The Democrats Need a Daddy. I Know Exactly Who It Should Be.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

Finally, a Democrat who actually knows how to have sex.

Earlier this month, the New York Post reported that Chris Gallant, the former military pilot and union leader running for Congress in Long Island, New York, was photographed in fetish gear almost 20 years ago. This is the typical kind of sex scandal that would ordinarily trip up a candidate, maybe even for good. But Gallant—who is gay, and already out—hasn’t been significantly impacted by the would-be controversy. The photos were taken consensually, when Gallant was a private citizen, but what’s protecting him more than anything is that he looks good. Ripped and half-hard, there isn’t anything to be embarrassed about here. He’s hot and gay and lightly horny. What exactly is the problem?

The dearth of a scandal around Gallant—running as a Democrat in decidedly red Long Island, where he’s still trailing behind his Republican opponent—must be a relief of sorts for the party. Ever since Barack Obama left office, Democrats have been looking for someone with his charm, smarts, and, yes, his good looks. There have been, it seems, a thousand flashes in the pan: Beto O’Rourke’s rolled-up shirtsleeves, Anthony Weiner’s city-kid mouthiness, Graham Platner’s stupid little butch mustache. So far, no one has stuck: Guys like O’Rourke failed to connect with voters in any meaningful way, and others, like Platner, dropped off the face of the earth after being accused of sexual assault. (Don’t get me started on Weiner.)

What the Democratic Party—and what Democrats of all ilks—considers attractive these days has changed considerably in the Trump years. There are fewer and fewer intellectual stalwarts like Obama or Pete Buttigieg, and not that many impish party boys/accused harassers like Weiner or Bill Clinton. There’s certainly no one on the national stage who inspires the same kind of insipid loyalty that Donald Trump does. For the last few electoral cycles, it somehow seemed that the Republicans were dominating when it came to hotness, encapsulated through Pete Hegseth struggling with a pair of dumbbells. Republicans owned boobs and lingerie and fucking raw, and while RFK Jr. looks like a raw chicken left in the sun, guys like him have an undeniable confidence that still gets political attention. The Democratic Party was virginized, a group of scolds lecturing everyone about safe sex and the benefits of chaste friendship. The party has long struggled to make sense of what it, and its voters, wants.

In the forthcoming midterms, and going into the all-important 2028 election, the Democrats understand that finding a hot candidate is important, namely a straight man who can appeal to both female and male voters through a mix of aesthetics and policy. Take a gander at the TikTok accounts of people like Manny Rutinel and James Talarico, and you’ll find plenty of self-objectifying videos, fan-cams of rolled-up shirtsleeves, compilation clips of dudes being dudes (lifting weights and being mean to Hegseth).

But they’re still not nailing it (get it?). It’s like a cursed episode of The Dating Game, with three versions of the Sexy Democrat as contestants. First, a representation of Woke 2 at its worst: Gavin Newsom, governor of California, a presidential prospect for 2028. Lately, he’s been going after the Republicans using millennial and Gen Z internet-speak, but there’s a clear dissonance between his old playbook and new slang. Next: Jon Ossoff, the latest Great White Hope of the Democratic Party. Running for Senate in Georgia, Ossoff is now synonymous with (ugh) clapbacks against Natalie Harp and being a saucy little bitch at confirmation hearings. What Ossoff offers is a pliable blank canvas in the shape of an attractive white man, not vocal enough to be hateable but forceful enough to pin your hopes for the next five generations on this one guy (ask John Kerry how that goes).

Finally, one of the newest subjects of political thirst: Abdul El-Sayed, candidate for Michigan Senate, and easily the hottest man the Democrats have offered us in the better part of a decade. He is, objectively, good-looking, and yes, anyone who disagrees is a racist! He’s a doctor, a beefcake, and he’s always walking around in a black V-neck, which is sluttier than anything Shane Gillis complains about on national television. But above all, El-Sayed is a bulldog, happy to bite back in a way we rarely see from any candidate, never mind a Muslim one.

As the midterms inch closer—and as we enter another two years of presidential primaries—the Democrats know they need to find a legitimately hot candidate. But it’s not just about finding a good-looking candidate, or a charming candidate, or even a personable candidate. After a decade-plus of living with an abusive father, there’s nothing we need more than a daddy.

Gavin “Shark Teeth” Newsom

Gavin Newsom looks like the rat that Lisa Simpson accidentally shears thinking he’s a baby sheep. He is an inherent and visual slimeball: greased-back hair, raspy voice, more teeth than you ever thought someone could have. When his social media accounts started to mock Trump openly and brazenly, it felt like only Newsom—Trump’s spiritual opposite, loose proof of the horseshoe theory—could pull this off. “I, THE PEACETIME GOVERNOR—OUR NATION’S FAVORITE—WILL SAVE AMERICA ONCE AGAIN,” he tweeted in August 2025. “MANY ARE NOW CALLING ME GAVIN CHRISTOPHER ‘COLUMBUS’ NEWSOM (BECAUSE OF THE MAPS!). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. —GCN.”

Looking a little like a forgotten McConaughey cousin? Check. Liberal enough to be considered a part of the resistance against the current administration? Sure. Mean to the president? Yeah, that’s the stuff. Newsom never seems more attractive than he does when he’s being a bully. Why else have a 6-foot-whatever nearly 60-year-old guy from the Bay Area in your corner? Newsom has built his iconography around an image of a young man following in his father’s footsteps while also being raised by a long-suffering single mother and overcoming his dyslexia. A more interesting version of Newsom, as both person and candidate, is the guy jeering at the president. What makes Trump attractive to those on the right—at least in spirit, if not his actual looks—is that he’s virtually untouched by consequences. He moves through the world and the meatgrinder of American politics without ever having to account for anything he’s said and done. A man who does whatever the fuck he wants and somehow seems to have fun doing it? Newsom has that down too.

Newsom also has an unbearable smarm about him. He has the conventions of attractiveness, from his height to his pearly whites to the almost strategic amount of smile lines he has, but add them up and you somehow don’t leave with much. His political platform remains staunchly centrist, and the image isn’t enough to override the lack of message.

Jon “Tanned Forearms” Ossoff

You can’t really get someone like Jon Ossoff without Newsom. Less smarmy, less orange, less bitchy, Ossoff recently went viral again for his debate against Senate hopeful Mike Collins after he said Ossoff was a part of the “Epstein class.” In response, Ossoff did what he does, which is look appropriately smug in a tight little suit with a jawline you want to run your tongue along. “Mike, who on your team advised you to raise the Epstein files?” he asked. “You voted to cover up the evidence, Mike.” Somehow, there’s something hot about two casual deployments of “Mike.”

Later at a campaign stop, he went after Collins and the Republicans some more. “Mike Collins is a known bigot under federal investigation for the illegal misuse of tax dollars, widely known for his poor character and low integrity, and unfit for any elected office in the United States,” he said. “And now the bigot wants a promotion.” All this while wearing a blue button-up, sleeves rolled up to expose a forearm that you might want to hang from by your teeth, like a dog with a bone. What a slut.

What Ossoff and Newsom might not have in effortlessness, they make up for in online clapbacks and debate performances. These are candidates who have decidedly refused Michelle Obama’s earlier edict that we go high when Trump and his ilk go low. Their hotness quotient isn’t just about how they look, but how willing they are to scrap with political candidates who otherwise refuse to play by any rules. If Trump can’t write a tweet like a normal person, then Newsom won’t either.

“I don’t think Ossoff is a good-looking man,” said Trump at a rally for Collins last week, suggesting that he probably really, really does. “I actually think Mike Collins is a good-looking man. He’s all man; I’m not sure about Ossoff.” It’s a lot of talk about who is “all man” from a guy whose hands have been melting for the better part of a year.

Ossoff and Newsom get under Republicans’ skin in large part because they’re conventionally attractive men who are also adeptly dogging their competition. We find these guys hot because they trigger the same feelings of being attracted to a bully football player, or even the quiet but surprisingly cute nerd who stood up for you in Intro to Calc. It’s hardwired before we’re old enough to vote, a search for a charming protector. Daddies come in many forms, but in this type of politics, a daddy is someone willing to fight for you, even if it’s ugly and even if it’s petty.

Where it begins to fall apart is when you start to ask for more than just viral clapbacks. It’s a little like going out with a good-looking guy whose Hinge profile said he loves deep conversation, but he spends the date distracted by his Kalshi bets. Neither Newsom nor Ossoff has much more to offer voters beyond the obvious. Ossoff is happy to fight with Trump’s lackeys, but he’s still a run-of-the mill Democrat. He’s remained somewhat supportive of Israel and is farther to the right than his contemporaries on Medicare for All. Newsom is an obvious antagonist for the Republicans, but it’s hard to forget that he used to roll around on a rug with at least one very famous (and recently disgraced) conservative.

These guys are hot insofar as politicians go, but real hotness comes from taking risks. Maybe during these midterms, the Democrats are learning how much reward can come from letting a hot guy run his delicious little mouth.

Abdul “Caked Up and Down” El-Sayed

Abdul El-Sayed is kind of an asshole, but what can I say: The ladies love a bad boy!!! Forty-one years old, 5-foot-9 (short-king status; being on the same eye level with someone has a lot of practical uses), and a doctor who benches 315 pounds. He’s been dubbed “Evil Mamdani” while he’s been campaigning for Senate in Michigan. El-Sayed is a hot guy. He’s not just hot for politics, where the bar is so close to hell that even Eliot Spitzer found a hot second wife 12 years his junior to marry. He’s just a hot person, and we should all be so lucky to have him spit in our mouths.

But what makes him hotter, undoubtedly, is his huge capacity for being a dick. His own campaign and even the Democratic Party know this and are happy to weaponize it; go browse their respective TikTok accounts and swim in a sea of El-Sayed clapbacks. His third-most-popular TikTok video is from July Fourth, when he danced around in his trademark black V-neck and American-flag cowboy hat, lipsyncing to Taylor Swift. (Also doing a lot of rotations on my personal TikTok is this video of him doing the Zara Larsson dolphin lift—you can see all his tricep definition.) Last week, Vice President J.D. Vance called El-Sayed a “little weasel.” In response, El-Sayed called himself “a fucking wolverine.”

El-Sayed has fused two key components of political hotness into one candidate, and it’s something so few political hopefuls do successfully: He’s ready to bite back at any and all Republicans (including those in the crowds of his rallies), and he’s encapsulating hotness through a prism of traditional masculinity. It’s something Graham Platner tried to do while he was running for Senate in Maine: Throughout his campaign, he wore henleys (the straight-male equivalent of a woman wearing lingerie and holding a whip) and T-shirts over his Nazi tattoo, a thick mustache completing a kind of progressive Ron Swanson look. He was the image of the Brawny man right up until sexual assault allegations (not the Nazi stuff????) derailed his campaign.

El-Sayed has adopted some of these same visual cues of traditional male behavior. He’s lifting weights in campaign videos, he’s taking his jacket off to show off his biceps, he’s making fun of Vance for having a beard that doesn’t connect. His interpretation of an attractive candidate isn’t just one in tight jeans and T-shirts (which, again, thank you), but one who acts like a rough-and-tumble boy. El-Sayed is always throwing around a football or flexing a muscle or being mean to another man, punching up with a smile on his face. It’s traditional masculinity retrofitted for a progressive audience. Just because his voters want access to healthcare and to get ICE out of the streets doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate seeing him lift something heavy just for the thirst of it.

And while Zohran Mamdani is handling idiotic questions about his religion and his wife with grace and a sincere smile, El-Sayed is here to tell you, essentially, to shut the fuck up. He recently went viral for a conversation he had with “Tommy,” an attendee at one of his events who wanted him to publicly denounce the Muslim Brotherhood. (Tommy, it turned out, was a former Josh Hawley aide and the son of a Republican strategist.) Tommy refused to be upfront about why he would assume El-Sayed, of all people, would support them to begin with. “Hi Tommy. How are you? Do you know what the Constitution of the United States is?” he asked. What an icky watch, witnessing Tommy get his ass gently handed to him. But it’s also pretty hot to watch El-Sayed activate his righteous condescending, hands slipping into his jean pockets, rolling his eyes at the absurdity of such a question and refusing to let it turn into a warped John McCain moment.

El-Sayed has learned a lot from more centrist candidates in the party. From Newsom, he learned the art of being an antagonist, of how effectively a man can run as Dennis the Menace against the domineering Republican Party. From Ossoff, he learned how to braid in being an intellectual and polished orator, how debate-club tactics can work as long as you eschew the tie and show an inch of clavicle. In deploying a Republican-style aggression toward his political opponents, he’s found a way to merge all of that with a broad chest that I want to rub my face in like I’m just a tiny woman and he’s an amorous bear.

The result isn’t just a political leader you want to vote for, but a daddy—someone you can trust to make the bad guys go away, to make the right decisions, and to shove anyone who stands in the way. The condescension is part of it.

It’s been a long time since the Democrats had someone who was willing to be as aggressive as Trump, someone willing to use the tools of combative oration to try to win an election. In a few days, we’ll have some kind of answer for whether it was effective. But if you’re worried about the midterms, about whether there is any one Democrat who can swoop in and save all of us, you just need a little self-care. May I suggest this video that includes several close-ups of El-Sayed’s bicep? It says it’s 17 seconds long, but on my computer it seems to last for hours. There, there, kitten. Daddy’s coming.