A candidate for governor in Colorado said living together without getting married leads to demonic possession. A Senate candidate in Georgia featured in his campaign materials his son-in-law, who has promoted white nationalist and antisemitic content online. And there’s a new ad in the Ohio governor race, weaponizing the childhood trauma of a Democratic rival.
“There are some bat crap crazy Republicans on the ballot,” says David Corn on this episode of Stress Test. Across the country, many Trump-endorsed candidates are now mired in self-inflicted scandals or displaying the kind of extremism normalized by MAGA’s takeover of the GOP. These candidates, win or lose, will be part of Trump’s legacy, David predicts. Even though the Republicans are “heading for a major drubbing on Election Day,” David says, “there’s still gonna be a tremendous amount of right-wing extremism within the GOP.”
David and co-host Garrison Hayes catalogue the unsavory allegations hitting GOP midterm candidates—spotlighting, in particular, investigations broken open by Mother Jones reporters Abby Vesoulis and Noah Lanard. Abby reviewed thousands of pages of filings involving Ohio Rep. Max Miller, whose ex-wife—the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno—told investigators Miller threw hot water at her, held a gun to her head, and shoved her against a wall. Authorities also investigated their toddler’s broken collarbone. Their finding was “unsubstantiated,” and Miller has denied abusing anyone. But Cook Political Report soon shifted his once-safe seat to a toss-up, and Abby kept surfacing details from the custody battle—including text messages indicating Miller repeatedly withheld his daughter’s beloved blue bunny. Meanwhile, Noah has spent weeks digging into David Flippo, a Trump-backed Republican running for an open Reno-area seat, including a Bronze Star with valor he never received, four required financial disclosures he never filed, and more than $2.5 million he says he poured into his campaigns without any apparent source of that level of wealth.
“If I’m a Republican congressional candidate and I get a phone call from you,” David jokes to Noah, “I should start to worry.”
Garrison wonders what it might take for voters to push back against extremism: “What we’re seeing here is that even for some voters who are loyal to the Republican Party, racism is not a deal-breaker. Antisemitism is not a deal-breaker,” he says. “White nationalism, neo-Nazism—this stuff is not a deal-breaker for them.”
We’ll know for sure in just under two weeks.