These Extremists Are Running for Election in November

There are five weeks left until the midterm elections, and extremism is on the ballot in much of the US. A WIRED review of candidates running for statewide and federal positions in November, along with exclusive data on candidates running for state-level positions, reveals hundreds of Republican candidates who openly express virulently hateful ideologies, share racist content online, have close ties to white supremacist and antisemitic figures, and are members of far-right groups online. President Donald Trump and his administration have openly embraced, endorsed and defended many of these candidates.

At a local level, over 500 candidates running for state legislator positions in November are members of far-right groups on Facebook that promote militias, gun rights, and Christian nationalism, according to data collected by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and shared with WIRED.

While many extremist candidates—such as groyper James Fishback and antisemitic influencer Dan Bilzarian— didn’t make it through GOP primaries, many made it to the general election, and a number of them are expected to win.

“The candidates are taking a page out of the Trump administration’s playbook,” Luke Baumgartner, a former research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, tells WIRED. Baumgartner claims that many of the candidates running in November have been inspired by those in the White House. “In essence, the executive branch has handed them a permission slip to say and do what would have been unthinkable during the George W. Bush, McCain, or [Mitt] Romney eras of the GOP,” he says.

Extremist rhetoric has led to real world political threats. In 2025, terrorism and targeted violence incidents rose 19 percent compared to 2024, according to researchers at the University of Maryland; the US Capitol Police reported an increase in “threat assessment cases” against members of Congress for the third year in a row, with a 58 percent increase from 2024; and the US Marshals Service documented threats against almost 400 judges, a roughly 5 percent increase from the previous year.

Here are five races involving candidates who have shared extremist ideologies or have close ties to extremist figures, that WIRED is watching ahead of the November midterms.

The Texas Railroad Commissioner Race

Bo French, the GOP candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner, is so extreme that Republican strategist Karl Rove has said he would vote for a Democrat rather than supporting a “bigot.”

Earlier this month, French posted racist comments about students celebrating at a University of Texas at Austin football game. “Like bodycam footage exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners,” French wrote alongside a picture of students of South Asian descent celebrating a victory over Ohio State. “It’s everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine.” (Former Border Patrol leader Greg Bovino wrote in reply, “Mass deportations will solve it in very short order.”)

While many Republicans, including senator John Cornyn from Texas, criticized French for his post and called on him to take it down, French instead doubled down, telling a conservative radio host that while he didn’t “have anything against the people specifically in that picture,” he wanted to “prioritize Americans.”

This wasn’t the first controversy for the candidate: French has previously called for the removal of 100 million people from America, including US citizens, and repeatedly used homophobic slurs.

The Texas Railroad Commissioner is an incredibly powerful position that has no role in regulating railroads, but instead oversees the state’s oil and gas industries, which in Texas drill more oil and other hydrocarbons than the rest of the US combined. The role will also be critical to deciding how the burgeoning data center industry in Texas will be powered.

New polling this week suggests French, who has not been publicly endorsed by Trump, is a slim favorite to win the seat.

Arizona’s 5th Congressional District Race

Mark Lamb, the GOP nominee for Arizona’s 5th district congressional race, is a former sheriff and reality TV star. He has deep ties to paramilitary groups, anti-immigration organizations, and the far-right constitutional sheriffs movement.

Lamb has protested Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates, expressed support for the “stop the steal” movement,” and sympathized with the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6. He is in favor of private militias and even authorized the formation of a civilian posse while serving as sheriff of Pinal County in response to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. He is a regular on right wing podcasts, including those hosted by white nationalists and conspiracy theorists.

Lamb, who is supported by Trump and conservative student organization Turning Point USA, won his primary despite accusations of multiple sex scandals. When one woman threatened to expose him, a Facebook account featuring an avatar of Lamb’s face threatened to use Arizona’s revenge porn law against her.

Lamb is almost certain to be elected in the deeply red district that includes Phoenix.

Texas’ 23rd Congressional District Race

Brandon Herrera, who rose to fame as a so-called “guntuber,” is running for Congress in Texas in the district that represents Uvalde. Incumbent GOP congressman Tony Gonzales resigned after admitting to an affair, making Herrera the GOP candidate.

Herrera has a very long history of sharing sexist, racist, and antisemitic opinions. He has said that a Nazi-era submachine gun was “the original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper.” He has compared feminists’ weight to whales, elephants, and nuclear bombs and described liberal women discussing guns as “both fat and wrong.” While talking about Shannon Watts, the gun control activist who set up Moms Demand Action following the Sandy Hook school shooting, Herrera said: “The fact that you kept your cum trophy doesn’t make you any less wrong about the dumb shit that you say.”

“HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN,” Trump wrote about Herrera in a Truth Social post in March.

When questioned about Herrera’s opinions of women, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson dismissed them as part of his online “persona.” Johnson also called Herrera a “very serious candidate” and a “very thoughtful guy.”

Herrera is in a tight race with Democrat nominee Katy Padilla Stout.

Georgia’s Senate Race

Mike Collins, the Trump-backed GOP senate candidate in Georgia, is running against Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff.

Collins has spent a large part of his campaign battling accusations that he supports or is indifferent to white supremacy and antisemitism—not because of anything he has said, but because of who he has surrounded himself with. In May, NOTUS reported that former Collins staffer William Paul (son of Kentucky senator Rand Paul) hurled antisemitic insults at representative Mike Lawler from New York while both were at a bar.

Later the same month, Slate revealed that Collins’ then chief-of-staff, Kip Talley, was in a group chat with known white supremacists like Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer. In the texts, Talley said he was working to help Charles “Chuck” Johnson, a Holocaust denier who has been accused of (and denied) being a white nationalist, who was in jail at the time as he was in contempt of court as part of a racketeering lawsuit. Talley told Slate that he was concerned about an “acquaintance I have known for years was being mistreated in custody and denied basic medical care.”

In July, CNN revealed that Collins’ son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, is a social media influencer who has shared antisemitic content and Nazi imagery. And finally, last month, the Washington Post revealed that a former intern and contractor for his PAC had shared images on X of a swastika and an image of himself in what appear to be KKK robes.

Collins has repeatedly said that he condemns antisemitism and hate speech of any kind. He also secured Trump’s endorsement earlier this month.

Polling shows Ossoff comfortably leading Collins in the general election.

Florida’s State House’s 10th District Race

Marshall Rawson, a 34-year old citrus farmer and GOP activist, was the surprise winner of the Republican primary in August for the Florida legislature’s 10th District House race.

Talking Points Memo revealed this month that Rawson marched at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and was pictured close to the neo-Nazi who later would drive his car into a crowd of protesters, killing Heather Heyer.

On social media, Rawson has repeatedly posted racist remarks. He has also suggested that gay people should be criminally charged and possibly executed. He has been associated with the racist and antisemitic League of the South movement, which seeks secession for southern states from the US.

Talking Points Memo revealed that his campaign is getting donations from the daughter of former KKK leader David Duke, along with another individual who marched in Charlottesville and admitted to organizing a birthday party for Duke.

There is no public polling available for the race, but the district leans heavily red, with Republicans winning the seat by a 48-point margin in 2024.