A Bumper Crop of Bad Candidates Running This November

Part 1: Our criteria for judging the worst of the worst

Anne Kim: Even when it comes to something like bad behavior, you have to set some standards somewhere. So let’s start with what your criteria were for judging who belongs in your top ten: Some combination of corruption, crime, convictions, incompetence? What did you look at when you were deciding who belongs in this rather vast field of bad candidates?

Nate Weisberg: One thing I think is very important for most of them is that they’re in close races, and they could win.

What made these candidates interesting was the fact that they have endorsements from national Republicans, and they have a real shot of winning. Maybe these things that make them such crazy candidates will ultimately be their Achilles’ heel—the thing that brings them down. But it’s too early to say right now. What we can say is that these biographies are causing the Republican Party to pour extra money into their races or give up on them altogether.

Anne Kim: As you surveyed your field of contenders—and there are an awful lot of them—were there common behaviors that stood out to you? 

Nate Weisberg: Absolutely. One of the big ones is racism and ties to white supremacist movements, neo-Nazi movements. Not all these candidates had a personal history of that themselves. Some of them it might have just been, sharing one post on Facebook. But almost all of them have ties to Nazi movements and white supremacist groups.

Mike Collins—who Jon Ossoff is running against in Georgia—his son-in-law, who lives in his home, is a neo-Nazi influencer. Jon Ossoff has put it to him directly in the debates: “Will you condemn the bile that is coming out of your home?” And he says, “That’s my family.” I don’t think Collins himself has pushed neo-Nazi content, but he certainly has pushed content that most people would categorize as racist or anti-Semitic.

Anne Kim: The other commonality is that a lot of these candidates have the endorsement of Donald Trump, right? A lot of these folks won their primaries because Trump endorsed these figures. For anyone who saw last week’s interview with Seth Masket, he did an analysis finding that the Trump endorsement carries 16 percentage points in a primary. It’s a significant advantage. That explains why we have so many of these people running in the general election at this point.

Part 2: Worst candidate – Number Five

Well, let’s move on to your list. We can’t talk through all ten of the people who are in your article, but let’s talk about the top five. Do you have someone you want to call number five?

Nate Weisberg: Let’s go with Brandon Herrera. This is Texas 23. And if you’ll remember, what happened with Texas 23 was it was represented by someone named Tony Gonzales, who had had an affair with one of his staffers who ended up committing suicide. He decided that facing an ethics investigation he was going to step aside.

Brandon Herrera then was crowned the nominee after Gonzales dropped out. He has had a full career as a YouTube influencer where he’s showed off his vintage copies of Mein Kampf. He’s marched to Nazi music. He’s reenacted the assassination of Martin Luther King. 

Anne Kim:  You forgot the misogyny, calling women “whales,” that kind of thing.

Nate Weisberg: [He’s called] women all kinds of terrible things, particularly liberal women. He’s also a very popular YouTube gun influencer, and he’s running for the district that’ll include Uvalde, where there was the gruesome school shooting. And it’s a going to be a close race.

Part 3: Worst candidate – Number Four

Anne Kim: Wow. Okay. That was number five. So who’s number four—keeping in mind that four is worse than number five? 

Nate Weisberg:  Scott Perry [of Pennsylvania].

According to Jewish Insider, he shared a Facebook post of a bunch of stereotypically looking Jewish bankers with hooked noses mastering a Monopoly board. Jewish Insider was like, “What’s going on here?” And he was like, “I didn’t know that there was an anti-Semitic connotation to this,” and he took it down. [So he’s been] enmeshed with the worst parts of the online right. 

And according to the January 6th committee, he was emailing Mark Meadows, who was chief of staff, encouraging Meadows to elevate Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who’s supposed to help Trump and Eastman and others overturn the [2020 election] results. In the days leading up to January 6th, [he was] frantically texting and emailing with Mark Meadows being like, “Five more days to January 6th, we’ve got to go!” 

Anne Kim: He ultimately voted not to certify Biden’s win, too. 

Nate Weisberg: Well, that’s just average these days. It’s not voting to certify but also being a part of this plot against America. 

Anne Kim: Right. And just to remind everyone, this guy is a sitting member of Congress. He’s not just a candidate who came out of nowhere. What does his race look like?

Nate Weisberg: He’s in an R+3 district, so it’s a district that leans Republican. But because of his terrible record, forecasters are saying the race is leaning Democratic.

Part 4: Worst candidate – Number Three

Anne Kim: So next, number three?

Nate Weisberg: I’ll go with Randy Fine [of Florida], who’s another sitting member of Congress. 

Unlike most of the other candidates, he is in a safe seat and likely to win re-election. He is a product of being in a safe Republican seat and not having to worry about alienating voters.

He’s a notorious Islamophobe. He’s called both Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib Muslim terrorists. He suggested that Israel should nuke Gaza before ultimately walking that back because the nuclear fallout would also impact Israel. His legislative agenda includes things like the Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act, which seeks to cut money off from municipalities that that restrict dog ownership based on Sharia law, despite the fact that there’s no municipalities in America that have either enshrined Sharia law or the fact that Sharia law doesn’t prohibit dog ownership.

Part 5: Worst candidate – Number Two

Anne Kim: Right. Okay, demagogue, Islamophobe, great. So number two?

Nate Weisberg:  Max Miller [of Ohio].  He’s an interesting one because this was a seat that Republicans won [by] eleven or twelve points in 2024. 

Max Miller’s ex-wife is Senator Bernie Moreno’s daughter, so you have both a political drama and a family drama. So his ex-wife, Senator Bernie Moreno’s daughter, accused Max Miller of physical abuse of both her and her child. Though prosecutors did not bring charges, Republicans, including Senator Bernie Moreno, have called on Miller to drop out. But he’s refused. Instead he’s called for an ethics investigation into himself, and part of his strategy was, “I’m going to be super transparent and release everything.”

And then he released a bunch of documents only for his wife to sue him again because he included an unredacted nude photo of their toddler. So his efforts at trying to clear his name are not working, and Republicans are getting increasingly nervous about this seat, which should be a layup for them. They’re pouring money in to try to save the seat.

Part 6: Worst candidate – Number One

Anne Kim: Right. So now we get down to the number one. And who is that?

Nate Weisberg: It’s hard to avoid talking about Ken Paxton here because he’s one of the most remarkably corrupt figures in American politics, certainly in Texas. 

A recent Wall Street Journal story was just perfect because it included all the things that makes him who he is. It reported that Paxton spent the new year in Dubai with two fugitives who are fleeing the United States government for healthcare fraud charges and with his girlfriend, who’s not his wife. So within this story, you have him cheating on his wife, which is well known, and he’s a Christian candidate. He’s a known fraudster hanging out with other fraudsters. And not only that, he’s on a lavish vacation. 

And the other thing that’s come out through this race was an Associated Press investigation [finding] that he’s just AWOL. The Associated Press found that in the vast majority of his days in office, his days were blank. He took tons of state-sponsored vacations, bringing security guards all over to wine country and Mexico and all these lavish vacations. And he’s become, in his time in office, very rich. And he has a history of being accused of fraud and securities fraud, including accusations from his own staff. 

Anne Kim:  I think the most horrifying thing about Ken Paxton though is that he could become a sitting U.S. senator. What’s happening with that race?

Nate Weisberg: This is a true toss-up. It’s one of the six or so races that’ll determine control of the Senate. It could go either way. [Democrat James] Talarico’s led by a point or two in most of the polling, but it’s going to be a really, close race. I think ultimately you can’t really be shocked either way it goes. I mean, this is still Texas. A Democratic pickup there would be a big deal.

Part 7: There are bad Democratic candidates too

Anne Kim: It would be a big deal. I just want to point out in your list that we’ve mainly only talked about GOP candidates, but you did mention that you have one Democrat on your list, who’s not in the top five, but just say a couple sentences about why you included Darializa Chevalier.

Nate Weisberg: So she is obviously a DSA candidate, and she comes out of the pro-Palestine protest movement. Ultimately what got her over the finish line was an endorsement from [New York City Mayor] Zohran [Mamdani]. And they are already clashing, it seems. She’s putting the heat on him to get rid of his police commissioner, which it seems he does not want to do. 

But she is a millennial who has a history with social media. And I mean, when people talk about “peak woke,” her peak woke output was something to behold. She was talking about, you know, getting rid of all police, all prisons. She trashed interracial marriage and interracial dating. She would say she would say she’s outgrown a lot of this material, though, even recently she was saying that she opposes any kind of deportation, including for violent criminals, because her explanation was that that would be “double jeopardy.” Basically if you’re tried in our criminal justice system, convicted, serve time, and then you’re deported, she was saying that that’s sort of a kind of double jeopardy.

Anne Kim: And didn’t she also call President Joe Biden a rapist?

Nate Weisberg: She also said, “Fuck Kamala Harris.” This is no friend of the average Democrat. She’s also blamed America for Russia invading Ukraine. It’s a big hodgepodge of crank views. But she’s in a safe seat and will coast to victory. 

Maybe I should have included, as a more consequential Democrat, [the candidate] in Montana for the Senate. You have an independent candidate who people think could be a real challenge to the Republican. 

Anne Kim: Seth Bodnar.

Nate Weisberg: But the Democratic nominee, Alani Blankhead just won’t drop out, even though leaders of her party have called on her to [do so]. And so these two candidates, the independent and the Democrat, will split the anti-Trump vote.

It just goes to show that even if all Democrats and a lot of independents agree about the stakes here when it comes to democracy and Trump’s abuses of power, sometimes these personalities can’t get out of their own way.

She doesn’t have a terrible record that I can point to, but she has an ego, it seems, that’s going to hurt the party. 

Part 8: Let’s not forget good candidates

Anne Kim: So these are terrible candidates of a different nature, not so much moral failings but as egotistical ones, perhaps. 

Well, there’s been a lot of negativity in the past twenty minutes here. And so I’m afraid that what we’ve been doing is confirming people’s low opinion of Congress already, which is valid. Let’s face it, that’s valid. But there are also a lot of great candidates who are running too and a lot of great members in Congress that we don’t hear much about because they’re not embroiled in scandals, and they are trying to do the right thing. 

I’m wondering if there is a candidate who’s running this cycle that does inspire you. Do you have someone in mind that you think belongs in Congress and would do the right thing and is exactly the kind of person we need to see more of in that institution?

Nate Weisberg: Well there’s a lot of ways I can answer this question.

Dan Osborn, who’s running for Senate in Nebraska against Pete Ricketts. And there’s Seth Bodnar in Montana. These are sort of a new kind of candidate who are, you know, can really expand the map, even if they’re running as independents. They can expand the map for Democrats in places where they’re no longer competitive. And then you have candidates like Roy Cooper in North Carolina, who’s just easygoing and not making the news. His race has not been in the news much just because he’s been he’s just been calm and collected and leading the whole time.

Anne Kim: And some of these candidates I think have moral character, moral fiber that is admirable. You’ve mentioned James Talarico, for instance, in Texas. Faith is a big part of who he is, but it’s a genuine faith. It doesn’t seem to be a hypocritical kind of faith, like we’re seeing in some of the Republican candidates. And Adam Hamilton running in Kansas also seems have found a way to bring Christianity to his campaign for office.

Nate Weisberg: Absolutely. It’s very important for Democrats not to be in a position where they’re coming off as hostile to religion or organized religion. That’s not a winning strategy. It’ll be tough for Adam Hamilton to win. It’ll be great if he did. But what Democrats need in presidential races and congressional races is to lose by less. And that could actually end up having a much larger impact on the balance of political power and who wins the 2028 election.