GOP candidate: Diversity will make us lose basketball games

Republicans are not known for nominating tolerant candidates. But even by their standards, Seth Grossman is completely off the rails.

Grossman, a pro-Trump former Atlantic City councilman and talk radio host who is running for New Jersey’s open 2nd Congressional District, first drew scrutiny last week. In a video posted by American Bridge, Grossman said, “Diversity is a bunch of crap, and un-American,” and is “an excuse by Democrats, communists, and socialists, basically, to say that we’re not all created equal.”

Not only did Grossman stand by these remarks, he doubled down on them this week with a bizarre warning that diversity initiatives from New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy could lead to an Afghanistan-style sectarian war … and a decline in college basketball skills.

“If you want to know where this evil and un-American perversion of ‘diversity’ will take us, go to Afghanistan, Lebanon, or Syria,” said Grossman, according to Insider NJ. “Those countries are divided into dozens of diverse groups with different languages, different religions, and different ethnic groups who hate each other, are afraid of each other, and who kill each other … Now Governor Murphy wants to turn New Jersey into Afghanistan.”

According to Grossman, that is not the only possible consequence of diversity programs. “Before Governor Murphy completely screws up the state police with his diversity quotas, why not try it on the Rutgers basketball team, and see if it helps them win more games,” he added.

One local NAACP leader has condemned Grossman’s beliefs as “cowering ignorance and an evasion of reality.” A spokesman for his Democratic opponent, moderate state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, agreed, saying diversity “is the foundation of our country’s success for generations as a land of opportunity.”

Even New Jersey Republican Party chair Doug Steinhardt is running away from Grossman, saying his views “have no place in the party that we are building.”

Grossman won the primary earlier this month, beating engineer Hirsh Singh, who had been supported by local GOP leaders before it came out that he lied about being a multi-millionaire. National Republican Congressional Committee chair Steve Stivers has admitted the party suffered a “recruiting hole” in this district, following the retirement of New Jersey GOP Rep. Frank LoBiondo.

New Jersey’s 2nd District, which covers the southern portion of the state from the eastern suburbs of Philadelphia to Atlantic City, has been in Republican control for 23 years, and backed Trump by 5 points. But experts now forecast Democrats as the favorites to win this seat.

So if Grossman thought he would find sympathetic ears for his bizarre and bigoted ideas, he appears to be sorely mistaken.