“Aus­trian Far-Right Icon Eyes Pres­i­dency” by Veronika Oleksyn [AP]; google.com; 3/3/2010.

A woman who has crit­i­cized anti-Nazi law and is mar­ried to an extreme right­ist is run­ning for pres­i­dent in Aus­tria, and crit­ics con­tend her can­di­dacy could tar­nish the rep­u­ta­tion of a coun­try still marred by its con­nec­tion to the Holocaust.

Bar­bara Rosenkranz, 51, is not expected to win the April 25 elec­tion, despite her endorse­ment from the owner of Austria’s most widely read news­pa­per, the Kro­nen Zeitung. [Ital­ics mine–D.E.]

But she is likely to lead a cam­paign against pop­u­lar Pres­i­dent Heinz Fis­cher laced with the anti-foreigner and anti-European Union rhetoric her far-right Free­dom Party generates.

She is most widely known for her belief that Austria’s law ban­ning the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Nazis is a hin­drance to free­dom of expres­sion and vio­lates the country’s con­sti­tu­tion. In the same vein, she also has defended doubts over Nazi gas chambers.

Her hus­band, Horst Jakob Rosenkranz, was part of a far-right polit­i­cal party that was banned for being too radical. . . .