White Supremacist Suffers Humiliating Defeat in Run for Comanche Nation Vice President

White Supremacist Suffers Humiliating Defeat in Run for Comanche Nation Vice President

David Yeagley, a white supremacist who has made a career out of posing as both a mainstream conservative and part-Comanche, fared extremely poorly in a special election for Comanche Nation Vice President, coming in a very distant fourth place out of four candidates.

Yeagley only got 102 votes, or slightly over 10%, in an election that also had an extremely low turnout of only 10%. That means that the number of eligible Comanche voters who cast their ballot for Yeagley was about 1%. Already Yeagley's loss has earned him a new nickname in Indian Country, ""1% Yeagley."

Yeagley and his supporters, in a rather bizarre denial of reality, claimed victory since he expected to only get "about five votes." Yet elsewhere in Indian Country, Natives that are familiar with Yeagley's chequered career are celebrating his getting his head handed to him.

Yeagley became enrolled with the Comanche Nation by accident, because his stepmother was Comanche. Kiowa disabled rights activist Cinda Hughes investigated and uncovered that it is a fairly open "secret" among Comanches that Yeagley was adopted. Comanche traditions do not allow for banishing anyone, no matter how contemptible their actions or beliefs.

Yeagley is a member of the white supremacist One Nation, which works against American Indians, especially on the issue of tribal sovereignty. He also is a speaker for the notoriously anti Semitic John Birch Society, best known for its bizarre conspiracy theories. Yeagley also is a supporter and associates with members of the National Alliance, the neo-Nazi skinhead group Storm Front (a Storm Front member moderated a section of Yeagley's message board on Jews), the eugenics website Gene Expression, and self described white nationalists and anti immigrant vigilantes the Minutemen.

Yeagley has long been a notorious character in Indian Country. He routinely refers to nonwhites (including American Indians) as "darkies." He has called for the mass murder of illegal immigrants and the mass deportation of all Arabs and Muslims. He frequently describes his admiration for Hitler, Columbus, and the Shah of Iran. Yeagley once compared Janet Jackson to an ape and called Martin Luther King "a blight on history." Yeagley received the strongest criticism when he attacked the Virginia Tech University shooting victims as "cowards."

Yeagley tried various tactics to boost his vote count in the campaign. According to one source in the Comanche Nation, literally every last vote for Yeagley was an absentee ballot. This suggests that Yeagley pushed his backers to vote early, before anyone could discover his unsavory past and beliefs.

Yeagley's campaign was marked by almost comical mistakes on his part. He gave a speech discussing Comanche clans. The problem is, the Comanche do not have clans. Yeagley was asked during a debate about the Indian Child Welfare Act, one of the most controversial issues in Indian Country. Yeagley was forced to admit he had never heard of it. Perhaps the most amusing fumble in his campaign came when Yeagley went to the Comanche courthouse, only to hide out from a group of Comanche women asking why he had lied about his stepmother being elected to a tribal post.

Such mistakes in Yeagley's attempt to pass himself off as Comanche are not new, and have long made him the butt of jokes in both the Comanche Nation and across Indian Country. Yeagley has often become an unwitting source of amusement at tribal council meetings, where anyone enrolled may speak. He once argued for the Comanche Nation to be the first to set up a tribally run bank. The first American Indian tribally run bank was begun more than twenty years ago, and more than two dozen exist today. His attempts to "look more Indian" also make him hard for many to take him seriously. Yeagley straightened his curly brown hair and dyed it black, and is fond of pancake makeup and turtleneck sweaters. Rumors swirl that he has had plastic surgery and have earned him another nickname, "Michael Jackson."

Yet his attempts to use dubious claims of American Indian ancestry to promote his white supremacy beliefs are no joke. Sometimes hardline conservatives find him useful to use as a token, and quote him as though he had a serious following within Indian Country. In this he follows in a long tradition of others claiming to be American Indian being used by the right wing such as 'Princess Pale Moon" and "Chief AJ."