Republican Jadon MacCormack, a Connecticut State House candidate who literally wants to execute all LGBTQ+ people, decisively lost his primary race last night against his competitor, Anthony Emilio. MacCormack won only 90 votes, less than 20% of the total votes cast for both candidates. Emilio will face five-term Democratic incumbent Pat Boyd in the November general election.
Shortly after being endorsed by his party at a district convention, MacCormack published a post proclaiming June as “Straight Month” in which he pledged to “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.”
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MacCormack’s post also promised to “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.”
In a July interview, he repeatedly compared LGBTQ+ people to “pedophiles and mass murderers,” said that Pride month “promotes sodomy,” and claimed that LGBTQ+ culture is more important than the child sex abuse epidemic in churches.
He also said he wants the US Supreme Court to re-criminalize consensual same-sex relationships between two men, invalidate same-sex marriages nationwide, said he hoped to remove children from the homes of all LGBTQ+ couples, eliminate all LGBTQ+ people from the educational system, and to execute anyone who is proven to be LGBTQ+, even if they are celibate or haven’t committed any crimes. All of this was necessary, he said, in order to “protect children.”
When MacCormack published his Pride Month post, State House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora (R) told the CT Mirror that the post was “immature and reckless” and said that it proves that MacCormack “isn’t ready for the responsibility he’s asking voters to give him.”
Candelora did not specifically defend the LGBTQ+ community, but nonetheless called on MacCormack to drop out of the race, saying voters deserve someone who is “focused on their paychecks, their property taxes and their kids’ futures.”
Boyd also posted a response to MacCormack’s bigoted comments, writing that he is “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,” he added.
In a social media post following his certain defeat, MacCormack proclaimed himself as “the true winner,” and said to his victorious opponent, “Go back to the retirement home you came from. We do not need leaders with one foot already in the grave; men who never wanted to run until someone became ‘controversial’ and the GOP needed a last-minute handout doesn’t make you a patriot but a pathetic pawn.”
Correction (8/12/2026): An earlier version of this story misidentified MacCormack’s home state.
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