The Worst People for the Job

The only qualification left is loyalty to Donald.

Donald Trump and Ken Paxton

The Democratic Senate primary in Maine won by Graham Platner initially was an utter mess. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But Platner is out of the race now, and every Democrat who endorsed him withdrew their endorsement. Everybody who supported him called for him to step down.

Why? Let’s start with the tattoo. Platner had a skull and crossbones design that looks suspiciously like the Nazi SS Death’s Head symbol. This should have been the end of it, but for many it was not, so Platner’s campaign continued. Then some of his old Reddit posts resurfaced, including comments he made in a 2013 discussion about sexual assault and alcohol. In one of them, he wrote:

Don’t get so messed up you wind up having sex with somebody you don’t need to.

After this, members of his staff started leaving the campaign. His political director quit, saying she couldn’t look past what he had written. His campaign manager followed, and then his finance director left, citing differences in professional standards.

Finally, on July 6, 2026, a former girlfriend, Jenny Rasico, came forward and said Platner forced her to have sex with him in 2021. He called this claim categorically false, but it was the last straw. Bernie Sanders, one of Platner’s earliest and most loyal supporters, called on him to step down. So did Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer. Ro Khanna withdrew his endorsement. Eventually, Platner did drop out. He insisted this wasn’t an admission of guilt, but when the credible allegations and the history of his rhetoric and actions stacked up, his support within the Democratic Party collapsed.

That’s the way it’s supposed to work, unless you’re a Republican. So I want to take a look at some of the Republican Party’s worst candidates, for whom Republican leadership, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Donald, are rolling out the red carpet.

First, there’s Ken Paxton, a man impeached by his own party in Texas. That’s right. Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate in Texas, was impeached by his own Republican controlled state House on allegations that included bribery, corruption, and abuse of office. Paxton was later acquitted by the Republican controlled state Senate. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

He competed in the Republican primary against John Cornyn, an actual four term senator, but he won in a runoff despite years of legal trouble, including a securities fraud prosecution that ended in 2024 with Paxton paying nearly $300,000 in restitution under an agreement that avoided trial. It also probably helped that Donald endorsed him.

Then there’s his marriage. Paxton’s wife, Republican State Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year on what she referred to as biblical grounds. Her court filing alleged adultery. There are now so many videos of Paxton awkwardly trying to avoid both his alleged mistress and whatever cameras are pointed at him that there’s practically a genre of political content. I don’t believe his behavior is biblical. The NRSC called what Paxton had put his family through truly repulsive and disgusting. Republicans spent millions in the primary trying to stop him. Again, they failed, in large part because of Donald’s endorsement of him.

There’s another part of Paxton’s record worth knowing about. His attorney general’s office took over the prosecution of Adam Hoffman, a Waco attorney charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy. After Hoffman’s first trial ended with a hung jury and the child did not want to testify again, Paxton’s prosecutors negotiated a plea deal. Hoffman would plead guilty to two misdemeanors. He would not have to register as a sex offender. And the original punishment proposed by Paxton’s prosecutors was one day in jail for sexually assaulting a child.

The judge refused to accept the deal. Hoffman ultimately admitted as part of the plea that he had sexually touched the victim without consent, which should go without saying, for his own sexual gratification. He surrendered his license, and the judge imposed 60 days. None of this stopped Texas Republicans from making Paxton their nominee to be a senator of the United States of America.

Then we have Jake Lang. He’s running for Marco Rubio’s old Senate seat in Florida. Lang spent nearly four years in federal custody awaiting trial on charges stemming from the Capitol attack. He had not yet been convicted when Donald’s January 20, 2025 pardon ended the federal case against him, and now he’s running as a Republican for a Senate seat in Florida.

This is what Lang said as a candidate:

I would deputize the Proud Boys and the January 6th Patriots to bounty hunt illegal immigrants.

He also promised to ban Islam. At an anti AIPAC protest, Lang gave a Nazi salute. He threw chocolate coins and invoked antisemitic stereotypes about Jews and money. He later organized an anti Islam march he intended to take into Minneapolis’ Cedar Riverside neighborhood, home to a large Somali American population. The march fell apart after counterprotesters overwhelmed his small group. But his legal problems didn’t end when Donald pardoned him. Lang has been arrested repeatedly since then. In Texas, he was charged with making a terroristic threat after allegedly threatening a Muslim man. His initial bond was set at a million dollars.

Brandon Herrera, also known as the AK Guy, is a gun influencer, because only in America. He’s also a firearms manufacturer who is now the Republican nominee in Texas’ 23rd District, the same district that includes Uvalde, the site of the 2022 elementary school massacre. Herrera got a clear path to the nomination after incumbent Tony Gonzales dropped out because of an affair.

Herrera has spent years creating content designed to shock. He’s appeared goosestepping with a German military song associated with Nazi era imagery playing in the background. He’s shown off his copy of Mein Kampf. He made a video recreating the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. using a ballistic dummy. He’s appeared in promotional material for a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He’s also joked about veteran suicide, once saying that because he thought about putting a gun in his mouth, he was “basically an honorary veteran.” Herrera says the Nazi material was mocking Nazis, not celebrating them.

When confronted with the goosestepping video, this is how Herrera responded:

I stand by it. This is funny as hell.

Donald has endorsed him. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has endorsed him. Last month, Johnson traveled to San Antonio to campaign and raise money for this Nazi who also, by the way, happens to be a virulent misogynist. Yes, holier than thou Mike Johnson is out there raising money for a congressional candidate who thinks Nazi jokes are funny and who, by the way, is a virulent misogynist in a district where 19 children were murdered using the kind of weaponry Herrera glorifies.

Turning to Colorado, Victor Marx is not some fringe candidate anymore. He’s the Republican nominee to be governor of that state. He runs a multimillion dollar ministry built around what he calls spiritual warfare. He says he casts demons out of people. He can even do this over the phone. He’s that good at it, although he does object to the word exorcism, which is interesting because it sounds like a synonym for the kind of thing he’s pretending to do. He describes what he does as prayer.

Marx has claimed that when he was seven years old, his abusive stepfather forced him to participate in killing a man. The story, of course, has never been independently substantiated. When a Colorado journalist asked whether Marx believes he has killed people as an adult, this is how Marx replied:

Does it matter?

I think it should probably matter. Not to Colorado Republicans.

Marx has also claimed that his organization rescued more than 45,000 women and children, a very large number that reporters have been unable to substantiate independently. When a reporter confronted him about that claim, along with the exorcisms and other stories, and asked whether Marx understood why critics considered him a conman, Marx simply said no.

His Republican opponents certainly understood the question. During the primary, rivals called him a conman, a grifter, and a fraud. In other words, Donald’s preferred candidate. After Marx won, Republican State Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer ended her concession with one final line:

And for the record, I still haven’t killed anyone.

Maybe that’s why you didn’t win the Republican primary, because Marx won anyway, and he is now the Republican Party’s nominee to run the state of Colorado. And why wouldn’t he be? Because the person that 78 million Americans voted for in 2024 is also a conman, a grifter, and a fraud.

Every political party will eventually find itself explaining a candidate it wishes had never made it through a primary. The test is what the party does when that happens, and that’s what makes this moment different. This has actually been the trend for a long time now. It has, of course, along with everything else, simply worsened since Donald’s been in power.

Inside today’s Republican Party, there are no guardrails anymore. The behavior that would once have triggered a candidate’s being called on to withdraw is actually the reason he or she gets nominated or elected in the first place.

These people are being handed power. They’re being handed the power to write our laws, to control our institutions, to decide who gets governmental protection, who gets targeted by the government, and whether or not you have civil rights. They’re going to get to confirm judges. They’re going to control who gets money and when. They’re going to oversee our elections and govern whole states.

So when a political party stops asking whether someone is fit to wield that power, that is a fundamental problem. Republicans are not asking the questions democracy requires of anyone seeking public office: What have you done? Do you understand your role going forward as a civil servant? Can you be trusted to wield the power you are being granted?

The question they seem to be reduced to is simply this: Whose side are you on?

And if the answer is, we’re on the side of Donald Trump, that is all they need to say in order to get a pass for everything else.