BREAKING: Jon Husted Hired a Nazi Enthusiast As His Political Director

BREAKING: Jon Husted Hired a Nazi Enthusiast As His Political Director

September 12, 2026

WASHINGTON POST: Ohio Senate campaign staffer used Nazi soldiers as profile photo

COLUMBUS, OHIO - Shocking new reporting shows that Jon Husted hired a Nazi enthusiast "wearing an SS uniform" as his political director, who used a "photo of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile photo and recently added to a public playlist of songs celebrating Rhodesia," an apartheid colony that has become a rallying symbol for white supremacists.

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Washington Post: Ohio Senate campaign staffer used Nazi soldiers as profile photo

• A top campaign staffer for Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) once used a photo of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile photo and recently added to a public playlist of songs celebrating Rhodesia, a defunct White-minority-ruled nation often venerated by white supremacists, according to publicly available social media activity.

• The staffer, 25-year-old Stephen Woytek, was tapped in August to serve as Husted's political director in the closely contested Senate race between Husted and former senator Sherrod Brown (D).

• The group shared photos linked to a Flickr account that appear to show Woytek wearing an SS uniform in February 2018 and marching in an area that is adorned with Nazi flags. Woytek would have been 16 at the time.

• Woytek follows several suppliers of SS military uniforms on Facebook, including one called Elsenau Militaria. An account with Woytek's name and photo created a Pinterest board in 2018 called "WWII Uniforms." The public Pinterest board's only two images appear to show Nazi uniforms.

• His social media presence also indicated a general interest in military history. On a Quora account bearing his name, Woytek answered questions about military history including Vietnam and the Blitz, and said he studied "conflicts throughout history as a passion." In a reply to a question about whether "anything good" happened under Hitler, Woytek replied in 2017 that Hitler started an anti-smoking campaign.

• In 2018, Woytek changed his Facebook profile photo to one identified online as real soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division in 1941. It is unclear how long he used that photo as his profile picture, which remained accessible on his account Friday. The photo shows the soldiers holding captured Soviet banners.

• In recent months, an account bearing Woytek's name and photo created a public Spotify playlist called "Tales From Rhodesia," which is captioned: "homesick for a place that no longer exists." (The playlist was made private on Friday.)

• Songs were added to the playlist as recently as last month, when "One Fire" was added. "Oh, Rhodesia I've given you my vow," the song says.

• The former British colony, where a small minority of White people ruled over a larger African population, has become a potent symbol to white supremacists. The man who attacked a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 posted a photo of himself wearing a Rhodesian flag patch and wrote white supremacist screeds on a website called The Last Rhodesian. The shooter at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, also wore a Rhodesia patch on his tactical vest when he killed three Black people in 2023.

• Some white supremacists have praised Rhodesia as an example of the superiority of having White people in charge and express nostalgia for those days. One of the songs on the playlist bearing Woytek's name, "Zimbabwe Ruins," describes trash "piling up" in the country and laments that: "Your heart is dead and all that's left are bones." The song also uses a slur to refer to African troops.

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