A top campaign staffer for Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) once used a photo of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile photo and recently added to a public playlist of songs celebrating Rhodesia, a defunct White-minority-ruled nation often venerated by white supremacists, according to publicly available social media activity.
The staffer, 25-year-old Stephen Woytek, was tapped in August to serve as Husted’s political director in the closely contested Senate race between Husted and former senator Sherrod Brown (D).
In a statement on Friday, after being contacted by The Washington Post, a spokeswoman for Husted said the campaign had decided to “part ways” with Woytek.
“Steve serves our country honorably as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army and is a proud graduate of The Citadel. He studies military history and routinely reenacts historical battles. While he denies negative intent, his social media activity displays a complete lack of judgement and disregard for its impact on others. Sen. Husted demands better of those who represent him. Upon learning about the social media posts today, Sen. Husted made the immediate decision to part ways,” the spokeswoman said.
The campaign did not answer questions about whether and how they vetted Woytek’s social media history before he was hired.
“I want to be unequivocal: I reject the racist and antisemitic ideology the SS and Nazi Germany represented. I believe it is important to educate our younger generations, which is why I participate in historical reenactments,” Woytek said in a statement. He said he should have “exercised better judgment when posting about my activities online” and did not want to distract from Husted’s race. “I am utterly heartbroken, but respectfully am parting ways with his campaign,” he wrote.
Some Republicans have expressed concern that a small but growing faction of younger people in the party have interacted with or expressed fealty to white nationalist and racist ideologies that have long been considered fringe. Leaks of offensive group chats and infighting over the bounds of acceptable political discourse have been fueling anxiety in the party.
Woytek’s public Facebook profile, which is linked to on from his profile on the federal employee tracker Legistorm, shows that he follows a military reenactment group called LAH Living History Unit. It describes itself as “a US-based historical reenacting society portraying the 1.SS Panzer Division. We are a NON-POLITICAL group under the National WWII Living History Association.”
On its website, the group says its members dress up specifically as the Leibstandarte. That was a Waffen-SS formation that began as Adolf Hitler’s bodyguards and later became an armored division. The group claims the Leibstandarte “came to symbolize the highest dedication to duty and individual as well as collective loyalty.” The group says it disavows “political and religious persecution” that happened during the war.
The group shared photos linked to a Flickr account that appear to show Woytek wearing an SS uniform in February 2018 and marching in an area that is adorned with Nazi flags. Woytek would have been 16 at the time.
Woytek follows several suppliers of SS military uniforms on Facebook, including one called Elsenau Militaria. An account with Woytek’s name and photo created a Pinterest board in 2018 called “WWII Uniforms.” The public Pinterest board’s only two images appear to show Nazi uniforms.
Woytek appears to have a long-standing reenactment hobby that involved dressing as soldiers from other conflicts, as well. He also participated in reenactments as a Union soldier in the Civil War in 2018 and 2019, according to photos provided by the campaign. He posted a photo of himself in a Union uniform in 2019 on Facebook. In 2025 and 2026, he dressed as a member of the US 83rd Infantry Division, those photos show, as part of a World War II reenactment.
His social media presence also indicated a general interest in military history. On a Quora account bearing his name, Woytek answered questions about military history including Vietnam and the Blitz, and said he studied “conflicts throughout history as a passion.” In a reply to a question about whether “anything good” happened under Hitler, Woytek replied in 2017 that Hitler started an anti-smoking campaign.
In 2018, Woytek changed his Facebook profile photo to one identified online as real soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division in 1941. It is unclear how long he used that photo as his profile picture, which remained accessible on his account Friday. The photo shows the soldiers holding captured Soviet banners.
Woytek graduated from The Citadel — a public military college in South Carolina — in 2024, and served as a legislative aide for Ohio state Rep. Haraz Ghanbari, a Republican, according to Legistorm. He serves in the National Guard, according to his LinkedIn profile.
In recent months, an account bearing Woytek’s name and photo created a public Spotify playlist called “Tales From Rhodesia,” which is captioned: “homesick for a place that no longer exists.” (The playlist was made private on Friday.)
Songs were added to the playlist as recently as last month, when “One Fire” was added. “Oh, Rhodesia I’ve given you my vow,” the song says.
The former British colony, where a small minority of White people ruled over a larger African population, has become a potent symbol to white supremacists. The man who attacked a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 posted a photo of himself wearing a Rhodesian flag patch and wrote white supremacist screeds on a website called The Last Rhodesian. The shooter at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, also wore a Rhodesia patch on his tactical vest when he killed three Black people in 2023.
Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe, declared independence from the British government in 1965 after Britain insisted that the country evolve toward majority rule. It was then led by Ian Smith, who earlier said that White men were the “master” of the country, and intended to keep it. Its soldiers battled Black insurgent groups who were fighting for independence.
Some white supremacists have praised Rhodesia as an example of the superiority of having White people in charge and express nostalgia for those days. One of the songs on the playlist bearing Woytek’s name, “Zimbabwe Ruins,” describes trash “piling up” in the country and laments that: “Your heart is dead and all that’s left are bones.” The song also uses a slur to refer to African troops.
A playlist called “War” was created under Woytek’s name that includes music celebrating Southern secession (“Bonnie Blue Flag”) as well as Union anthems (“We Are Coming, Father Abraham”), and another was dedicated to military bugle calls. The Spotify account also includes playlists of modern music, including one called “Grindset” and another focused on country music.
Woytek did not answer questions about the Rhodesian playlist or its intention.
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