Dem 'furry' running for House in Michigan celebrated Charlie Kirk's assassination

A Democrat furry is running to represent Michigan’s 7th district in the US House of Representatives. 36-year-old Samuel Smeltzer, who calls himself "Elyon Badger," has made numerous controversial statements on social media and has celebrated the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

Smeltzer is an LGBTQ activist, small business owner, and Michigan Army National Guard veteran, according to his campaign webpage. He is running on a platform that includes universal healthcare, legalizing marijuana, building a high-speed railway system, and free public college and trade school.

On Bluesky, Smeltzer has advocated for rounding up "every single red hat wearing MAGA" and placing them in "hard labor camps for the rest of their lives," and has claimed that "Jesus was a communist" and "America deserved 9/11." On TikTok, he made a post advocating to "kill billionaires," citing headlines about SNAP benefits running out amid the government shutdown and a Tesla shareholder package approved for Elon Musk.

In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, Smeltzer made a number of posts calling him a "massive loser," writing in the hours after Kirk’s death "good things can happen," and "how can we defeat evil, if evil is mourned when it’s defeated?"

In an official campaign statement made in the wake of Kirk’s death, Smeltzer wrote, "Charlie Kirk was against cancel culture and was a free speech absolutist… The alleged shooter is an Alt Right Groyper that was radicalized by Nick Fuentes and his alleged primary motive for the shooting was because Charlie wasn’t right wing enough."

Smeltzer wrote that Kirk was a "white supremacist who preached stochastic terrorism, and now a second political assassination was done by a white male that was groomed in a gun loving Christian Conservative home into becoming a very well trained political assassin due to the failures of these Christian fathers and the rhetoric they espouse to their young children."

He went on to blame the "gun loving Conservatives Christians" for Kirk’s killing, adding, "their violent stupidity and ignorance needs to be publicly mocked at all opportunities, 'the left' has advocated for mental healthcare and gun control so again, for the 400th time 'its not the guns its the mental health' THEN GIVE ME HEALTHCARE because we on 'the left' tried our best to get these gun loving psychopaths therapy instead of range time."

Speaking with Michigan LGBTQ paper Between the Lines, Smeltzer said he was "leaning into the furry side of things" because "the Heritage Foundation has targeted the furry community." He added, "they’re going after queer spaces and organizations where we are allowed to express creative freedom."

The article continued, "The candidate has special animus for the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025. He emphasizes the role of Michigan’s conservative Hillsdale College in planning the initiative, noting that Larry P. Arnn serves as both president of the college and as a trustee of the Heritage Foundation. Badger describes Arnn as a 'shadow person’ who is 'fucking up our America.’"