One Democrat in a key 2026 race is already in damage-control mode.
A post she made back in 2023 is making the rounds again, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that tends to follow a candidate all the way to November.
And this unspeakable insult about Jesus turned one election upside down./
What Holscher Actually Wrote
The post goes back to March 2023, when Holscher was arguing on X against Senate Bill 149, a Kansas measure that sought to restrict drag performances accessible to minors.
During that exchange, a user asked Holscher whether she was suggesting Jesus was transgender. She didn’t back down.
“I have no idea if Jesus was trans, gay, straight, etc.,” Holscher wrote, according to the Washington Examiner. “But you seem to imply that a sacred figure is ‘less than’ if they aren’t straight. That’s too bad.”
She then turned around and demanded that the user provide “proof that schools are grooming children.”
So to recap: she defended exposing children to drag performances, questioned the sexuality of the Son of God, and then accused the person she was arguing with of making things up. All in one thread.
For Christians in Kansas, this isn’t some abstract theological debate. According to Pew Research Center data, 70% of adults in Kansas identify with Christianity, making it one of the most Christian states in the country. Holscher just handed her opponent a gift.
Masterson Doesn’t Let It Slide
Republican nominee Ty Masterson, who won the GOP primary with President Trump’s endorsement, didn’t waste any time.
“If anyone needs proof that Cindy Holscher is a radical, here it is,” Masterson wrote on X. “She mocked Jesus Christ to defend drag shows for kids, and she’s so out of touch, that she doesn’t understand why most Kansans find that offensive.”
“That’s not your parents’ Democrat, that’s the most radical liberal nominee in Kansas history,” he added. “This November, the choice could not be clearer for Kansans.”
Hard to argue with that framing. Holscher won the Democrat primary by defeating state Sen. Ethan Corson, doing so even after outgoing Governor Laura Kelly endorsed Corson. That tells you something about where the Kansas Democrat base is right now.
And it isn’t exactly the political center.
The Campaign’s Response Says It All
Holscher’s campaign spokesman TJ Helmstetter pushed back by accusing Masterson of chasing old social media posts instead of talking about kitchen-table issues.
“Ty Masterson is focused on old tweets while Kansans’ bills are skyrocketing,” Helmstetter said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “He’s trying to distract voters from his failure to lower property taxes and his extreme agenda, but they’ll see right through it.”
That’s a standard deflection, and it doesn’t answer the actual question. Nobody forced Holscher to type those words about Jesus Christ. Nobody made her defend drag performances in front of children. She did that on her own.
The “old tweets” defense tends to work best when the tweet in question is something minor, out of context, or genuinely regrettable. This one fits none of those categories. It reflects exactly what Holscher believes, and her record in the Kansas Senate backs that up.
Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, which endorsed Holscher after the primary, noted that throughout her time in the Kansas Senate she has opposed efforts to restrict abortion access and has been a consistent advocate for policies that put their agenda at the center of healthcare decisions. Planned Parenthood, which receives hundreds of millions in federal funding annually while performing hundreds of thousands of abortions each year, doesn’t endorse candidates who waver. Holscher is their kind of politician.
The Institute for Legislative Analysis gave Holscher a 15% score for 2023, far out of step with limited-government principles. That’s not a moderate. That’s not even close.
But her campaign wants to talk about property taxes.
What This Race Actually Looks Like
Republicans hold a sizable voter-registration advantage in Kansas, with GOP voters registered at nearly twice the rate of Democrats, and the Cook Political Report rates the contest “Lean Republican.”
This will be one of five Democrat-held governorships up for election in 2026 in a state that Donald Trump won in the 2024 presidential election, and the only one of those states that Trump won by a double-digit margin. That’s not a friendly map for Holscher.
And she’s not running as a pragmatist trying to hold a difficult seat. She’s running as someone who went on social media to speculate about the sexuality of Jesus Christ rather than simply vote against a bill she disagreed with. There’s a reason Masterson called her the most radical nominee in Kansas history. The record supports it.
But here’s the thing that makes this more than just a one-cycle story. The resurfaced Holscher posts also come as another Democrat nominee in a marquee 2026 race faces scrutiny over past comments connecting religion and gender, with Texas state Rep. James Talarico facing heat over his 2021 declaration that “God is nonbinary.”
Two major Democrat nominees, two states, two candidates who apparently couldn’t resist using Jesus Christ as a prop in their gender ideology arguments. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a party that has drifted so far left on these issues that its candidates don’t even recognize how badly it plays in the states they’re trying to win.
Christians who express traditional biblical views in corporate or government settings face professional consequences that no other group would tolerate. And yet the same political movement that cheers those consequences turns around and demands that Christians sit quietly while their most sacred figure gets dragged into arguments about drag shows for kids.
Kansas voters get to weigh in on all of it in November. The choice, as Masterson put it, could not be clearer.
Sources: Washington Examiner; Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes; Institute for Legislative Analysis; Cook Political Report; Pew Research Center; Kansas Reflector