Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

On May 1st, voters in the Texas Sixth U.S. Congressional District, a suburban Metroplex district that runs from Arlington down to Corsicana, go to the polls to fill the seat vacated by late Republican Representative Ron Wright, who died February 7. It’s a Republican-leaning district that’s recently gotten more purple, and there are a bunch of candidates from both parties (plus a Libertarian and an Independent) running for the seat.

I haven’t paid close attention to the race, but one name has popped up a few times in my Twitter feed, that of Republican candidate “Big Dan” Rodimer, who’s running “More Texan Than Though” ad campaigns like this:

Wow, sure was impressive how that guy who’s face we never saw rode that bull! One tiny problem, though: Rodimer ran for a U.S. Congressional seat last year…in Nevada:

A Republican former professional wrestler is district-hopping in hopes of winning a U.S. House seat — and has apparently changed his personality as he tries to make those congressional dreams a reality.

Dan Rodimer won the GOP nomination in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District in November 2020. He went on to lose to Democratic Rep. Susie Lee by a 3-point margin in the suburban Las Vegas-based seat.

A little more than four months later, he’s back, this time running in a special election in a Dallas-based seat more than 1,200 miles away — and he’s almost unrecognizable from his previously failed bid.

In his Nevada race, Rodimer ran ads painting himself as a clean-cut family man, wearing a collared shirt and seated on a couch with his wife and five children.

In the ad, he was defending himself from reports that he had been accused of assault three times between 2010 and 2013. According to a report from the Associated Press in October 2019, Rodimer was accused of punching men “at or outside of nightclubs.”

Now, Rodimer is back and running in a special election in Texas’ 6th Congressional District — a Dallas-based House seat left vacant after Rep. Ron Wright died following a COVID-19 diagnosis.

And Rodimer looks like a totally different person, donning a cowboy hat and positioning himself as a rodeo bull rider with a Texas accent.

American Independent is a lefty source, which explains the bad writing, repetition (can you tell me whether the district is Dallas-based?) and sloppy errors (Rodimer won his Nevada primary June 9, not in November), but the basic outline of facts is correct. Rodimer himself even mentions his Nevada run in his bio. “Dan Rodimer lived in Houston, Texas and worked as a home builder. He owned a house in Galveston and has always thought of Texas as his true home.” So the question is: Was his Nevada bid a carpetbagger bid, or is his Texas bid one now?

I asked Rodimer exactly when he moved to Texas on both his campaign email address and his Twitter account, and have not received a reply.

Issue-wise, I have have no problems with Rodimer, but I do have issue with his carpetbagger bid and how thickly he spackles on his Texas persona.

There are ten other Republican candidates running in the TX-06 field. I suspect more than one of them are acceptable conservative Republican candidates.