A longshot candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa brandishes both a gun and a knife in a new, humorous campaign ad with a rather tragic backstory.
Bob Quast, a former contractor for the U.S. Army, is an independent candidate running on a platform of term limits and support for the Second Amendment. He makes that clear within the first 20 seconds of his video, when he looks into the camera and tells the man convicted of murdering Quast's sister that he's going to "blow [his] balls off."
"If you are the sexual predator and sociopath who murdered my sister Lynette and you come to my front door to do harm to my girls, I'm going to use my Glock. To blow your balls off," Quast says in the campaign video.
In 1999, Thomas Craft pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the brutal murder of his wife, Lynnette, who is Quast's sister. Police found pieces of Lynnette's body scattered across the Ann Arbor, Mich., area. But under a plea deal, he was released from prison in 2011. He is now under supervision at a halfway house in Ohio.
The Toledo Blade has more details on the case:
At approximately 6:30 p.m., a Washtenaw County sheriff’s detective called Swanton police saying he was investigating a possible homicide. Pieces of a body, which he believed belonged to the missing Swanton woman, had been found. The detective said they found legs, from the knee down, and feet, at a McDonald’s on Zeeb Road in Michigan’s Scio Township near Dexter.
Among the trash and body parts were clothing and an Ohio driver’s license belonging to Mrs. Craft.
In 2011, Quast told a local ABC station that he was still concerned about Craft's release.
"He has time to murder my entire family in Whitewater, come back, drive back from Whitewater, Wisconsin, and tell you, 'Oops. I didn't find a job today,'" Quast said.
In his campaign ad, Quast accuses Democratic candidate Bruce Braley of wanting to restrict gun rights.
"Liberals like Bruce Braley want to restrict our gun rights, including this magazine with 15 bullets," he says.
Here's the full ad: