Mother Jones; Getty; Valentina Gomez Campaign
Valentina Gomez, the 25-year-old former Missouri Secretary of State candidate known for crass posts—like calling her opponents “weak and gay” while jogging in a tactical vest—lost her eight-way primary last night.
Gomez rose to national (or maybe just very online) prominence by posting wildly. She declared that she would protect Missourians from the “transgender industry,” using a flamethrower to burn books in a campaign advertisement. She parted ways with her former employer, the dog food company Purina, and then told her fans to “feed your dogs something that is not weak and gay.” She instructed Black Americans to leave the country in a Juneteenth message. She recently said the Olympics were catering to “faggots.”
On Tuesday, Gomez discovered that Twitter is not real. She lost—and badly—with only about 7 percent of the vote.
Gomez’s minor celebrity, however, may distract from what actually happened in Missouri. The Republican nomination for Secretary of State was won by Denny Hoskins, a Missouri legislator and State Freedom Caucus member who wants to reform state election law in order to “ensure that none of the electoral fraud that took place in 2020 and stole the election from President Trump happens here,” as reported by the Missouri Independent.
Beyond his election trutherism, Hoskins is staunchly anti-trans and anti-immigrant, railing in the Missouri senate chambers against gender-affirming care, which he describes as “little kids having their private parts cut off.”
He is currently embroiled in a federal defamation lawsuit over posts he made misidentifying a Kansas City area mass shooter as an undocumented immigrant. (Hoskins posted a picture of a man at the scene and claimed that he was both the shooter and undocumented—neither claim was true: the man, according to reporting, was both uninvolved and from Kansas.)
There was never any serious chance that Gomez would win the primary. But her brand of outlandish meme-politicking serves to make equally hard-right politicians look almost reasonable. Would she have been, in office, that far off from Hoskins?
The campiest bigot with the funniest tagline lost her job, her election, and, it seems, her brother’s job (he worked for the Jersey City government and reportedly refused to denounce his sister’s actions).
But that doesn’t mean the Missouri Republican party meaningfully rebuked any of her actual policy positions. On her pet issue, which is transphobia, she seems to say bluntly what others imply.
Andrew Bailey, the incumbent Attorney General who won yesterday’s primary on a Trump endorsement, has described trans healthcare as “a bloody scourge intended to defile innocents.” He shares some of those views with Mike Kehoe, the Republican nominee for governor, who is likely to win in November. No flamethrowers, no tactical vests—but the likely outcome, absent Valentina Gomez’ memeability, is exactly the same: A Missouri Republican party pushing towards the exclusion of trans people from public life.
Gomez’s small time in the spotlight was a rawer, clearer articulation of ideas that more professional politicians must couch in acceptable language.
One thing to remember though: When Gomez put her beliefs out there bluntly, they were rejected by red-state residents—including and especially those of Gomez’s own hometown.
One writer from the Soulard neighborhood, the gay-friendly area Gomez used as a video backdrop, responded: “Soulardians might be called many things. Gay? Sometimes. But weak? Never. The weak are Gomez’s target audience, who are presumably hunkered down somewhere, anxiously peeking through their blinds at any noise while waiting for the government to come for their guns. By contrast, Soulardians aren’t afraid of shit.”
