ShamWow guy sues Texas Republican Party over how he appears on the ballot

You can call Texas politics a lot of things; serious is not one of them. Our state's circus-as-governance has long attracted all manner of charlatans. Now one of them, engaged in a long-shot race for Congress, is mad that his preferred nickname isn't on the ballot.

On March 3, which is Texas' primary day, Vince Shlomi, better known as the ShamWow Guy, announced that he would be suing the Republican Party of Texas. Shlomi, who is running for Congress in Texas' 31st congressional district against longtime incumbent Rep. John Carter, says that the primary is rigged because the state did not list "ShamWow" as part of his name on the ballot. 

"Rigged election by these rhinos," Shlomi wrote on X, misspelling the acronym for "Republican In Name Only" (it's RINO).

Shlomi indeed has sued both the Republican Party of Texas and its chairman, Abraham George. The suit, filed on Tuesday in Williamson County, says that the state party previously approved Shlomi's request to appear as Vince "ShamWow" Shlomi on the primary ballot, only to later inform him his name would be changed. 

The suit includes as evidence emails from Rachel Hooper, the general counsel of the Republican Party of Texas, which explains that the National Republican Congressional Committee challenged Shlomi's ballot name. In Hooper's telling, the NRCC did so because it did not fit the "legal requirements" of the Texas Election Code regarding nicknames on the ballot. Additionally, Hooper noted that Shlomi's actual nickname is "the ShamWow Guy," not simply "ShamWow," the name of the product he hawked. Shlomi has trademarked both "ShamWow" and "the ShamWow Guy."

Under the Texas Election Code, candidates may have a nickname listed on the ballot, as long as it is 10 letters or fewer and they've been "commonly known" as that nickname for at least three years before the election. Candidates can't use nicknames that function as slogans or "otherwise indicate a political, economic, social, or religious view." The economic view clause is what probably dinged Shlomi.

Believe it or not, there's precedent for this. In 2006, former Texas Comptroller Carol Keeton Strayhorn ran as an independent for governor after feuding with then-Gov. Rick Perry. Strayhorn attempted to have herself listed on the ballot as "Carole Keeton 'Grandma' Strayhorn." She argued that "Grandma" was a nickname of hers and that if her fellow independent and opponent could be listed as "Richard 'Kinky' Friedman," her nickname was fine. Then-Secretary of State Roger Williams disagreed, probably because "Grandma" sounded a lot like her campaign slogan, "One Tough Grandma." Friedman, meanwhile, had been going by "Kinky" since the mid-1960s. Still, "Grandma" finished third in that year's election. 

Like Strayhorn, Shlomi appears to be attempting to leverage the only notable thing about him into electoral success. Facing an uphill climb in a nine-way Republican primary against Carter, who has served since 2003, Shlomi has gone all in on hoping you remember the ShamWow (and SlapChop) commercials and nothing else. It's a tried, if not true, political strategy: Be a notable, slightly washed celebrity, tie yourself to the anti-woke bandwagon, and hope it pays off. 

Anyway, Shlomi accuses the state party and George of colluding with Carter and the National Republican Congressional Committee to sink his campaign. Shlomi is asking a Williamson County judge to rule that he can, in fact, be listed as "ShamWow" on the ballot, as well as find that the Republican Party of Texas acted improperly in changing his name. Shlomi is asking for attorney's fees and other relief. 

This could have all been solved if Shlomi had taken a page out of the true GOAT of Texas political candidate nicknames. In 2012, perennial Republican candidate Larry Kilgore changed his name to Larry "SECEDE" Kilgore when he ran for president, and later governor, on a platform of allowing Texas to, well, secede. Did it work? No. Do I remember it still to this day? Oh yeah. 

All of this will probably be moot, considering the election is today. But there's always next time for Vince "ShamWow" Shlomi.