GOP Senate Candidate Spent Campaign Money on Strip Club: Report

Nikki McCann Ramirez
·3 min read
1

NBA player-turned-Alex Jones protegee Royce White wants to be Minnesota’s next senator, and got a major boost this week when the state GOP endorsed him. And while Republicans are not shy about propping up conspiracy theorists, extremists, and grifters — the self-styled party of fiscal responsibility and family values may want to take a closer look at White’s campaign finance disclosures.

According to a new report from The Daily Beast, White’s FEC disclosures from a failed 2022 bid to unseat Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) are riddled with highly questionable — and likely unlawful — campaign expenditures.

Strip club, limousines, nightclubs, hefty unexplained wire transfers, cash withdrawals, luxury hotels, expensive restaurants, clothing, sporting goods, and private car services are all listed as expenses after White had officially lost the 2022 Republican primary. The total amount of questionable expenses surpasses $100,000.

On August 25, 2022, several days after his campaign loss, White and others racked up a tab over $1,200 at the Goldrush Cabaret, a strip club in Miami, Florida — almost 2,000 miles away from Minnesota.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, White claimed that the lavish spending at Gold Rush was campaign-related as he had recorded a podcast in Miami, and that he simply likes “the food there.” Rough calculations done by The Daily Beast based on Gold Rush’s menu suggest that those present would have had to order 48 of the establishment’s $25 appetizer platters in order to have spent $1,200.

White’s campaign also spent $3,200 and Guitar Center, $2,500 at Dick’s Sporting Goods, $700 at Sally’s Beauty Supply, and made purchases at a wide variety of clothing stores, including Lululemon, Cavender’s Western Wear, Crocs, Nike, and Nordstrom.

The Daily Beast also found that many of the out-of-state purchases made by White’s campaign coincided with touring dates for Ice Cube’s “Big3” three-on-three basketball league, with major expenditures in Chicago, Dallas, Tampa, and Atlanta.

As experts interviewed by The Daily Beast pointed out, White’s spending on his 2022 campaign likely violates campaign finance law.

There are plenty of other reasons the former NBA player is unfit to hold elected office.

White is a regular guest and even substitute host on The Alex Jones Show, and has used his growing presence on the fringe right to espouse a myriad of conspiracy theories and antisemitic dribble. Following his endorsement last week by the Minnesota GOP, White thanked Jones and Infowars directly, saying on his own podcast that “a lot of Infowars fans in the Republican Party delegation were there on Saturday at the convention.” At the convention, White was introduced to the audience by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

In the fall of 2022, White defended rapper Kanye West, known professionally as Ye, after the musician made a series of antisemitic remarks. White accused Jews of leveraging the tragedy of the Holocaust “to provide a victimhood cover for their own corrupt practices.”

“There is a group of Jewish elite, that tends to be secular in belief and corrupt in political practice,” White wrote in a 2022 tweet.

White is also an avid conspiratorial reactionary who has pushed baseless claims about anti-Trump fraud in the 2020 election, the attack against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi, and more. He also claimed that “advanced weapons” were behind the devastating 2023 wildfires in Maui, Hawaii. Despite styling himself as an anti-abortion hardliner, White has also been accused of offering several women tens of thousands of dollars in order to obtain abortions.

While much of this would be immediately disqualifying for any political candidate, it’s clear that the MAGA Republican party has been wholeheartedly captured by the most vitriolic fringes of the right.

More from Rolling Stone

Best of Rolling Stone