KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? A faction of the Aryan Nations has abandoned plans to shift its base from Pennsylvania to Kansas after the national director resigned because of what his successor said was an intense community backlash.

Instead, the neo-Nazi group will move to Sebring, Fla., the home of the new director, August B. Kreis III, who had called himself its high counsel.

Kreis told The Kansas City Star that national director Charles J. Juba had stepped down late Thursday afternoon for family reasons.

“Things just got too hot,” he said.

The Star, quoting Kreis, had reported Thursday that the Aryan Nations organization had chosen Kansas City, Kan., as a new headquarters because of its central location. Kreis said Juba had moved to the Kansas City area from Pennsylvania.

Kreis said Juba asked him to remove his name and picture from the organization’s Web site.

“Maybe he thinks if he steps a few steps back, the pressure won’t be so bad,” Kreis said. “I don’t know of anything like this ever happening.”

Although Kreis said Juba would remain in the organization, Juba said in a letter posted on the Web site that in addition to no longer holding office in or representing it, he would not be a member either.

“For those kinsmen who know me at a personal level, understand my reasoning for this abrupt move and I thank them for their support,” Juba said.

Juba, who does not have a phone listing in the Kansas City area, said in the statement that he was stepping down “with a heavy heart and much humble emotion.”

He said as his final edict he was appointing Kreis to succeed him as the national director, and that the new headquarters would be where he resides. Since January the site had carried a post office box in Kansas City, Kan., but it now lists Kreis’ address.

In a statement on the Web site announcing his acceptance of the leadership, Kreis said, “I intend to cull the modes and methods of the past and pave the way for our future as an organization: and as an organization we will continue to be, in an ever-increasing measure of severity, a proponent of all that is pro-Aryan and anti-Zionist.”

The organization has never revealed membership totals, and it is in the process of rebuilding after its former leader was bankrupted by a lawsuit in 2000, leading to loss of the group’s compound in Idaho.

In 2002, Juba, Kreis and a third man joined together to replace Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler, whose health was declining. After Butler’s death in 2004, Kreis took over a faction of the group he called the “true Aryan Nations.” Another faction calling itself the real Aryan Nations moved to Alabama last year.

News that the Aryan Nations wasn’t coming to Kansas City, Kan., came as a relief to city and community leaders. Many had spent the day trying to learn more about the group, whose members believe that Jews are the root of all the world’s problems and that nonwhites are inferior to the white race.

“I’m glad it’s not coming to our community,” Mayor Carol Marinovich said late Thursday.

Earlier Thursday, the Unified Board of Commissioners of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., reaffirmed its 1998 resolution against racism and hatred. Meanwhile, community leaders from across the metropolitan area met privately Thursday with law enforcement officials, the Justice Department and an expert on neo-Nazi groups.

At the statehouse, news of the move prompted state Sen. David Haley, of Kansas City, Kan., to reintroduce hate-crimes legislation that includes stiffer penalties for crimes motivated by race, sexual orientation, religion or creed.