Connecticut GOP candidate's anti-gay extremism sparks party meltdown

State House candidate Jadon MacCormack's history of hateful posts is forcing the GOP into damage-control mode

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Jadon MacCormack, the only Republican candidate for a State House seat from Connecticut’s 50th District, is a regular Christian shit-poster who routinely brags about how much he hates LGBTQ people.

Just last week, to mark the beginning of Pride Month, he wished everyone a “Happy Straight Month”:

As your State Representative, I, Jadon MacCormack, would stand firmly against the Transgender and LGBT movement that has for too long corrupted our families, undermined parental authority, and eroded the foundational values of our society. This ideology promotes confusion over clarity, prioritizes feelings over biological reality, and seeks to redefine the natural order of marriage, family, and human identity in ways that directly contradict God-given rights and common sense.

I will fight relentlessly in the state legislature to protect our children from premature medical interventions, indoctrination in schools, and the normalization of perverse ideologies that threaten the innocence of the next generation.

For him, it was a tame post. In 2025, when the Supreme Court hinted that it’d be open to overturning the Obergefell ruling that made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, MacCormack said it’d be better off if gay people were hanged. Because Bible.

That post rivals some of his other disturbing ones. Like the one where he endorsed Holocaust denial…

… or supported the view that we should “make being a homo illegal again”…

… or this one promoting his album of Gospel music. (Watch the video. I dare you.)

That’s who the Republican Party has chosen to be their standard bearer in a District that they have a very real chance of winning. District 50 has been represented by Democrat Pat Boyd since 2017, but that hasn’t always been automatic. While Boyd ran unopposed in 2020 and 2024, he won with only 53% of the vote in 2022, 57% of the vote in 2018, and 55% of the vote in 2016.

In other words, if Republicans ran a halfway-decent candidate, they might have a shot at flipping this district.

The problem is that, in Connecticut, Republicans don’t have much of a bench. In fact, after their nominating convention in May, they had no candidates for 31 (out of 151) House seats… and some of the districts were ceded over to the only person who offered to run. That’s how MacCormack became the sole Republican option for this district. There was no vetting; the 23-year-old homeschooled bigot was just the dude who raised his hand.

It was only after he became the default nominee that everyone realized how much of a religious extremist he was. And now Republicans are scrambling to fix the mess they created before MacCormack’s candidacy drags down the rest of their already pathetic ticket. After people saw the noose image and the Happy Straight Pride post, the Connecticut Republican Party issued a formal condemnation of him, saying MacCormack “crossed a line that should never be crossed by anyone seeking public office.”

Mr. MacCormack is entitled to his personal opinions, but those opinions are not representative of the Connecticut Republican Party. His statements do not reflect our values, our principles, or our approach to public service. Republicans can and should engage in vigorous debate on public policy without resorting to language that demonizes entire groups of people or invokes historical acts of persecution.

Given the nature of these comments and the poor judgment they demonstrate, I believe Mr. MacCormack has disqualified himself from serving as a standard-bearer for the Republican Party and as a representative for all the people of the 50th House District. Accordingly, I am calling on him to immediately withdraw his candidacy and step aside.

While that statement is important, it’s laughable coming from a party that openly embraces Donald Trump, a man whose racism, sexism, and outright bigotry toward immigrants and women and non-Christians and everyone who dares to ask him a non-softball question is so glaringly evident.

What’s the line that MacCormack crossed that Trump doesn’t cross every day?

Plus, this is the same party where a congressman just tweeted “Homosexuality has no place in America” (before deleting it and blaming a staffer). Anti-LGBTQ hate is quite literally what they stand for. MacCormack isn’t some anomaly; he’s the sort of bigot the Party has been embracing as its base for years. If you’re Republican, you should be used to people like this.

That’s the argument that Connecticut Democrats are making as they aim to tie MacCormack to every other GOP candidate who will appear on November’s ballot.

That includes MacCormack’s opponent, Pat Boyd, who spiked the ball as soon as he realized the political gift he’d been given: “I am deeply embarrassed that our region is drawing statewide, and potentially national, attention for all the wrong reasons. The nomination of a major party candidate who chooses to divide our towns, spread hate, and insult our neighbors is completely tone-deaf to the decent people from all political backgrounds who live here.”

Other Democrats also jumped on the action:

“The hateful comments made repeatedly by this Republican candidate for public office are unacceptable and completely out of step with Connecticut values,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “Connecticut is a state that welcomes people, respects differences and believes everyone deserves to be treated with dignity. Hate and discrimination have no home here, and I will continue to stand with the LGBTQ+ community to ensure our state remains a place where everyone feels safe, welcome and respected.”

US Congressman Joe Courtney, a Democrat, also released a statement on the controversy.

“The recent comments, and history of similar rhetoric, made by a candidate seeking state office in northeast Connecticut are reprehensible in every way and have no place in our public discourse,” Courtney said. “While I’m glad to see a number of Republican elected officials and party leaders condemn the statement, it is worth remembering that the Republican party gave this candidate their endorsement less than two weeks earlier.”

For the Republican Party’s part, they’re scrambling to avoid a larger headache. The deadline for all candidates to appear on November’s ballot is Tuesday. And they only began recruiting an alternative option to MacCormack on Friday.

With time running short, the next step is that Republicans have already started to collect about 240 signatures by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9, in order to force a primary, House Republican Leader Vince Candelora said Friday. The candidate is Anthony J. Emilio of Pomfret, a Republican small business owner who has run previously for the board of selectmen, school board, and board of assessment appeals over the past 15 years. His wife, Martha, is currently serving a four-year term on the town’s Board of Selectmen.

Republicans started collecting signatures Friday in the hopes of reaching their goal by Sunday with volunteers from the House, Senate, and state party.

Even if Emilio gets all the necessary signatures, though, because of the way Connecticut’s election laws work, both he and MacCormack would appear on November’s ballot. Which could split the Republican vote, making it easier for Boyd to win again.

MacCormack says he fully intends to stay in the race: “I will never withdraw.”

It’s also worth noting that his X/Twitter post history includes a LOT of shares of New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preachers, like Steven Anderson and Jonathan Shelley. Anderson has previously celebrated the deaths of murdered LGBTQ people and called on the government to execute gay people with a firing squad. His sermons have been so outrageously awful that 34 countries won’t allow him to step foot within their borders. I spoke with two of their more popular preachers a couple of summers agin. I also reached out to Shelley to see if he had any thoughts on MacCormack; he didn’t respond.

MacCormack says he’s not a New IFB member himself. He’s more of an old school IFB guy. But the tactics and dehumanizing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric are basically the same.

Regardless of how much the state’s Republican Party is trying to distance themselves from this guy, they’re going to find it impossible to do so because even if they claim his views don’t represent their positions, the fact is MacCormack felt perfectly at home within the Republican Party. Hell, he took a selfie with the GOP’s chosen candidate for governor, Ryan Fazio, calling him a “friend.”

It wasn’t just a selfie either. At one point, after MacCormack announced he’d be running in District 50, a man said he lived in that area and was represented by Pat Boyd.

“Not for long,” joked Fazio, referring to MacCormack’s campaign.

The Republican Party may not like MacCormack dragging them down, but they’ve done nothing to push bigots away from them. If anything, they’ve embraced bigotry and cruelty from the top of the ticket all the way down to local elections. You can’t run away from anti-LGBTQ rhetoric when you’re actively spreading lies about trans people and celebrating a Supreme Court that’s hell-bent on reversing civil rights progress made by LGBTQ people.

I attempted to contact MacCormack himself to chat about his positions, but he also did not response to a request for comment.

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