It was a fringe Republican marketing campaign advert that could possibly be ripe for parody on late-night tv, ideally suited materials for a skit on “Saturday Night time Reside” or the goal of a monologue from a bewildered Jon Stewart. Besides it was actual, and it’s arduous to think about the way it could possibly be additional satirized.
“In America, you will be something you need,” Valentina Gomez, a 25-year-old Latino immigrant and actual property investor operating within the G.O.P. major for secretary of state in Missouri, says within the video as she jogs via a historic district of St. Louis to the uplifting beats of “The Present Goes On” by Lupe Fiasco.
“So don’t be weak and homosexual. Keep arduous,” she continues, emphasizing her assertion with an expletive. The neighborhood the place the video was filmed, Soulard, has a major L.G.B.T. group.
The marketing campaign advert, which Ms. Gomez shared on her social media accounts, then transitions from the video of Ms. Gomez — sporting operating shorts and a vest resembling physique armor — to a nonetheless picture of the candidate in entrance of a truck and sporting a Nationwide Rifle Affiliation hat, with an American flag at her aspect and a gun in every hand.
The marketing campaign advert, first posted on Sunday, has drawn condemnation and scrutiny on-line. Mr. Fiasco, who has condemned homophobia within the hip-hop scene, distanced himself from the video that featured one in every of his hit singles, saying in a press release that he was “at present taking motion.” Jason Kander, a former Democratic secretary of state in Missouri and a former Military intelligence officer, mocked Ms. Gomez in a social media submit on Tuesday.
“So refreshing to see a feminine GOP candidate who by no means served within the navy doing the entire veteran cosplay, stolen valor, bigotry as an alternative to energy routine in addition to any man,” wrote Mr. Kander, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2006 and has since struggled with signs of post-traumatic stress dysfunction.
However Ms. Gomez’s on-line trolling marketing campaign, rife with homophobia and assaults in opposition to transgender folks, has additionally earned her the admiration of far-right lawmakers, together with Consultant Matt Gaetz, on-line conservative influencers and the expelled former Consultant George Santos — who’s himself homosexual.
The jogging video can also be not the primary such homophobic stunt from Ms. Gomez, who seems keen to face out as a political newcomer in a crowded Republican major to be Missouri’s prime elections official. In February, she posted a video of herself burning L.G.B.T.Q. books with a do-it-yourself flamethrower. A month later, she mentioned that international locations that ban flamethrowers have been additionally “weak and homosexual,” and has since repeatedly used the homophobic phrase as an insult, wielding it as a marketing campaign slogan.
Ms. Gomez has spent little on the race to this point as compared with a few of her better-known opponents, together with Dean Plocher, the speaker of the Missouri Home. However her social media posts — which come at a frantic tempo on X — have lifted her profile as she rails in opposition to the state occasion as corrupt and compromised.
“I converse the reality, and I’m waking up the lions to avoid wasting America,” Ms. Gomez wrote on social media on Wednesday, in protection of her advert. “Weak spot will get us nowhere. The gloves are off, and I’m right here to guard and battle for Missouri.”
Ms. Gomez didn’t reply to a request for touch upon social media.
Ms. Gomez’s remarks stand out not only for their provocative nature, but in addition as a result of they’re one thing of a non sequitur within the race she is operating. A secretary of state is actually a state’s chief bureaucrat, answerable for record-keeping and overseeing the state’s elections. Ms. Gomez is a 2020 election denier, and has mentioned she would abolish voting machines and deploy the Nationwide Guard — an authority a secretary of state doesn’t have — to safe elections.
