Richard Ojeda, the Democrat who just defeated Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he would welcome jail time in exchange for physically attacking Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff.
“Stephen Miller needs to be thumped. That guy’s a friggin’ worm,” Ojeda said. “I would be willing to go to jail for. I mean, how much would I get for just cracking him a couple times?”
He continued with a specific scenario involving an elevator encounter.
“You know, I’d be willing to go to jail to kick the shit out of him. I’d be more than happy to find myself in an elevator with him, and I’d whoop his ass from the first floor to the fifth floor, and be happy to go to jail.”
Ojeda, a retired Army veteran with 24 years of military service, won North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District with 138,707 votes (51.1 percent) to Hudson’s 132,692 votes (48.9 percent), according to the Associated Press. The district had been held by Republicans since 1963, per NBC News, and Hudson’s loss means the NRCC chairman tasked with protecting the House GOP majority lost his own seat.
Ojeda celebrated on X after the results came in. “WE JUST UNSEATED THE CHAIR OF THE NRCC,” he wrote. “IT’S A NEW DAY IN AMERICA.”
A Campaign Built on Anger
Ojeda’s win followed a campaign that leaned heavily on themes of economic grievance rooted in his home state of West Virginia. In one advertisement, he pointed to childhood poverty and coal miner pensions as drivers of his frustration with Washington.
“People say that I’m angry. Well, angry is an understatement. When I come home and I find that I got children in my backyard that have it worse than the kids that I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, I can’t accept that.”
The ad displayed an on-screen citation to an October 25, 2012, Public News Service report headlined “STUDY FINDS TOO MANY WV KIDS GROWING UP IN POVERTY.”
Ojeda also took aim at coal companies and congressional leaders of both parties over pension disputes.
“When I see companies using bankruptcy loopholes to keep repaying our coal miners the pensions that they work for, I will not sit quiet. Ladies and gentlemen, we have been sold out. We’ve been sold out by people like Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and the Washington Insiders.”
He closed the ad by owning the anger driving his candidacy: “I approve this message because I am angry and I’m ready to fight back.”
Add comment