Sage Naumann: 'Rising Republican' school board candidate haunted by nazi costume pictures

Beware: Facebook photos that five-years-old can still come back to bite you.

Or so a Califoia school board candidate has discovered this week, after photos taken of his 14-year-old self dressed in a Nazi uniform resurfaced.

Parents and PTA members have expressed outrage at the images of Sage Naumann, 19, a candidate for the Carlsbad Unified School District Board of Trustees, and supporters have started withdrawing their recommedations for him as a result.

The photos were taken five years ago, showing Naumann in a military uniform and were accompanied with offensive Nazi jokes such as: 'Sad Natsi mous the loss of ze Fuhrer.'

Another of the captions posted by Naumann read: 'Angry German waiting for candy.'

'Angry German': Naumann - now 19 - maintains the costume is meant to be German communist and not Nazi

Naumnann told UT San Diego that he bought the 'costume' online for $75 and that is meant to depeict a German communist, not a Nazi.

He said at the time - Halloween 2009 - friends called him a Nazi and he followed on with the joke.

Naumann told the newspaper that it was a lapse in judgement made by a teenager, but did not apologize for his actions.

'It is the most ridiculous thing. They are trying to make me look like I’m anti-Semitic or a Nazi supporter,' Naumann said.

'I was 14 years old at this party. The uniform isn’t a Nazi uniform.

'If it was a Nazi uniform, and that makes me anti-Semitic, if I wore a devil uniform then does that make me a Satanist?'

Naumann, a fiscal conservative, has been profiled on the San Diego Rostra blog as a rising Republican star.

 

Lapse in judgement: Naumann, who has been called a rising Republican, said a mistake in judgement as a teenager does not make him a Nazi supporter

The offending pictures have since been deleted from Facebook, but were first circulated among parents and PTA members on email.

One parent, Mike Guerreiro, described them as 'pretty disturbing'.

'Every single person has done stupid things when they are young, but nobody I know has ever, ever dressed as a Nazi and posted it on their Facebook page,' Guerreiro told UT San Diego.

After viewing the photos, Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Carlsbad, withdrew his support of Naumann.

'Although I am not Jewish, my daughter would be considered Jewish because her mother is,' he told the paper.

'Many of my closest friends are Jewish. 

'I have long supported Israel in its fight literally for survival against those who would destroy it.

'Naumann was very young when this occurred, but for all these reasons, I will withdraw my endorsement.'