It’s not common for The New York Times to describe a congressional primary as “zany,” but this week’s Republican race in Florida’s 19th Congressional District was, among other things, unique.
It featured a former New York congressman who went to prison, a scandal-plagued former North Carolina congressman who lost in a primary four years ago and a handful of other failed GOP candidates from states very far from Florida.
But as weird as it was to see all of these candidates run in the same primary, their most outlandish primary rival was a man by the name of John Strand. I’ll just let this recent Mother Jones report speak for itself:
When Florida congressional candidate John Strand introduces himself to potential voters, he starts with his criminal record. “I’m John Strand, patriot for Congress, the J6 hostage who went to prison on principle so that you don’t have to,” he said at a January debate hosted by the Women’s Republican Club of Naples Federated.
The former international underwear model spent about a year in federal prison after a DC jury convicted him of five criminal counts, including one felony, related to his participation in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. In January 2025, Trump pardoned him, along with 1,500 people convicted of J6-related crimes. And now, Strand is using his J6 infamy to try to catapult into Congress in one of the weirdest GOP primaries in the country this year.
This week, Republican voters in the Fort Myers-area district finally had their say, and it turns out, all of the aforementioned candidates lost to talk radio station owner Jim Schwartzel, who finished with roughly 29% of the vote in the 10-candidate field.
And how did the former underwear model who was sentenced to prison for his role in the Jan. 6 attack fare? Strand finished seventh, garnering just under 4% of the vote.
Time will tell whether he tries his hand at elected office again, but if he does, Strand should probably take note of the fact that Jan. 6 rioters keep losing in their bids for public office.
A couple of months ago in South Carolina, for example, Tyler Bradley Dykes, who was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for stealing a police shield and twice using it against officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, also ran in a Republican congressional primary.
He did even worse than Strand: Dykes finished 10th in an 11-person field, garnering a little over 1% of the vote in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District.
Other Jan. 6 rioters announced candidacies but never quite made their way to a ballot. In Texas, for example, pardoned rioter Ryan Nichols launched a Republican congressional campaign late last year, only to withdraw from the race days later while calling his candidacy a “mistake.”
Meanwhile, Jake Lang, who spent several years in prison before receiving a Trump pardon, also claimed last year that he was a Republican Senate candidate in Florida, but he never actually filed the paperwork and never appeared on a ballot.
I’m mindful of the fact that in many far-right circles, these pardoned criminals enjoy celebrity status, but to date, that hasn’t been enough to propel them to election victories.
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