Republican Valentina Gómez, candidate for Missouri Secretary of State, posted a video on her social media asking voters not to be “weak and homosexual.”
Gomez, a 24-year-old real estate investor, was running through a predominantly LGBTQ neighborhood in St. Louis during the video. reported WCPT820 Radio.
“In the United States you can be whatever you want, so don’t be weak or gay,” Gomez said while jogging in a bulletproof vest. ‘Still fucking hard.’
The clip then showed a photo of her holding a rifle.
Gomez is running for Missouri Secretary of State as a Republican, and since the state is heavily red, the winner of the Republican primary is likely to win the general election.
Gomez is a prominent gun rights advocate and frequently posts photographs of herself holding and shooting firearms.
The current Secretary of State, Republican Jay Ashcroft, is running for governor of Missouri, leaving the seat vacant. Gómez, along with three other major rivals, will run in the Republican primary, which will take place on August 6.
Gomez, however, has attracted much more attention than her counterparts simply for her controversial stances and provocative videos.
Chief among them was when she shared images of herself setting fire to two LGBTQ-inclusive books in February, characterizing the literature as “grooming, indoctrination and sexualization.”
‘When I am Secretary of State, I WILL BURN all the books that are grooming, indoctrinating and sexualizing our children. MAGA. “America first”, wrote in X.
Gomez used a flamethrower to ‘groom, indoctrinate and sexualize’ books in a viral video shared as part of his campaign.
Viewers quickly got to work responding to her latest campaign video, posted on May 12, with many people calling her “embarrassing” and “pathetic” for walking around in a bulletproof vest.
Liberal radio host John Shannon wrote, “Nothing shows weakness more than going for a morning run in a Kevlar vest.”
There were some responses supporting her, but they were buried amid an avalanche of attacks and jokes at her expense.
Gómez has earned a reputation for wading into conservative culture war issues; One of his favorites includes protecting children from the “transgender agenda,” as he puts it on his campaign website.
He attacked transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney before Mulvaney’s speech to students at Saint Louis University, a Jesuit university in St. Louis.
“That guy is making fun of women,” Gomez said. in a video filmed in front of the university campus, “No matter how many surgeries, injections or hormones you receive, a man will never become a woman.”
Gomez recently attacked Dylan Mulvaney, who spoke at a Jesuit college in Missouri. He called Mulvaney ‘a guy’ with a ‘penis’
Since the secretary of state serves as Missouri’s top elections official, Gomez has floated plans to revamp the election system.
She believes the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, possibly influencing her idea to “eliminate electronic voting machines to successfully transition to universal hand counting of paper ballots,” according to the website of his campaign.
He also supports deploying the National Guard to monitor polling places in Missouri.