Here are the 9 most monstrous and crazy Republicans of 2019

2019 was a year of extremes in politics, as President Donald Trump learned for the first time his limitations clashing with a Democratic House of Representatives, elections were held in several Southern states, and the voting public geared up with some trepidation for the 2020 presidential election. But even in such a year, some Republican lawmakers and politicians managed to stand out as particularly insane, corrupt, or mean-spirited.

Here is a roundup of this year's nine most memorable GOP monsters:

1. Matt Bevin

It would not only be hard to start any list of unlikeable politicians without Matt Bevin, it would be hard to choose the biggest reason why.

The only Republican governor in Kentucky's history to preside over unified GOP control of the state government, Bevin quickly developed a reputation even among members of his own party for being impossible to work with. He sought to gut teacher pensions and strip Medicaid from low-income families, both of which were ruled unlawful by state and federal courts. He antagonized just about everyone with his callous attitude, suggesting that children should be forced to walk to school in life-threatening deep freeze weather and that striking teachers enable child molesters.

In the end, despite Kentucky's deep conservative politics, Bevin was so toxic that voters threw him out in favor of Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, even while voting for Republicans across the board up and down the rest of the ticket. Even his own lieutenant governor, a staunch Tea Party conservative whom he had booted off the ticket, refused to vote for him.

But perhaps the most despicable thing Bevin did came just days before he was set to leave office. In a move that stunned Kentucky observers, Bevin pardoned a spate of hardcore criminals, including murderers and child rapists, some of whom had family who contributed to his campaign. Pressed in particular about the child rapist case, Bevin suggested that his nine-year-old victim had lied because "her hymen was intact" — which isn't in any way medically or forensically relevant. The FBI is now reportedly looking into Bevin's pattern of pardons, so although he is gone from office, he may not be gone from headlines just yet.

2. Steve King

The GOP congressman from northwest Iowa gained a reputation for xenophobia and white supremacy that long predates 2019. He called young Mexican-Americans drug mules with “calves the size of cantaloupes.” He argued that “diversity is not our strength,” and America ought to be more “homogenous” because “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” He has endorsedThe Camp of the Saints, a racist 1973 novel in which a feces-eating warlord conquers Europe with a horde of nonwhite invaders. He promoted content from a British neo-Nazi, endorsed a white nationalist candidate for mayor of Toronto, and gave an extremely racist interview to a far-right Austrian political party founded by a Nazi SS officer, while on a Holocaust remembrance trip.

But 2019 could be the year that King's antics finally caught up to him. In January, after King asked in a New York Times interview how "white nationalist" and "white supremacist" became offensive terms, House Republicans finally had enough and stripped him of his committee assignments, including — and it is rather astonishing he held this in the first place — his ranking membership on a subcommittee on civil rights. Evidently not taking any hint from this that it might be time to tone down his rhetoric, King shortly followed this up by arguing that we should probably thank rape and incest for the survival of the human race.

Heading into 2020, King has drawn a serious GOP primary challenger in state Sen. Randy Feenstra, as well as a rematch with Democratic former ballplayer J.D. Scholten, so his chances of being in Congress much longer are increasingly in doubt.

3. Duncan Hunter

It is a curious fact that both of the first two congressmen to endorse Trump for president, Chris Collins (R-NY) and Duncan Hunter (R-CA), have resigned after pleading guilty to federal crimes. But while Collins pleaded guilty to a run-of-the-mill insider trading scheme, the scandal that brought down Hunter was far more memorable.

Federal prosecutors indicted Hunter and his wife Margaret last year, accusing them of spending over $250,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses including vacations to Europe, dental work, and bar tabs — and falsifying spending reports to the FEC to cover up their theft. According to transcripts, Hunter’s wife told him to charge a purchase of clothes as “[golf] balls for the wounded warriors," and Hunter demanded the Navy "go f**k themselves" after military personnel refused to let him tour an overseas base to make it look like his trip to Italy had an official purpose.

Hunter initially called the whole thing a "witch hunt." He then tried to blame the improper expenses on his wife — but then prosecutors also detailed how Hunter spent campaign cash on a series of sexual liaisons with mistresses, including three lobbyists and a staffer, some of which were going on after Congress had already opened an ethics investigation into him. Finally unable to defend himself, Hunter agreed to resign at the end of the year and took a plea.

4. Matt Shea

State legislators are commonly swept up in bizarre and shocking scandals. But it would hard to top the saga of Washington state Rep. Matt Shea, who this year was linked to far-right domestic terrorism.

The Spokane lawmaker's pattern of disturbing behavior has been reported for a while. First, Shea was implicated in distributing a document called "Biblical Basis for War," which advocated training children to become soldiers and killing unbelievers who do not submit. Then leaked chats from the private messaging app Signal revealed Shea was not only in close contact with right-wing extremists, but discussing surveillance and "psyops" measures they could use to target local liberal activists.

Finally in December, the extent of Shea's terrorist activity was fully laid out in a Washington House of Representatives report, revealing that Shea was an active participant in the armed paramilitary occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016. "Representative Shea, as a leader in the Patriot Movement, planned, engaged in and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States Government in three states outside the state of Washington over a three-year period," said the report, adding that "In one conflict Representative Shea led covert strategic pre-planning in advance of the conflict."

Shea has no plans to resign, setting up the likelihood that the legislature will move to expel him next year.

5. David Stringer

Arizona state Rep. David Stringer drew outrage and calls to step down last year after claiming that Black people don't "blend in" to American society and "there aren't enough white kids to go around."

But that was not the reason Stringer abruptly resigned from the Arizona House of Representatives in March. Rather, the day after his resignation, a report released by the House Ethics Committee detailed his horrific sexual assault of two children in Maryland in the 1980s.

"The police report [uncovered by the committee] states police arrested Stringer in September 1983, after a boy told officers that Stringer had met him and a friend in a park a year earlier, and asked them to come back to his apartment to have 'some sex,'" reported the Arizona Republic. "Stringer paid the boys $10 after he performed oral sex on them, and they performed the same act on him, the police report states." One of the boys also reportedly returned to see Stringer "at least 10 times" to perform "oral sex and penetrative sex," in the last instance in the shower.

One of the boys, according to the Republic, had a developmental disability, and the police report showed that Stringer "should have reasonably known" that.

6. Omar Navarro

An alt-right internet celebrity and gadfly congressional candidate, Omar Navarro is best known for his repeated unsuccessful campaigns against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). But in July, he had a spectacular and public falling out with his erstwhile allies that ultimately led to his arrest.

Plans for Navarro to speak at the "Demand Free Speech Rally" in Washington, D.C. — an event protesting a number of right-wing extremists banned from social media for bigotry or threats — fell through after he publicly accused his then-girlfriend, "MAGA relationship expert" DeAnna Lorraine, of cheating on him in coked-up sexcapades with the Proud Boys, a so-called "Western Chauvinist" group notorious for getting into violent brawls. Navarro was already married to a different woman at the time.

Then, in December, Lorraine — who is herself mounting a right-wing campaign against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — allegedly noticed Navarro waiting outside her apartment, just as she received anonymous text messages saying, "Bitch, I came to see you." The texts then offered her money to marry him, threatened to leak her relatives' addresses to left-wing protesters, and threatened her pets. Navarro was promptly arrested on charges of extortion and felony stalking.

7. Danielle Stella

Another far-right internet darling, Danielle Stella, managed to get herself into serious legal trouble shortly after announcing her candidacy against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

A bizarre character who has called for Omar to be hanged for treason and has said she "100 percent" believes a conspiracy theory that Democrats are running a world-spanning sex trafficking ring, Stella was arrested in July after allegedly stealing more than $2,300 worth of items from a local Target. She denies the charges, claiming she was suffering a PTSD episode at the time and does not remember walking past the self-checkout area without paying for the items. But despite maintaining her innocence, she skipped her court date, leading to an arrest warrant being issued in her name.

Ironically, Stella has attacked the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where she is running for Congress, as the "crime capital of our country." Even including the felony theft with which she was charged, it isn't. It's barely even in the top 20.

8. Amanda Chase

As the Virginia General Assembly elections drew nearer and Republicans faced imminent wipeout from fed-up suburban voters, some of them attempted to moderate their message. And then there was state Sen. Amanda Chase.

Chase, who had already drawn controversy for claiming that the Equal Rights Amendment is a plot to "eliminate gender altogether" and that she doesn't need equal rights as long as she has her revolver, sparked outrage in July when she dismissed rape survivors as "naive and unprepared" for not just carrying guns to fight off their rapists. There is no evidence to support the idea that gun ownership reduces sexual violence, which is mostly committed by familiar people, or indeed that it deters any crime at all.

Facing criticism, Chase simply doubled down, attacking a constituent for "scoffing at my rights and the rights of everyone else who protect themselves … I'm a champion for women, their right to protect themselves and their right to their opinion, even if I may not agree, but will not tolerate the bullying or chastising the rights of the Second Amendment."

9. Glen Casada

Perhaps no politician's career imploded more spectacularly in 2019 than Glen Casada, the freshly-minted Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.

Casada caused outrage at the beginning of his term by standing firmly behind David Byrd, a lawmaker accused of sexually assaulting multiple women — and he not only defended Byrd, he used taxpayer money to help his political operatives smear Byrd's accusers. But Casada's real undoing came after texts emerged of one of his aides, Cade Cothren, using the N-word, boasting about using cocaine in state office buildings, and describing his sexual conquests at campaign-funded events. Casada initially tried to pretend he hadn't seen any of this, but more leaked messages revealed Casada laughingly joined in these exchanges, making lewd remarks about women, and at one point using legislative equipment to tamper with evidence against a Black activist charged with assaulting him.

As the scandals mounted and his own party turned on him, Casada finally agreed to resign. But in one last indignity, Casada hung around for two months after agreeing to resign, collecting an extra $15,000 in taxpayer salary.