Elected Democrats denounced a candidate for a House seat in Texas this week over her calls to imprison and castrate Zionists and raised questions about her funding from a newly-formed super PAC with possible Republican ties.
Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist who led the first round of the Democratic primary in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, has drawn scrutiny for her social media posts about Jews and calling to turn immigration detention centers into prisons for Zionists.
“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” a post from a campaign social media page states.
“It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists,” it adds.
In a followup post, she clarified that “does not mean I want Jews in internment camps,” but that “if you are a Zionist,” then “you are a danger to humanity and belong in prison.”
Galindo has also said “Zionists are not real Jews” and has referred to “the Jews who own Hollywood” and on Tuesday, she posted a video clip of Ghassan Kanafani, spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group, whom Israel killed in 1972 after the PFLP orchestrated the Lod Airport massacre.
Those comments have drawn sharp criticism from leading Democrats around the country, including some who have otherwise been frequent critics of Israel.
“This is absolutely disgusting,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “This bigoted garbage and antisemitism should be nowhere near our politics.”
The anti-Israel group Track AIPAC, which had previously endorsed Galindo, withdrew its endorsement on Tuesday amid the controversy.
Pro-Israel Democratic groups and Democratic leaders in the House also moved to distance the party from the Texas candidate and condemn her views.
“This vile language by her is disqualifying and has no place in American politics, and certainly not in the Democratic Party,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) stated.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who is Jewish, said that if Galindo were elected, he would force a daily vote to expel her until she was removed.
“I will hold the floor everyday until she is gone,” Moskowitz stated. “My grandmother was part of the kindertransport out of Berlin. Her parents were killed in Auschwitz. My kids are never going to ‘the camps.’”
Galindo garnered 29.2% of the vote in the April Democratic primary for the 35th district, which includes parts of San Antonio. She faces a runoff on May 26 against Johnny Garcia, a former Bexar County sheriff’s deputy, who had 27% of the first-round vote.
Some Democrats have accused Republicans of backing Galindo through Lead Left PAC, a political action committee based in Tallahassee, Fla., which filed its organizing papers with the Federal Election Commission in April.
Lead Left’s website says it “stands against MAGA extremists, who will infect our country with Donald Trump’s agenda” and has spent nearly $1 million backing Galindo, according to FEC filings.
But as first reported by PunchBowl News, the metadata for Lead Left originally included links to a political action committee raising money through the Republican Win Red platform. That metadata has since been removed from Lead Left’s website. (JNS sought comment from Galindo and Lead Left.)
In a statement condemning Galindo, Jeffries accused Republicans of cynically backing her candidacy as an election tactic.
“House Republican leadership must immediately cease propping up this antisemitic candidacy, pull spending in the race and forcefully condemn these comments,” Jeffries stated. “To embrace and uplift a fringe candidate with antisemitic, and extremely dangerous, rhetoric and views in order to win an election is beyond the pale.”
Opposing parties backing flawed candidates in primaries has a long history, including the 2012 Senate race in Missouri, when then-Democratic senator Claire McCaskill spent $1.7 million boosting Republican Todd Akin in the primary in the hope that his comments about “legitimate rape” would prove toxic in the general election. McCaskill won that race and later revealed her role in supporting Akin.
Such tactics have drawn criticism in the 2026 cycle, however, with questions about the wisdom of AIPAC’s decision to spend more than $2.3 million in a New Jersey House race opposing a candidate it had once supported, only for a Democrat who accuses Israel of genocide to ultimately win the primary.
“Galindo is being kept afloat by Republican money,” Democratic Majority for Israel stated on Tuesday.
“They are deliberately elevating one of the most grotesque antisemites in American politics this cycle because they think it helps them win,” DMFI stated. “It is sick, it is cynical and it tells you everything about a party that will fund anyone, including someone openly invoking the language of pogroms, as long as it serves their politics.”
