O'Brien: 2026 Democrat Candidates Are Weird

By Bill O'Brien, NH Journal

The 2026 midterms are shaping up less like a normal election and more like an audition for the Democrats’ Weird Caucus. Let’s start in our neighboring state of Maine, where Senate hopeful Graham Platner, the new face of the new Democrat mainstream, is being selected by the disloyal opposition apparently because he is a leftist train wreck.

Platner has been noted for his Nazi Totenkopf (Skull) tattoo, which he says he covered up when, after 20 years of it stretching over his chest, he figured out what it meant. It doesn’t end there with him. His social media posts include women deserving sexual assault when they don’t “act like an adult,” police being bastards, and praising Hamas.

Lest you think Platner is an outlier, Michigan Democrats would like you to hold their beer. Their Senate candidate, Mallory McMorrow, wants her voters to think of her as a bright, viral, suburban future for the party. But old posts reveal the truth: she is a fountainhead of California-inflected disdain for non-coastal elites. There are deleted social media postings calling anyone not from California “morons” and comments calling middle Americans “backward.” In what is becoming required Democrat rhetoric, she has, of course, compared Nazi Germany to the Trump administration. (On that point, she hasn’t revealed if Platner agrees.)

Then comes Abdul El-Sayed, another Michigan Senate candidate. His ambition seems to be to prove there is no left-wing internet figure too radioactive to be a campaign buddy. He appears with podcaster Hasan Piker, who said Americans deserved 9/11 and suggested his followers might kill off Florida’s Rick Scott, one of the true gentlemen in the U.S. Senate.

El-Sayed is also running on abolishing ICE and taxpayer-funded gender mutilation of children. He has refused to comment on the Ayatollah’s death because it was “sad.” He, like most Democrat candidates, checks the Democrat divisive rhetoric box by calling President Trump and Republicans “fascists.”

Texas Democrats apparently are determined not to be outdone in fielding bizarre candidates. Here are the positions of nominated Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico: He “Loves” trans-kids as much as his family, supports men in girls’ sports, said there are 6 sexes, supports the gender mutilation of children because “God is non-binary,” and said police officers fuel a “culture of violence,” Oh yeah, and he also wants to put abortion clinics in federal buildings.

You might think it’s hard to top that, but Democrat House candidates are no less strange. In Iowa, there is Democrat congressional candidate Sarah Trone Garriott. Garriott has defended witchcraft, officiated at a Satanist wedding, and warned about public expressions of Christianity in a 2023 speech because, she says, Christianity is threatening and linked to political violence.

Texas Democrats were up to the Garrott weirdness challenge, however, because they have Democrat congressional candidate Bobby Pulido. Pulido stars in his own music video, where he plays a pervert (practice for a Democrat campaign, perhaps?), and the Texas Tribune reported he performed with a bandmate convicted of indecent contact with an 8-year-old girl. Pulido’s campaign said he was unaware of the man’s criminal history, which might just mean he wasn’t aware that his buddy was caught and convicted.

Coming to the end of a cross-country sampling of the sad state of Franklin Roosevelt’s and John Kennedy’s party, we find Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. She claims to be a blue-collar moderate, but her Democrat weirdness seeps through. Former roommates recount that she “‘serrated’ a chicken’s head off with ‘a dull kitchen knife.’” The roommate also laminated her “cosplaying” of a poor person, even though she comes from wealth. Apparently, he isn’t aware that cosplaying is always required of Democrat candidates.

Returning to New Hampshire, we have to acknowledge that local Democrat candidates add color to the mosaic of Democrat weirdness. Rep. Maggie Goodlander appeared in the “refuse military orders” video that triggered a federal probe and, strangely, revealed what Democrats usually hide: her disloyalty to her country and her lack of integrity.

Meanwhile, gubernatorial candidate Jon Kiper, once and future Democrat and known as an income-tax cheerleader with a history of misogyny, has weighed in with this poetic offering to the state that gave the nation Robert Frost: “Are you a prostitute? … Because I would definitely be willing to pay cash money to have sex with you.”

Boy, that’s a weird thing to have said if you are running for governor and want to be trusted with spending money wisely.

The question is no longer whether Democrats have weird candidates. The question is whether weirdness has become the credential.

Former NH House Speaker Bill O’Brien is currently the RNC National Committeeman from New Hampshire and Chairman of the RNC Rules Committee. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.