STD-Themed Drag Queen Comes After Republicans Over Dem Attack Ad

A guy who performs under the name "Chlamydia Berns" wants to be treated as an innocent bystander in a congressional race. Fine, but he's the one who chose that name, took the stage in that persona, and apparently posed for a photo with a sitting mayor who is now running for Congress. Nobody photoshopped him into the picture. He showed up, smiled, and the picture got taken. If that's a liability for Paige Cognetti's campaign, the fix isn't suing Republicans, it's picking better company for your photo ops.

This is the part Democratic candidates keep tripping over. They want the energy and the donor base that comes with embracing drag culture at every level of local politics, but they get squeamish the second a voter in a swing district gets to see what that actually looks like up close. Cognetti didn't get forced into a photo with a stranger. Somebody on her team, or she herself, decided this was a fine association to make. Republicans just took the photo that already existed and used it.

Now the performer is fundraising off the outrage, which is its own kind of tell. If the ad were unfair or dishonest, the response would be a correction, not a GoFundMe. Instead we get a campaign to punish the people who pointed a camera at reality. That's not a free speech grievance. That's a candidate's associations catching up with her in a district that isn't Manhattan or San Francisco, and an ally trying to turn embarrassment into a cause.

Voters in Pennsylvania's 8th aren't going to be scandalized that drag exists. They're going to ask a simpler question: why is this who my mayor is standing next to, and is that the judgment I want representing me in Washington. That's a fair question to put in an ad. Nobody owes Chlamydia Berns an apology for asking it.