Offer Shlomi, best known for his informercials as the “ShamWow guy,” has filed to run for Congress in Texas.
Israel-born Shlomi, whose showbiz name is Vince Offer, is running to represent District 31, a rural district just north of Austin, abutting but not including Round Rock and Killeen.
On Friday, Shlomi filed for candidacy under the name “Offer Vince ‘ShamWow’ Shlomi” to be the Texas District 31 congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives, as first reported Saturday on Twitter by The Texan’s Brad Johnson.
District 31 is one of only two Texas districts that’s never been represented by a Democrat. Since its creation, it has been represented by Republican U.S. Rep. John Carter, who was elected in 2003.
The Brooklyn-raised Shlomi is seemingly leaning into his campy persona, with the campaign slogan “Soak Up the Swamp.” The phrase is a callback to the rhetoric the ubiquitous daytime TV huckster used tout the ShamWow towel’s absorption abilities in the early 2000s.
Shlomi is running an “anti-woke” campaign, which includes a video depicting him as a Ghostbuster-type figure called the “Woke Buster.” In the video, a woman presented as a cis woman inspects a trans woman’s genitals.
The video also mocks DEI with a racist and fatphobic scene in which a skinny white model is obscured in a photo shoot by two large black women.
Shlomi released the full Woke Busters video on Oct. 14 in honor of “National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk,” according to his X account. In an interview on Fox News, Shlomi said he was inspired to run by the assassination of Kirk.
In the Woke Busters video, Shlomi also includes a call back to another one of his products, the Slap Chop, which he sold by chopping nuts with often-quoted line “you’re gonna love my nuts.”
In his anti-woke October campaign video, Shlomi stands in front of a church with rainbow-colored steps.
“The woke churches are after our kids’ nuts,” Shlomi said. “Not no more, we’re not chopping nuts. You’re gonna love your nuts with the ShamWow guy.”
The 84-year-old U.S. Rep. John Carter, having served the district for over two decades, easily won reelection in 2024. However, several challengers are running against him in the 2026 primary. One of them, MAGA crusader Valentina Gomez, also made an appearance in Shlomi’s Woke Busters video.
Carter has more than $418,000 cash on hand, far surpassing any of his primary opponents. And while Shlomi may be able to leverage his demi-celebrity fame as a novelty TV personality, his 15 minutes of fame came two decades ago and he doesn’t exactly have a massive fanbase. For example, he only has 3,000 followers on X as “@RealShamWowGuy.”
Shlomi’s MAGA-inspired “soak up the swamp” rhetoric, a riff on the 2016 Trump slogan, also begs the question of who comprises the swamp now that Republicans control every branch of the federal government. It was one thing for Trump to say it while Obama or Biden was in power, but if there’s a swamp now, Trump is Shrek himself.
Shlomi also could be trying to shamwow his reputation in the wake of a 2009 sex scandal that involved allegations that he beat up a prostitute. However, the Woke Buster video indicates the pitchman is just as irreverent as ever.
It remains to be seen if voters will buy what he’s selling.
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