Jadon MacCormack wanted the state of Connecticut to execute LGBTQ+ people. Not as a metaphor, not as a dog whistle, not as a rhetorical flourish he could walk back. He said it on the radio. He said the government should hold “the death penalty” for “sodomites,” that Connecticut had done it for “hundreds of years” and it was “very, very Christian.” He shared a noose image in response to a same-sex marriage story. He liked a post calling for queer people to be burned to death. He called all of this “moderate.”
Ninety people voted for him anyway.
Let that number sit with you. Ninety residents of the 50th District walked into a voting booth, knew exactly who this man was, what he had said on WTIC radio, what he had posted on Facebook, and they pulled the lever for him anyway. Anthony Emilio won the primary. MacCormack lost. That is the headline, and it is a relief. But ninety is not zero, and the distance between those two numbers is where the real story lives.
MacCormack is 23 years old. He hosts something called the New England Baptist Podcast. He worked as a sessional employee at the state Capitol, which means he was inside the building, near the levers of power, while publicly arguing that some of his own colleagues in the General Assembly should be put to death for who they are. House Speaker Matt Ritter and Majority Leader Jason Rojas said it was “sickening to think that this candidate wants to spew this kind of poison in the people’s chamber.” They were right. He was already in the chamber.
USCG PTC Developer (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsThe Republican Party’s response was a masterclass in too little, barely on time. House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora called the posts “immature and reckless,” which is what you say about a teenager who keys a car, not about a man calling for state-sanctioned mass murder. State Chair Ben Proto told him to drop out. State Sens. Jeff Gordon and Heather Somers condemned him. Congressman Joe Courtney called the rhetoric “reprehensible” and noted, correctly, that this same Republican Party had endorsed MacCormack at their district convention weeks before any of them found their conscience. They handed him the nomination. They owned him until he became a liability.
And MacCormack? He called the backlash a “badge of honor.” After losing, he declared himself “the true winner” and told Emilio to “go back to the retirement home you came from.” He is not embarrassed. He is not recalibrating. He is building a brand. The podcast will continue. The posts will continue. The infrastructure that radicalized a 23-year-old into calling for executions on AM radio will continue, because nobody dismantled it. He was just told to lose quietly.
Here is what the organizing lesson is, and it is not “the system worked.” The system produced him. A district convention endorsed him. A major party put him on a ballot. Ninety people affirmed him. The defeat is a floor, not a ceiling. Every institution that touched this man, from the Capitol staff office to the GOP endorsement process, needs to answer for how far he got before anyone flinched. And every community in that district, every queer person, every family member, every neighbor who heard a candidate say their loved ones should be killed by the state and then saw “Republican nominee” next to his name, needs to hear something louder than condemnation. They need structural accountability. Endorsement processes that screen for this. Party bylaws that revoke nominations automatically. A legislature that does not employ people who call for the execution of their colleagues.
Ninety votes is a defeat. It is not a victory. Victory is making sure the next Jadon MacCormack never gets the nomination in the first place.