Gemma has become increasingly immersed in local GOP politics, but his past affiliation with an array of controversial groups and individuals is generating controversy

In 1999, the head of the Republican National Committee urged all Republicans involved with the Council of Conservative Citizens to resign from the group, saying the CCC appeared to hold “racist views.”

The CCC had become infamous after media scrutiny of the organization and its links to elected officials.

The Washington Post noted in 1999 that “a columnist published by the council's Web site, wrote that if whites continue to allow heavy immigration and racial mixing, they will become part of ‘a slimy brown mass of glop.’”

Years after that RNC warning, Peter Gemma’s name popped up in association with the CCC. Gemma — a Sarasota resident whose involvement in local politics has stirred controversy in recent weeks — wrote an article that ran in a CCC newsletter in 2005. At the end of the article, Gemma was listed as the president of the organization’s chapter in the Washington, D.C., area.

It’s not Gemma’s only link to individuals and groups who have come under scrutiny for alleged racism and other extreme views.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Gemma as “a white nationalist with deep ties to a whole array of racist hate groups.”

In 2005, the Washington Post wrote that Gemma organized a secretive book event with David Irving, an author described in the Post article as “a well-known Holocaust denier who has claimed that Jews were not killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz. (He once famously said, 'More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.')”

Now Gemma’s past associations are attracting fresh scrutiny.

Gemma joined the Sarasota County Republican Party Executive Committee this year and hosted meet-and-greet events at his house for two GOP candidates, including a candidate in the state House District 73 race, adding another strange twist to a contest that attracted national attention after Republican Melissa Howard dropped out following the revelation she was touting a fake college degree.

Before that, Gemma was deeply involved in the successful effort to stop a development near the Celery Fields in eastern Sarasota County.

But Gemma’s increasing immersion in the local political scene became controversial after the left-wing group Media Matters for America published an article highlighting his background.

Now some Sarasota GOP leaders — though not all — are distancing themselves from Gemma.

Party Chairman Joe Gruters says he will ask Gemma to resign from the executive committee, even as Gemma denies "any of the crazy stuff they say about me" and one prominent Hispanic Republican is coming to his defense.

'Politics all my life'

In a phone interview with the Herald-Tribune, Gemma, 67, expressed regret over some of his past associations but denied that he is a racist and said he has been “smeared” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Gemma considers himself part of the mainstream conservative movement, saying he worked for former President Ronald Reagan’s campaign and the campaigns of presidential candidates Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul.

“I’ve never had a legitimate job,” Gemma said. “All I’ve done is run campaigns, politics all my life.”

The SPLC stands by its description of Gemma.

“He’s completely in the white nationalist scene,” said Heidi Beirich, the director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, which tracks hate groups and extremists.

“This is serious stuff; it’s really hardcore,” Beirich added.

Gemma said he is a Rhode Island native who lived much of his life in Virginia and moved to Sarasota roughly 10 years ago. He lives east of Interstate 75 near the Celery Fields.

Last year, Gemma became deeply involved in the effort to stop a recycling facility from being situated near the Celery Fields, a large wetland that is beloved by birders and other nature enthusiasts. The development was rejected by the Sarasota County Commission in August 2017.

Around the same time, Lourdes Ramirez was getting ready to run for the Sarasota County Commission.

Ramirez is a longtime neighborhood activist and local Republican leader who is involved with a variety of GOP groups and serves on the Sarasota GOP’s Executive Committee.

A vocal critic of what she views as inappropriate development, Ramirez sought to tap into the neighborhood activism generated by the Celery Fields debate. She asked one of the organizers for the names of those who were most involved in the recycling facility opposition, hoping some of them would agree to help her campaign.

Gemma’s name was on the list.

But before Ramirez could contact Gemma, she ran into him at a meeting of a new group she was helping to organize, a Libertarian-minded faction within the Sarasota GOP called the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Gemma agreed to help Ramirez. He also became increasingly involved with the Sarasota GOP.

Immersion in local politics

Ramirez filed to run for the County Commission in February. By then she’d already begun holding meetings with what she called her “kitchen cabinet.”

The group met at Gemma’s house. Ramirez said Gemma offered her valuable advice. She never had any inclination about his past and never saw any evidence of racist beliefs. She noted that he has ethnic art in his house and that he was quick to help her.

“We were talking about themes; he helped me write the first few speeches,” Ramirez said. “I really thought he was very helpful.”

At the same time, Gemma also became a regular at GOP events. He was a devoted member of the Liberty Caucus and also attended meetings of the Sarasota Republican Club and the Sarasota GOP Executive Committee, Ramirez said.

Earlier this year, Gemma was sworn in as a member of the Sarasota GOP’s Executive Committee. In April, he held a meet-and-greet at his house for Ramirez.

In August, Gemma hosted a meet and greet for Tommy Gregory, a Sarasota attorney who is running for the District 73 state House seat.

Until that point, Gemma’s involvement in local politics went unnoticed, but Media Matters picked up on the event Gemma hosted for Gregory.

Gregory had thanked Gemma on Facebook for “hosting a wonderful meet & greet event last night.”

“The attendees were all concerned with the erosion of Constitutional Rights, Establishment/Swamp Politics, the lack of American Civics classes, and Illegal Immigration,” Gregory added. “We have a lot of work to do!”

The post included a picture of Gregory and Gemma and their spouses.

Media Matters' recently posted an article headlined: “Florida Republican had ‘wonderful’ event with white nationalist writer who’s been involved in Holocaust denial movement.” The article highlights the Southern Poverty Law Center’s reporting on Gemma.

Gregory said he met Gemma twice — once at a Sarasota GOP Executive Committee meeting and the second time at the meet-and-greet — and knew nothing about his background.

“Any family that offered to do a meet-and-greet for me... I did it just trying to meet as many voters as possible,” Gregory said. “I don’t know everybody’s background — certainly didn’t know his.”

In a recent Facebook post, Gregory said Gemma “denies the allegations made by the liberal media.”

“More importantly,” Gregory added, “I am disgusted by racism and Holocaust denials. I know the Holocaust is a historical fact and I am a strong supporter of the nation of Israel. I also believe strongly in the dignity and equality of all human beings before God.”

In a subsequent statement sent to the Herald-Tribune, Gregory noted that his wife's mother immigrated from the Dominican Republican and his wife "is proud of her mixed race, multicultural background and so am I." He also noted that he served in the military, which "appropriately has zero tolerance for discrimination in any form" and that he took his children to the Anne Frank House while serving in Europe and to a Nazi concentration camp "where we cried and prayed alongside people of all faiths for the millions of Holocaust victims." After retiring from the military, Gregory and his family lived in the Domican Republic for 10 months and his children attended a "non-English speaking school... founded by Jewish refugees who fled Europe during World War II."

Gregory also lashed out at his Democratic opponent Liv Coleman, who shared the Media Matters article on Facebook and wrote that "I am appalled that Gregory is associating with a known White Nationalist." And he criticized the media for covering the issue.

"Claiming racism to falsely smear people for political advantage diminishes those who are real victims of racism," Gregory wrote. "I am frustrated and angry that my opponent would continue the tactic of dividing by race for political gain. But I'm deeply disappointed that a supposedly impartial media would further such a slanderous smear."

Meanwhile, Gruters said he plans to try and expel Gemma from the Sarasota GOP Executive Committee.

“There’s no room for any type of hate in our party. Period. End of story,” Gruters said. “We’re going to have a board meeting and ask him to resign. I’m personally going to ask him to resign. I have a zero tolerance policy.”

But Ramirez — who says she regularly experiences racism as a Hispanic individual whose parents both were born in Puerto Rico — finds it hard to believe that Gemma is racist and is willing to forgive him for his past associations.

“I just don’t see him as bigoted because of my experience with him,” she said, adding that: “I’m sure Peter woke up and realized his mistakes, although I still don’t believe he’s racist. I just believe he did the wrong things at that time.”

Sarasota Republican Rod Thomson also defends Gemma, who now works as a freelance writer.

Some of Gemma's writings have focused on illegal immigration, including a recent article for The Revolutionary Act, a conservative website run by Thomson.

Gemma’s article for Thomson’s website is headlined “Trump’s Immigration Goals Mirror Eisenhower’s: Jobs and Security.” It recounts President Dwight Eisenhower’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

Another article written by Gemma about illegal immigration attracted attention when Kris Kobach, the GOP nominee for governor in Kansas, linked to it in a column Kobach wrote for Breitbart.

Gemma wrote an extensive post on the Constitution Party’s website about illegal immigrant crime statistics titled: “Illegal Alien Crime And Violence By The Numbers: We’re All Victims.” The Kansas City Star newspaper wrote about Kobach linking to Gemma’s post in an article titled: “Kobach’s new Breitbart column cites a man linked to Holocaust denial, white supremacy.”

Asked about Gemma writing for his website, Thomson sent a statement blasting the SPLC and Media Matters as “two left-wing smear machines that work in tandem to besmirch conservatives and Republicans.”

“So the source is dubious from the start, and sources matter,” wrote Thomson, a GOP consultant who is president of the Sarasota Republican Club. “But I read their allegations and found them to be tenuous and weakly documented for the broad conclusions they drew. I read Peter’s defense and was persuaded that he is not who they are trying to paint him to be. If I thought for a moment that he was a white nationalist, I would denounce him and take down his writings. But I don’t.”

Campaign contributions

Gemma’s immersion into the political scene also included campaign contributions.

Campaign finance records show Gemma gave Ramirez a $178.70 in-kind campaign contribution related to the meet and greet.

Gemma also gave $50 to another GOP County Commission candidate, Alexandra Coe, $10 to GOP candidate for governor Ron DeSantis and $50 to Darcy Richardson when Richardson was running as a no party affiliate candidate for a state House seat. Richardson dropped out of the House race and is now the Reform Party's candidate for governor. And Gemma’s wife gave $100 to Tony Mowry, a Venice Democrat running for the District 74 state House seat. Mowry returned the contribution.

“We thought it was the right thing to do to separate ourselves from that kind of stuff,” said Mowry, an attorney who has known Gemma’s wife for years through the South County Division of the Sarasota County Bar Association.

Mowry also served on the Friends of the Venice Public Library board of directors with Peter Gemma. Mowry said he “raised my concerns” with the board’s president when he found out about Gemma’s background, and Gemma no longer is on the board.

Nothing in his interactions with Gemma was unusual, Mowry said.

“It was pretty library-focused,” Mowry said. “I knew he was involved in Republican politics but the board deals with library things.”

Gemma's defense

The descriptions of Gemma by the Southern Poverty Law Center do not mince words, and they include a long list of questionable associations.

The SPLC provided digital copies of pages from old newsletters to the Herald-Tribune regarding some of its assertions about Gemma.

Gemma wrote an article that ran in the Council of Conservative Citizens newsletter — the Citizens Informer — about the death of Sam Francis, a conservative writer. At the end of the article, Gemma is described as president of the CCC’s “National Capital Region Chapter.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the CCC as “the modern reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils, which were formed in the 1950s and 1960s to battle school desegregation in the South.”

Gemma said Francis was the head of the CCC chapter. Gemma acknowledged attending the group’s events, but said he went to the meetings as a friend of Francis and not a member of the CCC. When Francis died, Gemma said he continued to organize the luncheons but did not consider himself officially involved with the CCC and said the title given to him in the newsletter was inaccurate.

“You know, looking back, this is one of those head-slapping ‘what was I thinking’ times,” Gemma wrote in an email to the Herald-Tribune. “Sam and his group organized the event, which attracted a variety of conservatives, and I kept it going simply believing it was only a function, not ‘official’ work. I really should have known better.”

In a subsequent interview, Gemma said the CCC chapter “stole my identity and tried to make me their leader. I’m sorry they used it. I don’t even remember seeing it and I should have been more careful with my reputation.”

Francis was a columnist for the Washington Times who was fired for expressing white supremacist views. According to the Washington Post, Francis argued at a conference that whites must "reassert our identity and our solidarity, and we must do so in explicitly racial terms through the articulation of a racial consciousness as whites ... The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people."

Gemma also expressed regret about the event with David Irving, the historian and Holocaust denier. He said he was intrigued by some of Irving’s early writings but that “I don’t agree with anything that has to do with denying the Holocaust. That’s all crazy stuff.”

“It’s one of those things that you look back and say: ‘Geez, maybe I shouldn’t have done that,’” Gemma said.

In other instances, Gemma said his associations have been mischaracterized.

The SPLC provided the Herald-Tribune with a photocopy of “Heritage and Destiny,” a newsletter by the American Friends of the British National Party. The 2000 newsletter says that Gemma spoke at an event that also included David Duke and Don Black as featured speakers.

Duke is a well-known former Ku Klux Klan leader. Black is the founder of Stormfront, a racist website.

The newsletter says that Duke "spoke about the threats to white survival, both in America and worldwide, and what we as Racial Nationalists can do to stop them."

Gemma says he did not know the true nature of the event and only understood it to be a gathering of “conservatives.”

“I have no association with the notorious hater David Duke and his ilk,” Gemma wrote in an email. “This claim comes from an incident during the Pat Buchanan presidential campaign where I served as a senior staffer. We were invited to a rally of ‘conservatives,’ and when I came in the front door (Duke was seated in back of me), I was handed a mic to introduce Pat. He and our crew were in the back of the room. Suddenly, I saw Pat bolt out the door while the others were signaling me furiously. It took maybe 28.5 seconds for me to catch on before I left.”

The newsletter says Gemma spoke to the group about getting Buchanan on the ballot in every state. It does not mention Buchanan being at the event.

The SPLC also says that Gemma served as media director for the National Policy Institute, which the SPLC describes as “a hate group that is staffed by leading racists and anti-Semites and whose founder worries that ‘the white race may go from master of the universe to an anthropological curiosity.’”

The current leader of the National Policy Institute is Richard Spencer, one of the most prominent white nationalists in the country. Spencer caused an uproar recently when he spoke at the University of Florida campus.

Gemma says that he worked with the NPI in its infancy and only briefly.

“I was with them for a couple of weeks,” Gemma said. “A bunch of Ph.D.s got together. It was going to be a high-brow think tank about affirmative action and immigration. A few press releases and then several of us realized it was going off the edge.”

But Beirich with the SPLC said that “from its beginning” the National Policy Institute “was about white ethno nationalism.”

“William Regnery, whose the money behind NPI and the founder, at the beginning had already at the time been running a dating site for white people,” Beirich said.

Gemma said he left the NPI when he learned more about Regnery, and he noted that his involvement with the group was more than a decade ago, long before Spencer took it over.

'Consider the source'

Gemma believes the SPLC has distorted and exaggerated his relationship with various groups and individuals, saying people should “consider the source” before making assumptions about him.

“This is what the SPLC does for a living,” Gemma said. “They smear conservatives. It’s the price I have to pay for being on the frontlines of politics. It’s very sad these days the word racist is used so frequently and unfairly but I won’t be put on the defensive. I stand by every word I’ve ever written and every word I’ve ever said.”

The SPLC has a long record of exposing hate groups, but has been criticized in recent years by conservatives who allege the group has been too quick to tar people as racist and too expansive in its definition of what constitutes hate-mongering.

The SPLC settled a defamation lawsuit for $3.4 million this year. The group admitted it was wrong in including Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam Foundation in its “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”

But Beirich said that the SPLC stands by what is has written about Gemma and added that “as far as I know Gemma has never contacted us to” dispute any of the allegations.

“It’s ridiculous,” Beirich said. “Peter Gemma is in the thick of white supremacy and Holocaust denial and he’s saying consider the source.”

Gemma has not spoken to Gruters, but said he will resign from the Sarasota GOP’s Executive Committee if asked.

“If the chairman says I should resign then I certainly will,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything that will have an impact on my Republican Party.”

In insisting he is not racist, Gemma said he is sensitive to the issue because his own family includes individuals who might be targeted by various hate groups.

“My family matches any number of descriptions of people they hate,” he said.