Texas Leftist House Candidate Accused Of Antisemitism Loses

The Texas leftist who campaigned on turning an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility into a prison and castration factory for “American Zionists” lost her bid Tuesday to represent the Lone Star State’s 35th Congressional District. 

Maureen Galindo’s primary runoff loss staves off the Democratic Party’s presumed PR nightmare of running a candidate considered the “poster child” for exploding antisemitism on the left. But the party remains packed with enough Jew haters to field a “Free Palestine” rally. 

Galindo fell to opponent Johnny Garcia, public information officer for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. With 75 percent of the precincts reporting, Garcia was crushing Galindo by more than 20 percentage points. 

‘Castration Processing Center’ for ‘Zionists’

Galindo’s fortunes have taken a turn since March, when she finished first among four primary candidates, moving on to Tuesday’s runoff. She became an albatross to Democrats who prefer their antisemitism with the base alloy of “progressivism.” Galindo, a marriage and family therapist (sex therapist) who received a master’s degree in community psychology from a university in Portland, Oregon, found herself in the national spotlight after posting on Instagram that, as a representative for the 35th, she would repurpose ICE’s Karnes County Immigration Processing Center into a “prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.” She added that the center “(will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists).”

She seemed to accuse Garcia of high crimes earlier this month during an interview on Texas Public Radio. 

“Maybe Johnny Garcia and others who support him, or anybody who is supported by Israel, should be tried for treason,” she said, hammering a familiar leftist talking point that Israel has committed “genocide” against Gazans following Gaza-based Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Israeli and U.S. officials have denied the allegations. 

Galindo was forced to clarify — aka walk back — some of her more incendiary comments, insisting that she is not an antisemite. 

“She does want Karnes ICE facility to be turned into a prison for the billionaire Zionists who have profited off genocidal prison state materials and trafficking,” the candidate’s campaign website asserts in a Statement for the Media. The campaign claims Galindo “NEVER said that she wants anyone in internment camps!!”, blaming the use of the descriptors on a “very unethical journalist desperate to take her down through a screenshottable article title.”

Prosecution, the congressional candidate said, isn’t about religion. She would lock up Evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, Jews and others if she believed them to be “billionaire Zionists” profiting off detention centers housing illegal immigrants. 

Dems’ Antisemitism Problem

Facing heat from Republicans and a public-relations debacle, local and national Democrats withdrew support and urged Texas Dems to vote for Galindo’s opponent. Texas Rep. Al Green, a performative Democrat who has grown fond of being removed from President Donald Trump’s State of the Union addresses, even drafted a House resolution condemning Galindo’s “hateful comments.” (On a related note, Green was unseated in Tuesday’s runoff election.)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., described the comments as “bigoted garbage and antisemitism.” 

“Maureen Galindo is a moral disgrace who has no business running for, let alone holding, elected office,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., told Fox News Digital. “So she should withdraw from the race out of shame.”

Strong words.

Galindo didn’t go anywhere. Why would she? She campaigned on the kind of ideas her fellow Democrats have been pushing for years.

Who could forget AOC’s description of illegal immigration detention centers as “concentration camps?” Yeah, she made that hideous comparison in 2019, during the first Trump administration. 

AOC and her “squad pals” have routinely accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza, even as Hamas and Hezbollah have led an unrelenting campaign of terror against the Middle East’s lone true democracy. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., has joined in the unholy hymn of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” an antisemitic slogan “and call for genocide and the destruction of the Jewish state,” according to the House resolution censuring the radical lawmaker. 

As we’ve seen, today’s Democratic Party has a complicated relationship with antisemitism as it courts and supports antisemitic voters and candidates. Take Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner and his Nazi-looking tattoo. Platner claims ignorance, which should scream to voters that he’s too stupid to be a U.S. senator — and that’s saying something. The Democrat’s previous declarations that he’s a communist and that law enforcement officers are “bastards” still plays nicely with the far-left, which effectively controls the party of John F. Kennedy. 

Vermont leftist Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Jew who apparently doesn’t mind a tattoo reminiscent of the one worn by Hitler’s police force, spent Memorial Day weekend campaigning with Platner. To hell with antisemitism, they’re fighting “oligarchs.” Presumably some “billionaire Zionists” are in the mix?

The good news is that voters in Texas’ 35th Congressional District have sent a message that, at least for now, there is a radical bridge too far. 

Garcia, however, is still a member of a party moving farther and farther left. He’ll face businessman Carlos De La Cruz, the Republican candidate backed by Trump, who trounced his GOP opponent. The district leans likely Republican, but Democrats have hopes of stealing the redrawn district seat that includes San Antonio’s southeast side. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.