After Rival Commits Suicide Amid 'Whisper Campaign'

The Republican primary contest for the 2016 Missouri governor’s race has barely begun. But it is already one of the most unusual and tragic in the state’s memory, upended by the suicide of a top contender followed by accusations that anti-Semitism played a role in his death, despite the fact that he was not Jewish.

Now an actual Jewish candidate is primed to enter the fray.

On February 24, just two days before Tom Schweich killed himself following an alleged whispering campaign claiming he was Jewish, 40-year-old Eric Greitens launched an exploratory committee to raise funds for a gubernatorial run of his own. Greitens who, unlike Schweich, is Jewish, has already raised close to $400,000, according to public records.

A former Navy SEAL and Rhodes Scholar with a PhD from Oxford, Greitens is a St. Louis native and makes no bones about his background — no whispering necessary. He has also just released a book, Resilience, born out of a series of letters between himself and a fellow former SEAL struggling to adjust to ordinary life after combat.

“I’m proud to be Jewish,” he told the Forward

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/217642/jewish-navy-seal-vet-jumps-into-missouri-governor/#ixzz3VtSE4Gwe: http://forward.com/articles/217642/jewish-navy-seal-vet-jumps-into-missouri-governor/#ixzz3VtRwyqSO