Repeat GOP candidate transforms into cowboy for Texas run

New Jersey boy. Pro wrestler. Republican candidate in Nevada. Dan Rodimer has led many lives, but his latest — a cowboy-hat-wearing, Southern-drawling bull rider — might be the most extreme transformation to date.

In his first ad as a candidate for Texas’s 6th Congressional District, “Big Dan” Rodimer speaks in a gravelly, indistinct Southern accent, throws jabs at Democratic policies and compares House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to a bull — the bull he’s supposedly riding in the ad.

But the New Jersey native did not have the twang last year when he ran for Congress in Nevada. In one of those ads, resurfaced by the American Independent, Rodimer’s voice was softer and more clear as he defended himself against assault allegations raised by his opponent. Rather than a rodeo arena, he was surrounded at home by his wife and children — who, at one point in the campaign, was asked to explain the 911 calls she had made against him.

Rodimer has remade himself again on a road he hopes will lead to Congress, though his latest ad has earned him ridicule, including from fellow Republicans.

The ad has renewed criticism that Rodimer, with no known connection to the 6th District, is a carpetbagger pandering to the Texas electorate. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., criticized Rodimer and the ad: “Fake Texan makes fake video of fake bull ride.”

“We already have enough phonies in Congress,” Gaetz said. “Texans, please send this Nevada man back to his true home state (where he lost two prior elections).”

The campaign declined the Washington Post’s request for an interview with Rodimer and did not respond to questions about the ad or Rodimer’s connections to Texas.

Originally from New Jersey, Rodimer attended a preparatory school in the suburbs before moving to Florida for college and law school. His campaign website says he previously lived in Houston, working as a homebuilder, and owned a home in Galveston — though neither location is near the district he’s running for just south of Dallas.

In an interview with Newsmax, Rodimer touted the ad’s “Make America Texas Again” tagline, saying he was “in free America” now that he had moved to Texas. He boasted he stayed on the bull for 11 seconds.

But reporters and internet sleuths are convinced that he used a stunt double for the bull-riding spectacle, noting the camera angle in the bull-bucking ad never shows the face of the rider, which is presumably intended to be Rodimer.