Texas Candidate Who Claimed Obama Was Gay Hooker Loses Runoff Election

AUSTIN, TX -- Texas just let out a collective "whew."

Mary Lou Bruner, State Board of Education candidate from East Texas, on Tuesday lost the runoff election in the Republican nomination race for the State Board of Education District 9 post.

The eyes of Texas were on East Texas Tuesday night focused on a race for a relatively obscure post that may have otherwise gone largely unnoticed until Bruner's entry in the primary contest and ultimate runoff election.

The reason: Bruner's unconventional beliefs.

The woman who came this close to being elected to the State Board of Education -- the government body that sets curriculum standards and adopts textbooks for the state's 5 million-plus school students -- believes (as she has stated both out loud in public, with people around, and on her prolific string of social media posts):

• President Obama was a gay prostitute in his youth, an occupation he took up to finance a drug addiction;
• Climate change is a hoax orchestrated by communists to undermine capitalism;
• Democrats engineered the assassination of John F. Kennedy to allow his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, to enact a socialist agenda;
• Pre-K programs at schools are designed to indoctrinate children into multiculturalism, socialism and homosexuality;
• The Affordable Care Act is part of a plot by the United Nations to take over the U.S.;
• Baby dinosaurs were among the animals on Noah's Ark.

Despite those interesting theories, Tea Party activist and former schoolteacher Bruner had been highly favored to win the election after nearly having won it against political rival Keven Ellis in the March primary.

Had she won, Bruner would've represented the East Texas region in the 15-member State Board of Education.

Ellis, an East Texas chiropractor who also is president of the school board in Lufkin, ultimately won the contest by 18 points.

"Texas escaped an education train wreck tonight," Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller said in a post-election statement. "If Bruner had ultimately won election to the board, she would have instantly become the most embarrassingly uninformed and divisive member on a board that already too often puts politics ahead of making sure our kids get a sound education."

The Texas Freedom Network is a nonpartisan education and religious liberties watchdog based in Austin. Miller thanked voters for not electing Bruner.

"We commend the majority of East Texas voters for their wisdom in this particular race," she said.

After two months of waiting for the outcome, Texans everywhere have now exhaled.

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From May 5:

AUSTIN, TX -- Another Texas political figure is making national headlines, but not necessarily for all the right reasons.

Mary Lou Bruner is poised to be the next member of the Texas State Board of Education, having fallen just short of the 50 percent needed to secure the seat this past Tuesday.

Bruner will compete with chiropractor Keven Ellis, who got 31 percent of the vote, in a May runoff. Bruner, the GOP candidate, is expected to win over over Democratic opponent in the general election, as the Houston Chronicle reported.

That prospect has raised quite a few eyebrows, in Austin and beyond. The 68-year-old retired teacher from Smith County has distinguished herself with some, let’s say interesting, views and theories on everything from climate change to President Obama.

• On climate change: “Climate change has nothing to do with weather or climate,” she wrote last June: “It is all about system change from capitalism (free enterprise) to Socialism-Communism. The Climate Change HOAX was Karl Marx’s idea.”
• She also wrote about her views on the Civil War, 2014: “Slavery is not the Reason for the Civil War. by [sic] Mary Lou Bruner…Historians waited until all of the people who were alive during the Civil War and the Restoration were dead of old age. THEN HISTORIANS WROTE THE HISTORY BOOKS TO TELL THE STORY THE WAY THEY WANTED IT TOLD.”
• Last November, she weighed in on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, by saying “Many people believe the Democrat Party had JFK killed because the socialists and Communists in the party did not want a conservative president.”
• On more topical issues, she also has some -- let’s again say interesting -- theories. As recently as October, she wrote in a post that President Barack Obama once worked as a gay prostitute: “Obama has a soft spot for homosexuals because of the years he spent as a male prostitute in his twenties,” she wrote. “That is how he paid for his drugs.”

She attributes the president’s support of gay rights to this imagined past occupation.

If she secures the State Board of Education seat, Bruner would have input on what goes into school textbooks. The board itself made national headlines in 2010 when it voted to change the state’s social studies standards while declaring they were written with a liberal slant.

Since then, the agency’s revisions have earned a grade of D from the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Washington Post reports.

Texans have known of the bombastic nature of Bruner’s views for some time now. In 2010, she addressed the very board to which she now seeks membership to discuss the state’s school textbooks.

Her main area of concern related to her perception that Middle Easterners were purchasing said textbooks: “I think the Middle Easterners are buying the textbooks!” she said with palpable alarm. “They’re buying everything else here.”

Bruner is one of two Texas political figures whose profiles were raised in the wake of Super Tuesday.

Robert Morrow, the newly elected Travis County GOP chairman, also has risen to prominence since Super Tuesday. Morrow beat incumbent James Dickey with about 55 percent of the vote.

Morrow, too, has some -- let’s just again say interesting -- views on topics, including his belief that the former governor engages in bisexual orgies and that LBJ was behind the JFK assassination.

Sometimes, it seems that Texas has a higher per-capita representation of individuals with bombastic views. Texas U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert has long captivated political observers with his own particular brand of worldview.

“No country has ever fallen while it was truly honoring the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” he once said.

In a heated exchange with former Attorney General Eric Holder, Gohmert lambasted him for casting aspersions on his asparagus.

Texas, our Texas. All hail the mighty state.