Kathy Barnette

On May 15, 2022, images surfaced showing that Barnette had participated in the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the 2021 United States Capitol insurrection; though her campaign has denied participating in any acts of violence, she has stated that she "brought" three buses of "pissed off patriots" to the rally.

Barnette came third in the 2022 primary, behind Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, a loss she blamed on comments made by Fox News host Sean Hannity. In October 2022, she stated that she would vote for Oz in the election, but declined to endorse him.

According to The Tennessee Star, in 2022 Barnette ran "on a platform emphasizing free-market health care, border security, school choice, domestic energy production, tax reform, and protection of the unborn."

Barnette had a close relationship with My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell for a time. Lindell said of Barnette in June 2021, "She is just an amazing person" and "I never heard of anyone being so tenacious."

Barnette announced she would run to fill retiring Senator Pat Toomey's seat in early April 2021, and received some high-profile endorsements from Michael Flynn and Sebastian Gorka. She raised about $600,000 by June 30, 2021, more than Sean Parnell or Jeff Bartos, the major candidates at the time. She surged in the polls in late March 2022 and started receiving major attention from news outlets in May.

Barnette entered politics by running for Pennsylvania's 4th congressional district in the 2020 election. She was unopposed in the Republican primary. She lost the general election to incumbent Madeleine Dean and refused to concede, while later saying she had accepted the results of the election, Barnette continued to raise doubts about her own election and the wider 2020 presidential election.

Barnette began to receive scrutiny over past tweets she had made, including some spreading the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and others that have been described as homophobic and Islamophobic. In a 2015 YouTube video, Barnette said that it is okay to discriminate against Muslims and compared rejecting Islam to "rejecting Hitler's or Stalin's worldviews." In comments on her radio show, she said that accepting homosexuality would lead to accepting pedophilia and incest. In one post, she called a transgender person "deformed" and "demonic."

Kathy Jean Barnette (born September 6, 1971) is an American politician and political commentator. A member of the Republican Party, she ran for the United States House of Representatives in Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district in 2020, and unsuccessfully sought the party's nomination in the 2022 United States Senate election in Pennsylvania. She has espoused homophobic and Islamophobic views, and has promoted conspiracy theories.

According to Barnette, her mother was raped at the age of 11 by a 21-year-old man. Her mother became pregnant as a result of the rape, which led to Barnette's birth on September 6, 1971, in Alabama. She was raised by her mother on a pig farm in the south of the state, in a house where her great-great-great grandmother, who was born a slave, formerly lived.