Election News

The most homophobic GOP candidate of the year loses her primary & it was brutal

Republican candidate Valentina Gomez
Republican candidate Valentina Gomez Photo: Screenshot

Valentina Gomez, who ran in the GOP primary for Missouri Secretary of State, built her campaign around her hatred of LGBTQ+ people. She made “Don’t be weak and gay” a slogan of her campaign, she called LGBTQ+ people “groomers” and “pedophiles” repeatedly, she burned LGBTQ+ books with a flamethrower, and she said anti-LGBTQ+ slurs in videos posted to social media.

And she just came in sixth place in her primary election out of eight candidates.

With 99% of votes counted this morning, the Kansas City Star reports that Gomez got 47,931 votes – or just 7.5% – in the primary yesterday, putting her behind five other candidates. State Sen. Denny Hoskins (R) got 24.4% of the vote and has been declared the winner by the AP.

In a video posted after the polls closed but before the votes were counted, Gomez claimed that her campaign had “locked up pedophiles, saved children, stood up to tyrants and corrupt politicians, and I would do it 1000 times again.”

“God qualifies the called,” she said. She has not posted a message since the election was called.

Gomez drew national attention to the crowded primary in May when she posted a video to social media where she said: “In America, you can be anything you want. So don’t be weak and gay. Stay f**king hard.” She had already drawn some headlines a couple months prior with her flamethrower stunt.

She grew increasingly unhinged as she got closer to the primary, calling LGBTQ+ people “pedophiles” regularly. She even made a video this past week calling LGBTQ+ people “fa***ts” and claiming that unnamed people tried to poison her dogs, before calling Vice President Kamala Harris “an Indian hoe” and saying that Democrats are all “gay, vaccinated, and cannot reproduce.”

While she got more attention from national media outlets than all of her competitors combined, that didn’t translate into votes in the primary.

But that wasn’t the only loss she suffered this year. Her campaign, she claimed, caused her to lose her job with Purina dog food. Her brother also lost his job with the Democratic mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, when he donated $1250 to her campaign and then refused to say he disagreed with her stances on LGBTQ+ people.

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