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# A GOP Candidate Mocked Trans Women Online, So the Internet Dug Up a Pic of Him in a Bra & Wig
October 25 2021
Written by Bil Browning.
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LGBTQ POLITICS - Republican Josh Mandel [can’t stop obsessing about transgender people](https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/08/senator-just-cant-stop-tweeting-transgender-people/) and pronouns.
The perennial candidate and former state treasurer is making the issues two of his primary campaign issues.
This time around, he decided to demean trans women with a slur while touting Dave Chappelle’s controversial comedy special for Netflix and the subsequent fallout.
“Just watched the Chappelle special,” he tweeted. “Was hilarious and offensive to all — as comedy should be. Lighten up transies \[sic\] — Chappelle is the GOAT.”
The internet being what it is, the responses to his tweet were sharp, but user Robert Schmad took it a step further.
“Trans icon Josh Mandel,” he tweeted in response along with a photo of Mandel in drag wearing a stuffed sports bra and a wig.
The homophobic candidate is pictured giving another student a backrub in the weight room. The photo comes from Mandel’s high school yearbook.
Our sister site, *Queerty*, [reports that the photo first surfaced in 2012](https://www.queerty.com/photo-josh-mandel-stuffed-bra-wig-resurfaces-tweets-transphobic-slur-20211022) “when Mandel was Ohio’s state treasurer and a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate. At the time, his communications director said the candidate had no recollection of taking the photo, but that he was probably just ‘joking around’.”
Earlier this month, Mandel – who was once denounced by his own family for rejecting his lesbian, veteran cousin – was [kicked out of a school board meeting](https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/10/gop-candidate-humiliated-police-haul-school-board-meeting-trans-kids-rant/) by sheriff’s officers on Monday when he took to the mic to rant about transgender kids in schools… in a school district he doesn’t even live in.
*(Bil Browning is the Editor-in-Chief of LGBTQ Nation where this story was published. His personal papers and LGBT activism memorabilia are included in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History archives.)*
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