Lev Parnas, ex-member of Trump's 'cult', runs for Congress as Florida Democrat

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Sun 8 Mar 2026 08.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 8 Mar 2026 08.02 EDT


Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman who served a 20-month sentence for campaign contributions to Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, that secretly came from a Russian oligarch, has announced a bid to unseat María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American Republican who is in her third term as representative for Florida’s 27th congressional district.

Parnas rose to national attention during Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019, when it emerged that he had been the first to ask Trump to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and then worked with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to press Ukrainian officials to make false claims about corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

In his announcement, Parnas said he will run as a Democrat. His son, Aaron, is a prominent Democratic activist and social media influencer with 5 million followers on TikTok and nearly 3 million on Instagram, and has been called the gen Z Walter Cronkite by Rolling Stone. “I’ve spent years speaking out, exposing corruption, and warning about the dangers facing our democracy. Now it’s time to take that fight directly where it belongs — to Congress,” the elder Parnas wrote in a post on X.

Parnas was convicted of campaign finance violations in 2021 as part of a scheme to trade Russian political contributions, including $325,000 to Trump’s approved Super Pac, America First Action, for support for a legal cannabis company. While people with felony convictions may not vote in Florida, they are permitted to run for office.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/lev-parnas-ukraine-congress-florida

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I have seen his son out there...

[mopinko]

1. no thanks. tho i dont live there, i wouldnt vote for him.

r we supposed to believe that he grew morals? gimme a break.
i hope we have an actual dem in the race.

[pecosbob]

2. Just what we need...more gangsters in American politics.

[Cha]

3. From what I've read about Les Parmas..

He's a Reformed man. Hope he beats the Fascist in Florida!

And his son.. wow!

Mahalo, BRDS

[LiberalArkie]

4. I did not realize that Aaron Parnas was kin to Lev Parnas.. Maybe his sone talked some sense into his dad.

My dad was born in 1915 and was solid Republican and conservative. His viewpoint on executions was that "even if a wrong person was killed, they probably deserved it anyway." I used to get in knock down verbal fights with him over Nixon, as he believed that Nixon was a quaker and would never do anything wrong. But, a week before his death in 1992, he told me that he would vote for Clinton. He acknowledged that he had been wrong his entire life.

Maybe his son did some good..In any case a Democrat from Florida in place of a Republican in these times, can not hurt.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. His son has been doing news stories for MeidasTouch.

[markodochartaigh]

14. Aaron also does news reports on Substack and youtube

I learn a lot from his reports, most of which are short.

https://aaronparnas.substack.com/

[BumRushDaShow]

19. Yup

Have seen some of those too. When I first saw the last name, I *knew* he had to be associated with Lev!

[oasis]

6. Hopefully there's a Dem party primary process.

[msongs]

7. someone to counter the trojan horse trump humper allegedly reformed nt

[oasis]

10. Is a one-time Trump flunky "bright"enough to

be an asset to our party?

[bluestarone]

8. Well, if he spills EVERYTHING he knows about everything

I still wouldn't trust him. NO WAY!

[karijofromMT]

20. Once a thug, always a thug

I wouldn't trust him, either. He has very thoroughly shown the world who he is, we'd best believe him. Tigers don't change their stripes. Love his son Aaron, him not so much.

[FakeNoose]

9. Sometimes the "enemy of your enemy" turns out to be pretty friendly

Lev Parnas has a lot of guts to try this. Maybe some of those Florida Repukes will listen to him?

[50 Shades Of Blue]

11. Yikes. The attack ads will write themselves.

[markodochartaigh]

15. That's the great thing about being a

Republican. You can just lie in the most bold-faced way imaginable and your voters will believe it, and half of the other voters won't really know what to think and will just say that both sides are the same anyway.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

26. Either way, Lev Parnas has a sordid history with Trump.

[blue-wave]

12. I don't know about this one

Seems kinda shady to me. If he wins, I hope he's the real deal. But he's gonna have to prove it to me first before I'm on board.

[lastlib]

13. Kinda think I don't want even a reformed tRumper in the gov't.....

...particularly one as dirty as Parnas was. Yeah, I get it that he's repented, but I don't think the stain is entirely washed off. My 2cts.

[Drum]

16. Founding member of The Two Shreks

Oh and this part: “While people with felony convictions may not vote in Florida, they are permitted to run for office.”

[quakerboy]

17. eww

[carpetbagger]

18. Robin Peguero, J6 committee counsel, is a decent candidate.

Parnas would be interesting for sure, but what happens when he's taking up a house seat in 2029, and no more Trump? If Aaron wants the seat, he should run himself.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. Ballotpedia lists 4 others running in the Democratic primary

https://ballotpedia.org/Maria_Elvira_Salazar

I see no reason to think they're as unreliable as Parnas. If the alternative were for Salazar to run unopposed, then a vote for Parnas would be OK, but he's seeking publicity, rather than a way to serve constituents.

[sop]

22. I seriously doubt Parnas will win Florida's 27th Congressional district.

(From Cook Political Report) "Florida's 27th Congressional District is a heavily Hispanic, Republican-leaning district in South Florida, represented by Republican Maria Elvira Salazar. Following redistricting and a significant shift in Hispanic voter support toward the GOP, the district has become firmly Republican, with Salazar winning by 21 points in 2024."

Trump's threats to topple the current regime in Cuba make it almost certain Salazar will win by an even greater margin in 2026.

[BumRushDaShow]

23. "Trump's threats to topple the current regime in Cuba make it almost certain Salazar will win"

Except that he has also deported more Cubans than any of his predecessors.

As posted here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=3628444

To their shock, Cubans in Florida are being deported in record numbers

(snip)

Heidy Sánchez took her 17-month-old daughter to a routine check-in last April with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa, Florida. During the appointment, federal authorities told her that she was being detained and that her husband should pick up their daughter, who was still breastfeeding. Two days later, Sánchez, 44, who worked as a home health aide, was deported.

Sánchez’s story quickly spread across social media, in part because she is Cuban, a group that had long been treated differently than other immigrants, even when they entered the country illegally. That has changed under President Donald Trump.

He has repatriated more than 1,600 Cubans in 2025, according to the Cuban government. That is about double the number of Cubans who were repatriated in 2024. And in the years that Trump has been president, he has sent more Cubans back than his three predecessors.

Those numbers are greater for Cubans who were deported by land into Mexico. Some of them had been in the United States for decades and built families and businesses, but were removed because of an old criminal conviction — say, from Miami’s infamous cocaine cowboys days in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

(snip)

(originally published in the NYT - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/us/politics/cubans-florida-deportations-trump.html)

[sop]

24. I live in Florida's 27th congressional district.

The vast majority of Cuban-American voters in the southern part of Miami-Dade County - Republicans and Democrats alike - have been praying for the overthrow of the current communist regime in Cuba since the 1960s. It's the single most important issue for them. Most of these voters are 3rd and 4th generation U.S.-born Cuban-Americans who care more about toppling the communists in Cuba than they do about deportations. If Trump and Rubio launch an invasion of Cuba, statues will be erected to honor them, and they will become mythical figures.

[BumRushDaShow]

25. One of my old childhood friends

whose mother was a friend of my mother (and their daughter was also childhood friend of one of my sisters), was Cuban. They had a huge house (mansion) here in Philly (the parents ran a small hotel in the area), and they were back and forth between here and Florida. So we got the lowdown about all that.

I would agree that they fled for obvious reasons. But that older generation is dying out, and ever since the "wet foot/dry foot" policy was abolished, the abuse has accelerated.

If what you describe happens, I expect that they will suddenly realize, like the Iraqis who wanted to get rid of Saddam, the Libyans who wanted to get rid of Gaddafi, the Panamanians who wanted to get rid of Noreiga, the Palestinians in the U.S. who supported a free Gaza, the Venezuelans who wanted to get rid of Maduro, and the Iranians who wanted get rid of Khamenei, is that U.S. "liberation" is all bullshit, death, and destruction.