Monero podcaster loses NY congressional race

Douglas Tuman, a crypto enthusiast and host of the Monero Talk podcast, has lost in his bid to represent New York’s 4th District in the U.S. Congress.

According to election results from The Associated Press, Tuman, a Republican, received 134,243 votes to incumbent Democrat Kathleen Rice’s 147,580 in New York’s 4th District, which includes parts of central and southern Nassau County. Rice has served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2015.

The Monero (XMR) podcaster first announced his intentions to run for Congress in March, stating that he was running on a platform “to improve representative democracy and money.” Tuman said he was willing to accept XMR and other crypto donations for his campaign to create a “more pro crypto” U.S. government.

“With the crypto community behind me we can probably get Monero national attention as free speech money,” said the congressional candidate. “Monero aligns with the ideals America was founded upon. It is America 2.0 — a protocol to preserve liberty in the digital age.”

Privacy coins like XMR have been involved in U.S. elections and legislation this year in one form or another. In October, crypto scammers briefly replaced a page on Donald Trump’s re-election campaign website, calling for readers to make donations to two Monero wallets if they wanted certain “strictly classified information” about the president released. The Internal Revenue Service also recently offered a bounty of up to $625,000 to anyone who can break the purportedly untraceable features of XMR.

Cointelegraph has reached out to Douglas Tuman, but had not received a response at the time of publication.