White nationalist leader Richard Spencer said Friday he is considering running for Montana’s lone congressional seat if the U.S. Senate confirms Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Whitefish, as President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of the interior.

“I’m thinking about it,” Spencer told the Daily Inter Lake in a phone interview. “I’m very serious. I would only do it if I felt I could win. I don’t want to engage in a vanity project.”

Spencer, who heads the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist independent think-tank and publishing firm, drew global media attention following Trump’s election when he shouted “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” during a post-election conference and lauded Trump’s election because he believes it will create a political climate conducive to his alt-right white-nationalist views.

He acknowledged a congressional run would further propel the momentum of the alt-right.

“I recognize it could be a really major conversation, with the million people in Montana, and a national conversation,” he said. “I could point in the direction of a new kind of politics.

“I have confidence that if I did it there [in Montana] there would be a tremendous amount of interest around the world; it would be amplified ... I recognize this would be an unconventional campaign. It would come out of nowhere. This would be coming from nothing, in a way, and then become something. Even two years ago I wouldn’t have been able to do this.”

He said when he held a National Policy Institute press conference a year ago, four media outlets attended. A recent press conference drew 100 members of the media from around the world.

“The interest [in the alt-right] has multiplied times a hundred,” he said.

The alt-right movement is described by Wikipedia as “a loose group of people with far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States.” Spencer has emerged as the de facto leader of the alt-right due to his media profile both before and after Trump’s election.

“I have been used to exposure in the news, but nothing like this. Effectively every day there’s something new ... I always knew that our movement and the ideas we represent were going to have a break-through, but I didn’t know when. I never thought it would be in 2016.”

He said he would run either as an independent or a Republican.

Spencer said he is a Montana resident.

“I voted for Trump in Montana. I pay taxes there and I have a Montana driver’s license,” he said. “I’m a resident.”

Spencer has been a part-time Whitefish resident for many years. His mother, Sherry Spencer, owns a mixed-use commercial building in the city’s historic Railway District, and he said he plans on spending time in Whitefish over the Christmas holiday.

According to Spencer, the National Policy Institute supports the heritage, identity and future of European people in the United States and around the world. Spencer, of English and German heritage, said the broad European race is what he identifies with.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.