In Ohio, much of the focus on former President Donald Trump's endorsements of Republican candidates has been on "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance, who is competing with Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, in Ohio's 2022 U.S. Senate race. One Trump-endorsed MAGA candidate and GOP nominee in Ohio who hasn't received nearly as much national attention as Vance is J.R. Majewski, a full-fledged QAnon conspiracy theorist running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives via Ohio's 9th Congressional District.
Majewski is hoping to unseat the Democratic nominee, long-time Rep. Marcy Kaptur. If the 43-year-old Majewski managed to defeat Kaptur, it would be a political shocker; the Ohio Democrat was first elected to the U.S. House in 1982. Kaptur, now 75, has the distinction of being the only woman who has been serving in that branch of Congress for almost 40 years.
Kaptur survived the red waves of 1994 and 2010 and was reelected both years. But thanks to gerrymandering, it isn't out of the question that Majewski — even with his support of QAnon — could win.
The Guardian's Adam Gabbatt, in an article published on June 13, observes, "This is no quixotic campaign…. The 9th District has been redrawn for 2022, and is now rated as a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, ahead of elections in which Republicans are increasingly hopeful of winning the House and the Senate. If that happens, (President) Joe Biden will face extreme difficulty in passing any meaningful legislation for the rest of his first term."
Majewski is among the extremists who buys into the Big Lie and doesn't believe that Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election — never mind the fact that numerous recounts confirmed the fact that he did. The Ohio Republican marched with fellow Big Lie promoters in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, although he wasn't part of the mob who broke into the U.S. Capitol Building.
The Big Lie isn't the only conspiracy theory that Majewski believes. QAnon has been claiming that the United States' federal government has been hijacked by an international cabal of pedophiles, child sex traffickers, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was put in the White House to fight the cabal.
Majewski, Gabbatt notes, repainted a pro-Trump sign on his front law so that it was changed into a sign promoting QAnon.
"The sign repainting wasn't Majewski's only dalliance with QAnon — a baseless right-wing conspiracy theory which has been labeled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI — and which states, among other things, that a cabal of Democrats and liberals are engaged in child trafficking," Gabbatt reports. "In a television interview about the sign, Majewski was wearing a QAnon t-shirt — and Media Matters, a media watchdog, documented multiple instances of Majewski posting images and hashtags relating to the baseless conspiracy theory."
Majewski has also called for red states to secede from the United States. In a video posted on the Periscope app, Gabbatt notes, Majewski said, "I didn't want to be a hype beast, but I've had it in my back pocket to say that every state that went red should secede from the United States. I don't think it sounds out there."
