Frederick Haynes, who calls Crockett ‘the baddest sister out there,’ announced campaign for Texas’s 30th district
Dallas pastor Frederick Haynes, who hailed anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan as a “great” man and lashed out at Israel in a sermon just one day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, is running to replace a member of his congregation in Congress: firebrand House Democrat Jasmine Crockett (Texas).
Haynes filed paperwork for Texas’s 30th district on Monday, shortly after Crockett launched a campaign for Senate. “She’s the baddest sister out there,” Haynes, the pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church, said at a Senate kickoff event for Crockett.
Haynes is likely to have an advantage in the race thanks to his alliance with Crockett, who frequently attends Friendship-West and has called Haynes her mentor. It’s a natural pairing, given that Haynes, like Crockett, has a tendency to make inflammatory remarks.
Haynes, for example, posted a selfie with Farrakhan at a 2019 event and referred to the Nation of Islam leader, who once called Adolf Hitler a “great man,” as a “wonderful and great man.” His mentor, meanwhile, is Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of Barack Obama who stoked outrage during the 2008 presidential race over a sermon in which he shouted, “God damn America.”
Haynes’s affinity for Farrakhan and Wright is reflected in his preaching. On Oct. 8, 2023—with Crockett in attendance—Haynes lashed out at Israel over the Hamas terror attack carried out the day before.
“I recognize that we gotta be pro-Israel, yeah we got to do that, or we get in trouble,” Haynes said mockingly. “Well, I’m coming to get in trouble.” Haynes then delivered a fiery diatribe accusing the United States of standing with Israel “on the side of apartheid because that’s its track record.” He pointed out Crockett in the church audience right after those remarks.
“I hope they don’t use this against you in the future, though with what you be saying, they going to use what you say against you,” said Haynes, who then praised Crockett over her combative political style: “That congresswoman be going in on them folk. You be goin’ in girl, I got it from you.”
Haynes’s relationship with Wright has landed him in hot water in the past. His former executive assistant, Elizabeth Payne, sued Friendship-West in 2009, alleging Haynes fired her over an affair she had with Wright and because she was the only white and Hispanic person who worked at Friendship-West, which is predominantly black.
Haynes said in depositions that he was “not interested” in reading Wright’s emails to Payne, in which Wright called her “sexy” and made other provocative remarks, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Payne said in a deposition that she thought Haynes might have been in an affair of his own after she discovered a photo of a topless woman in his email account. She said she notified church leaders of the photo after she had wired money to the woman in the photo on behalf of Haynes. Friendship-West settled the lawsuit with Payne in 2010, according to court records.
Haynes has forged tight relationships with other prominent Democrats. In 2023, then-vice president Kamala Harris shouted out Haynes, with whom she worked with in “the early days of the criminal justice reform movement.”
Former congressman Colin Allred (D., Texas) attended Haynes’s church on multiple occasions as part of his own Senate campaigns. Allred, who quit his Senate race on Monday and launched a campaign for the House, held a voter registration event at Friendship-West in September, the Free Beacon reported.
During his sermon, Haynes attacked conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated days earlier. Haynes suggested Kirk was not a true Christian and that Kirk’s rhetoric was “racist, rooted in white supremacy, nasty, and hate-filled.” He falsely stated that Kirk’s killer, Tyler Robinson, was a “white Christian.” According to Robinson’s family, he harbored left-wing and pro-trans views.
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