How a ‘flaming liberal’ podcast host won a US House seat in conservative Missouri

The Guardian · Jeremy Barr · 2026-11-06 11:00 UTC

Fred Wellman, host of the progressive podcast On Democracy, defeated longtime incumbent Republican Ann Wagner

Fred Wellman’s victory in Missouri’s second congressional district on Tuesday was such a surprise that NBC News’s star data analyst Steve Kornacki didn’t even have a graphic prepared, he told supporters on election night.

Longtime Republican incumbent Ann Wagner, who had been widely expected to hold her seat, was swept aside as part of a broader wave of Democratic victories across the country.

Wellman, 61, had a lengthy career as an officer in the US army and later as a veterans advocate, but he is better known as an anti-Donald Trump, pro-democracy online media personality with more than 358,000 followers on X. (He met his fiancee on the social media platform, he said.)

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