Mark Clayton from Facebook
Mark Clayton, a floor installer, received twice the votes of his nearest competitor in a seven-candidate Democratic primary Thursday. Actress Park Overall was one of them.
In a statement released Friday afternoon, the Tennessee Democratic Party said Clayton has only voted in the Democratic Party when he was voting for himself, and only got the most votes because his name was listed first on the ballot.
The party said in a statement Friday that Clayton is associated with a known hate group in Washington, D.C., and the party “disavows his candidacy.”
Clayton is vice president of Public Advocate of the United States, which calls itself a conservative advocacy group.
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the organization an anti-gay hate group.
Clayton said in an interview before the election that privacy issues are his main concern and that he thinks people are being “over-identified by the government and tracked.”
In the most recent financial disclosures, Corker had more than $6 million remaining, while no other challenger had more than $19,000.
