- GOP House candidate JR Majewski has faced scrutiny for exaggerating his military service.
- The issue continues to dog his campaign, but his supporters are dimissing the controversy.
TOLEDO, Ohio — Two weeks out from election day, Republican House candidate JR Majewski seemed to have found a way to explain away his unsupported claims about serving in Afghanistan. At least to his most loyal supporters.
"My campaign is not about my military veteran status," the first-time candidate told a crowd of roughly 40 people who had gathered in a Toledo cafe for a "meet and greet" on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon. That's despite Majewski's campaign slogan reading: "Conservative Veteran for Congress," with the word "veteran" highlighted in red.
Majewski, 42, has claimed he served in combat and in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks, but the US Air Force says it has no record of his service there. Military records obtained by the Associated Press instead show he served mostly in Japan before a six-month stint loading planes in Qatar in 2002.
Attendees at the Tuesday event largely consisted of Majewski's long-time supporters and a handful of local GOP officials, most of whom spoke about the importance of defeating Majewski's opponent, the long-serving Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur. They agreed that despite his dubious claims about his military record, he was still their man.
"This whole 'did he or didn't he serve in Afghanistan' business — I couldn't care less about it," said Tim Fouts, a 67-year old Republican resident of Toledo. "As far as I'm concerned, he served his country. He served. Marcy, what did you do?"
Many supporters repeated the candidate's claim that the episode was the product of a smear-job by Kaptur, pointing to false assertions she made about a Republican opponent over a decade ago and Majewski's assertion that his military records should have been protected by privacy laws.
"He's not the man she has painted him to be," said Donna Owens, a Republican who served as mayor of Toledo in the 1980s.
While the local party faithful are brushing away the issue, it's evidently impacted the calculations of House Republicans' campaign arm.
Following the initial AP report, the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) canceled almost a million dollars in planned TV ads on behalf of Majewski, essentially cutting his campaign loose despite the newly-redrawn district's Republican lean. Majewski's campaign has also been tainted by his associations with the QAnon conspiracy theory and his presence outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In an interview with Insider in Toledo, Majewski brushed off the ad cancellations.
"Honestly, you know, I'm over the whole money pull," he said. "I don't think that's something that's as big of an issue as it maybe appeared to be."
But he struggled to defend his prior descriptions of his military service, particularly his unsubstantiated claim that he spent 40 days without running water in Afghanistan.
"Whether there was running water or not, I just don't understand how that…you know, some — I just don't… you know, I can't say, with, as a matter of fact, nor was it my intent to make it sound like, you know, I was suffering, right?" he said. "But I would challenge anybody who hasn't been to war, who hasn't served this country to go to the Middle East in the early 2000s, and do what we did, and not come home and be a little bit proud of your accomplishments."
"Taking a shower with running water or not is not the highlight of my career, and I don't understand why it continues to be a question," he continued. "No offense to you, or anything."
'Imagine how she'll treat you'
Majewski is best known nationally for painting pro-Trump images onto his lawn in Port Clinton and for being one of several GOP House nominees who were at the Capitol on January 6.
He previously worked for an energy company, has appeared in a pro-Trump rap video, and has a colorful online history that includes involvement with QAnon, the expansive conspiracy theory that posits that former President Donald Trump is working to defeat a cabal of Satan-worshipping, pedophilic elites.
—Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 4, 2022
In his own words, he launched his House campaign after spending years as a "couch conservative" who frequently yelled at his own television. Initially a long-shot candidate against Kaptur in a deep-blue district that snaked along Lake Erie, he benefited from Republican-led redistricting and split opposition in the GOP primary to become the party's unlikely nominee.
Today, he travels around the district in a camper emblazoned with a photo of himself shaking hands with Trump, who quickly endorsed Majewski following his victory.
And the party as a whole had embraced Majewski, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy saying the first-time candidate "understands what Ohio needs" during a visit to the district in August.
But the AP report in September quickly took the wind out of Majewski's sails; in addition to revealing discrepancies in his purported military record, documents revealed that he was told that he could not reenlist. The outlet later revealed that he had also lied about that — while he claimed it was the result of a dormitory "brawl," records revealed that he was reprimanded for drunk driving on a US air base in Japan.
Following the NRCC ad pull-out, the Cook Political Report promptly shifted the race from "toss-up" to "lean Democratic" — a source of frustration for local Republicans.
"When you have a toss-up race, you need to support your candidate," said Fouts. "I don't understand why they don't see it like I do. They should've come right back and attacked her viciously."
And Majewski has struggled to raise money since the report, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. Days after Insider reported in August that Majewski had violated federal law by failing to file a financial disclosure, he filed documents indicating that he and his wife have up to $750,000 in personal debt spread across home, home improvement, auto, and student loans.
But while national Republicans have seemingly given up on Majewski's candidacy, many local Republicans are standing firmly behind him. Majewski was joined at the Toledo event by two local GOP state House candidates and Ohio GOP chairman Bob Paduchik, who Majewski commended at the start of the event for helping to arrange a telephone town hall with Trump.
"That guy right there just made one call, and made it happen for us," Majewski told attendees, pointing at the chairman. Paduchik gave brief remarks, praising Majewski for having "stood tough" amid the "slings and arrows that the Democrats and the corporate media have thrown at him and his campaign."
It was part-and-parcel with Majewski's own narrative of the incident.
To hear him tell it, the embellishments of his own record were all just "innuendo" spread by his opponents and a national media bent on attacking him. And he claimed Kaptur had an obligation to assist him amid the scandal.
"You would think that when the Associated Press leaks my records, that she would have done what a respectable congresswoman would have done, which is intervene and represent me," he told attendees.
In a way, Majewski was mimicking Trump's own playbook when it comes to scandal; deflecting while suggesting that an attack on him represents an attack on all who may support him. "If you were to Google 'JR Majewski' right now, the first thing you'll see is that JR Majewski lied about his military record, sponsored by Kaptur for Congress," he said.
"So if that's how I'm treated, folks," he continued, "imagine how she'll treat you."
In an interview with Insider following an unrelated event the following day, Kaptur brushed off Majewski's charge.
"There's an expression — something about 'make your own bed and lie in it,'" she said. "His record speaks for itself."
Majewski says the NRCC is still backing him, citing a recent visit by chairman Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota. In a statement to Insider, NRCC spokesman Michael McAdams offered little further detail on what support the candidate continues to receive, only saying that the committee has "made a six-figure investment in this district to defeat liberal Marcy Kaptur."
But there was a despondency in Majewski's pitch. He brought up his military service controversy unprompted on several different occasions while touting a recent TV ad that he hopes will put his controversies to rest.
"I've never said that I went to Afghanistan with a combat knife," he told attendees. "I've never gone on to say that I was like, this Navy Seal or anything like that. That's all an innuendo that's pushed by the media."
But Majewski became further frustrated as attendees asked questions about the controversy, and what more could be done to reset the narrative of the race.
"I feel any more discussion by me is giving oxygen to a fire that should've already been out," he said. "That's what they want."
'Trump 2Q2Q'
Even to this day, Majewski has associated himself with fringe figures, including an appearance earlier this month on the Stew Peters Show, where his interview was sandwiched between segments claiming that humans are being genetically modified via vaccines and that the war in Ukraine is an anti-Christian plot.
As part of his support for QAnon, he painted a "Trump 2Q2Q" image on his front lawn in 2020.
—andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 8, 2022
Nonetheless, Majewski denied ever being a supporter of QAnon when asked by Insider at the diner, shrugging off the lawn imagery. Asked why he painted the QAnon imagery on his lawn, he replied, "Why does it matter?"
"That Q was on there long enough to take a photo," he said. "There's one scenario where there's a picture of it, and there's multiple times of me saying I didn't support it. I think the answer is clear. I don't support it."
Majewski told a local news outlet earlier this year that he was "responsible for 60-70 people'' at the Capitol on January 6, where he said he "had multiple people get injured." He declared on a QAnon livestream just days after the attack that he was "pissed off at myself" for not entering the building, the AP reported.
"I was trying to articulate how strong groupthink is when you're in a group of people, and you're not entirely conscious of everything that's going on," he told Insider, explaining the remarks suggesting he wanted to breach the Capitol.
"There was a quick second where it's like: do I go in, do I not go in," he continued. "But at the end of the day, I made the responsible decision. I kept my faculties and I didn't go in."
Kaptur, unsurprisingly, has seized on her opponent's ties to January 6 to paint him as extreme.
"All I know is that he was at the Capitol on January 6. He was outside, while I was trapped inside," she said. "I am very concerned, as an American, that someone like that would even run."