A Republican candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission has posted a “seminude” video in which she—dressed as a stripper—straddles an oil pumpjack in order to drum up name-recognition in advance of a primary election scheduled for March 1, according to KENS-5.
“They said I needed money,” 37-year-old lawyer Sarah Stogner wrote in a Twitter post that included the viral TicTok video. “I have other assets.”
In her Twitter profile, Stogner brands herself “the Unicorn ushering in the next era of Texas energy independence.”
The “disgraceful” ad caused Stogner to lose the support of at least one newspaper that had endorsed her candidacy.
“We were disappointed to see a disgraceful TikTok video posted Sunday from Sarah Stogner, whom we recently recommended in the Republican primary for railroad commissioner,” the editorial board of the San Antonio Express–News wrote.
“We expect candidates for public office to model civil discourse and decorum worthy of the public’s trust” the editors continued. “This was an embarrassing failure.”
Stogner, in turn, condemned the paper’s decision as “another example of preconceptions of how women are forced to fit into a male-dominated industry.”
“It feels very much like slut-shaming,” Stogner told the Houston Chronicle. “We were just goofing off.”
“If I had gone off and shot machine guns and screamed about the border, they wouldn’t have had a problem with it,” the unconventional candidate continued.
KENS-5 sought comment on the situation from a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“There’s something to be said for the hucksterism,” Prof. Jon Taylor said. “We’re not in an ‘idiocracy’ yet, but it sometimes makes you wonder when you see stuff like this.”
