Utah Democrat Nate Blouin faces ridiculous backlash over decade-old comments
His opponents want him to drop out of the race for Congress. But there’s little evidence those remarks reflect who he is today.
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An openly non-religious candidate for Congress made a slew of offensive comments on online forums well over a decade ago, and they’re now threatening to derail his campaign.
Nate Blouin is a state senator running in Utah's newly redrawn (and—importantly—left-leaning) 1st Congressional District. Democrats in Utah are hoping to finally have representation in Congress, which is why this is one of those races where the primary may be a bigger deal than the general. Also, if elected, Blouin (pronounced BLUE-in) would be the first person to enter Congress as openly non-religious.
Since getting elected to the legislature, Blouin has carved out a niche as a progressive in the Bernie Sanders vein with a focus on the climate crisis. During his current campaign, he’s called for abolishing ICE, safeguarding health care for transgender people, and passing Medicare for All. Blouin says he wouldn’t have run if this was a swing district, where a more moderate Democrat might have a better chance, but given that the district appears to be safely blue, he believes Democrats should elect someone who can champion more progressive policies—and I happen to agree with that strategy. It’s also why he’s been endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.
In fact, just last week, I proudly hosted a virtual phone-banking event on his behalf because I want more people like him in Congress. At a time when we’re inundated with Christian Nationalism, Project 2025, and whatever the hell Pete Hegseth is doing to Christianize our military, we need more strong, progressive, Humanist voices who will represent us in ways our community is just not used to. (To be clear, no one should support Blouin because he's non-religious. You should support him because of his political positions. The fact that he's openly non-religious is just an added bonus.)
That’s why it was a shock to see reporting in Punchbowl News this morning that Blouin made a slew of offensive posts on online forums between 2009 and 2015. He used derogatory and misogynistic language. He made crass “jokes” about domestic violence and assault.
Some of the claims are extremely over-the-top, though.
When answering a question about what local issue would make him riot, he responded “Something about the mormon church being a bunch of bigoted assholes.” That’s not unfair criticism. The Mormon Church is famously anti-LGBTQ.
Punchbowl also says:
Blouin recommended buying a GoPro camera “for filming porn with your underage sister.”
Sounds bad but the context doesn’t support that at all. Someone asked on a skiing forum if a GoPro camera was the best option, or if there was something else he should consider. Blouin, apparently not a fan of GoPro, sarcastically responded, “for filming porn with your underage sister, yeah, that's a good call bro.”
He’s not actually recommending anyone use it for that purpose. Obviously. If I ask a bunch of expert chefs if a particular kind of rolling pin is worth buying, and someone responds, “sure, it’s what I use when I’m screwing your mom,” that’s not meant to be taken literally.
But Punchbowl News doesn’t appear to speak fluent sarcasm.
Punchbowl also says Blouin “threatened to ‘skull fuck’ someone.”
That’s also not what happened. In a Reddit forum for skiers, a user asked what websites were best to purchase discounted gear. One commenter suggested a hack: There was a website meant to give employees information on the products their stores may carry. If you just lied to them, by registering and saying you worked for a sporting goods store, it would allow you to get an employee discount on the products you wanted.
When the user asked what he should enter in all the fields (to perpetuate the lie), Blouin urged him not to do that.
Well, he actually said, “i will skull fuck you if you do this.”
That’s not a threat. That’s just a person saying don’t do it… with the language of a troll. It’s definitely crude. But it’s not meant to be taken literally. Obviously.
That’s not to excuse any of this. Those remarks, and other more pointed ones, are awful. There’s no way around that. They also strike me as the sort of stuff some young wannabe edgelord says to get a rise out of people on forums when he thinks he’s anonymous. (Graham Platner, who’s currently running for U.S. Senate in Maine, has admitted to doing the same thing in his past.)
It’s worth stressing that these are all comments he made between the ages of 19 and 25. That doesn’t make those comments okay. It does, however, raise questions about what he believes today. Are those still his views? Does he make comments like that today?
There’s no indication I’ve seen of any of that. Simply put, Blouin, who’s 36 now, is no longer the same guy he was in his early 20s. Neither am I (and, in many ways, thank goodness for that).
More on that in a moment.
Here’s what Punchbowl News doesn’t mention: There’s nothing in Blouin’s legislative history, or career as a public figure, or anything else in his goddamn life, that suggests those comments reflect who he is today.
It honestly feels cheap to use people’s idiotic decade-old online comments against them at a time when the current Republican president says far worse things on a daily basis, with the full support of his conservative allies. (For example, Punchbowl calls out Blouin for using the word “retarded,” and yes, that’s deeply offensive. Also, Trump just said that word this month in a press conference and used it to describe a sitting governor last Thanksgiving. He faced no consequences for that whatsoever because Republicans are never held to any sort of standard by political reporters. A Republican senator, just yesterday, said Somali Americans should be kicked out of the country “if you talk like they talk.” That open racism barely made a blip in the news.)
In response to his old comments resurfacing, Blouin issued an apology saying he’s “ashamed” of those comments now and has “thankfully evolved past” all that. He added, “All I can say is I’ve spent the past decade of my life trying to become someone worth trusting.”
My response to an article you may have seen today: There's no excuse for these posts -- they're vulgar, stupid, and reflect a version of me in my early twenties that I’m ashamed of and have thankfully evolved past. When a reporter sent me these posts, I was horrified to see my use of language toward women and about a faith that my family, friends, and millions of Utahns practice.
I won’t minimize what I wrote, and I believe every candidate forced to look at their old online activity should take full accountability for the person they once were behind their computer screen. To the people I hurt with my words, I sincerely apologize.
All I can say is I’ve spent the past decade of my life trying to become someone worth trusting -- as a neighbor, as an advocate, and now as a public servant -- to fight for working families, for health care, for the dignity of every person in this district. I will keep showing up every day as the person I've worked to become. That is my promise to you.
I think that last bit is crucial. We should judge people for who they are, not who they were. If they have a track record of public service, then they should be judged on that. And if they have a troubling past, we should know if they’ve truly changed. Blouin has made campaign promises. He has public positions on a variety of issues. He has taken votes. That’s what voters should care about.
A Republican with a pristine online past who wants to ban abortion access and deport immigrants is infinitely more dangerous than a Democrat who fights for civil rights and social justice but made unwholesome remarks on random online forums well over a decade ago.
It’s insane that anyone would even question that.
I’ll reiterate something that should be common knowledge at this point: If you want to see younger candidates in office, you have to accept that they’ve spent the majority of their lives making comments and videos on the internet—many of which, in hindsight, will be deeply embarrassing—because they didn’t think those things would ever come back to haunt them.
Hell, there will be candidates in the future whose nudes are online. Or candidates who did dumb stunts to go viral. There will also be candidates who said thoughtful things in the past who have since become monsters (see: Vance, JD).
In a statement sent to me, Utah State Rep. Sahara Hayes said she was judging Blouin by who is is today:
Nate has taken full responsibility for his comments, as he and every person who has made shameful comments online should. The statements that he made were hurtful then and are hurtful now. The fact is, many young candidates have a digital record of almost every year of their lives. It’s up to Utahns whether they want to judge their candidates based on online comments made 17 years ago, or on their current character and positions on health care, housing, reproductive rights, and more. The Nate of today has proven himself to be a tireless advocate for his constituents, and that is who I am supporting.
This isn’t a partisan thing. I don’t think Republicans should be condemned for idiotic things they said in the past, either… but only if they’ve truly changed. The reason former Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson got so much shit for obscene comments he made on adult websites was because he was a Christian hypocrite who also currently wanted to pass policies that would hurt women and LGBTQ people.
In Blouin’s case, there’s no evidence that he’s anything but a progressive champion today. That doesn’t excuse his terribly offensive comments. Rather, that’s proof that he’s not the same guy he used to be.
I would go on to say there’s actually concrete evidence of this change in his life.
In 2017 (years after those offensive comments were made), Blouin resigned from the Utah Democratic Party, where he was an intern, because he didn’t believe the party was doing enough to criticize a candidate accused of harassing women. (I have a copy of the letter he sent to Party officials.)
In 2022, he ran for State Senate against an incumbent Democrat, Gene Davis, who had been accused of sexual abuse. (Interestingly enough, one of Blouin’s more moderate Democratic opponents, Ben McAdams, endorsed Davis in 2018 even though those allegations were public in 2016. McAdams never rescinded that endorsement.)
If you want to look at character, what matters more? Blouin’s actions over the past decade, or his poorly chosen words from well over a decade ago? This isn’t a complicated question.
I reached out to Blouin’s campaign to see if he would chat with me for this piece, and he was not available. Still, this feels like a pathetic attempt to undermine an otherwise stellar campaign. Two of his primary opponents have called for him to drop out, but again, they cite no evidence that his online comments reflect who he is today. They’re acting like the online persona he took on in 2009 should stain him forever even when there’s clear-cut evidence that he supports women, minorities, civil rights, environmental justice, etc. To say he “trivializes or undermines the seriousness of sexual violence, assault, and harassment” is to ignore what he’s done to taken those issues seriously over the past decade.
Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something, a group that’s encouraged young progressives to run for office, called the Punchbowl News piece an “oppo dump against Nate” and praised his “pitch-perfect” response. She added that the piece was an example of how people are going to “discredit” younger candidates “who grew up online.” What matters, she says, is “taking accountability and proving growth.” Blouin has done that.
If this news is the reason Blouin’s campaign ends, I fear what that means for other candidates like him. No one is safe, especially not young people who want to run for office after years of building up a base of followers online. It’s not that everyone says offensive things on the internet—obviously they don’t—but that things we believed or said years ago (in settings where provocation is often rewarded, no less) shouldn’t be the defining moments of our lives.
Especially if there’s evidence that we’ve changed.
In Blouin’s case, that evidence is everywhere.
By all accounts, Utah Mormons are the most porn-obsessed people in this country. That squeaky clean Mormon image they present to the world is just a paint job.
Saying dumb shit while in your early 20s is par for the course. Add the context and recognize the sarcasm and what he said is less dumb. Hell, I am almost 60 and I say dumb shit.