriage, prohibit the abortion of "healthy white babies," and send Black prisoners "back to western Africa," according to the Chicago Tribune.

"Some of my views are controversial," Mayers told the Evanston Review in 2000. "But I think I could do good in some places."

That year, he also ran in the Democratic primary for Illinois's Third Congressional District.

In 2002, Mayers tried running as a Democrat for the Illinois Ninth Congressional District, but he didn't get enough petition signatures for a nomination, according to the Post-Tribune.

He also put up unsuccessful bids for office in Alaska in 2024 and in Illinois in 1993, 1998, 2007, and 2009, per the State Journal-Register.