TOLEDO, Ohio — A familiar name is jumping into the 2024 race for Congress to unseat longtime 9th Congressional District Representative Marcy Kaptur.
JR Majewski made the announcement earlier in the week that he will once again be running for the seat held by Kaptur since the early 1980s.
The conservative Majewski also ran against Kaptur in 2022, but lost his bid.
Majewski’s campaign took a hit after he was accused by Kaptur and others of misrepresenting his time spent in Afghanistan when he was in the military.
Majewski says the Air Force has recently corrected his military record and feels vindicated by the corrections.
He says he has seen lots of calls from supporters for him to run again.
"I was getting a lot of calls from people asking me to get into the race and after my record was cleared that momentum expanded," said Majewski. "People apologized to me saying they were voting for me [in 2022] and then changed their vote at the last minute because of what they heard from the Democratic Party and Marcy Kaptur."
The recent fight over funding the federal government that ended when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy relied on votes from Democrats to pass a temporary funding bill highlights a divide within the Republican congressional caucus.
Majewski, who has aligned himself with congresspersons like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Green in their bid to extract deep spending cuts in exchange for voting to fund the government, has expressed doubts about Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s leadership.
"McCarthy had a really tough fight to win the speakership and he made some commitments to the Republicans and he hasn't made any of those promises come to fruition. A lot of those promises, Republicans like myself campaigned on," said Majewski.
Before he can face Kaptur in the general election, Majewski has to win the Republican nomination. So far, Majewski has two opponents in the May 2024 primary- Craig Reidel and Steve Lankenau.
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