ENID, Okla. On the evening of Nov. 7, 2023, Judson Judd Blevins, a city councilman in Enid, Oklahoma, took his seat inside the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Municipal Complex and watched as local constituents took turns at a lectern.

A lot of people want to give you a pass, Mr. Blevins, because youre an honorably discharged veteran, said Father James Neal, a local priest, wearing a black cassock and white clerical collar. I am an honorably discharged veteran, and I tell you, as a fellow veteran, the Commandant of the Marine Corps made it clear in 2017 that your actions in Charlottesville were a betrayal of the core values of the Marine Corps and of this country

Time, Mayor David Mason interjected, enforcing a strict one-minute limit on public comments. Neal ignored him.

As a priest, I will continue to pray for you, he continued. And after you are a private citizen, if you desire and pursue

Your time is up! the mayor interjected again.

Youve had six months of silence! Neal shot back at the mayor. Your time is up! He turned his attention back to Blevins. We will be ready to help you

Im gonna have to ask you to stop! the mayor yelled.

Neal kept his focus on Blevins. We will be ready to help you on a path to reconciliation, he said, walking away from the lectern and taking a seat in the gallery among his fellow citizens, some of whom wore purple shirts emblazoned with Enid Social Justice Committee.

The scene was the culmination of a simmering political fight in Enid, a deeply conservative town of 50,000, home to Vance Air Force Base, an hour-and-a-half drive north of Oklahoma City, where a small band of progressive activists in town have begged their elected officials to, at the very least, acknowledge that there might be a neo-Nazi in City Hall.

Four years earlier, in 2019, journalists and anti-fascists had published research identifying Blevins as a leader in the now-defunct white nationalist group Identity Evropa. Blevins announced his candidacy for city council in late 2022, prompting the local newspaper to publish an article rehashing all the evidence of his connections to the group. But voters in Ward 1 of Enid elected Blevins anyway. And since Blevins took his oath of office, the mayor and other city commissioners have remained largely silent about his past.