Ohio GOP Senate candidate’s campaign staffer once used SS soldiers as his Facebook photo. Now the campaign says it has decided to part ways with him

Sen. Jon Husted’s Ohio Senate campaign named 25-year-old Stephen Woytek as political director in August, in a race against former senator Sherrod Brown (D). Publicly available social media activity reported by The Washington Post showed that Woytek once used a photo of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture and later added songs celebrating Rhodesia to a public playlist.

The Washington Post reached out to the campaign on Friday. A spokeswoman then said the campaign had decided to “part ways” with Woytek. The campaign did not answer questions about whether it had reviewed his social media history before hiring him, or how that review was done.

“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.

Woytek said he rejects the ideology of the SS and Nazi Germany

In a statement, Woytek said, “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.” 

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.

A Facebook account belonging to Woytek once carried a profile photo identified online as real soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division in 1941. The soldiers in the picture are holding captured Soviet banners. The photo was still accessible on the account on Friday. How long it had been used as the profile picture was not clear.

The same public Facebook profile is linked from Woytek’s listing on the federal employee tracker Legistorm. It shows that he follows LAH Living History Unit, a military reenactment group that 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.”

The group’s website said members dress specifically as the Leibstandarte, a Waffen-SS formation that started as Adolf Hitler’s bodyguards and later became an armored division. The group claimed the Leibstandarte “came to symbolize the highest dedication to duty and individual as well as collective loyalty.” It said it disavows “political and religious persecution” that happened during the war.

Photos shared by the group and linked to a Flickr account appear to show Woytek in an SS uniform in February 2018, marching in an area with Nazi flags. This is not the first time a political campaign has faced scrutiny over staff members’ ties to Nazi imagery, such as when a former DeSantis campaign staffer was fired for sharing a Nazi-linked video. 

He would have been 16 then. He also follows several Facebook pages that sell SS military uniforms, including Elsenau Militaria. An account using his name and photo created a 2018 Pinterest board titled “WWII Uniforms.” The public board has only two images, and those images appear to show Nazi uniforms.

The campaign also provided photos showing other reenactment work. They show Woytek as a Union soldier in the Civil War in 2018 and 2019. He posted a Facebook photo of himself in a Union uniform in 2019. Other photos from 2025 and 2026 show him dressed as a member of the U.S. 83rd Infantry Division during a World War II reenactment.

A Quora account bearing his name includes answers on military history topics such as Vietnam and the Blitz. He said there that he studied “conflicts throughout history as a passion.” In 2017, responding to a question about whether “anything good” happened under Hitler, he wrote that Hitler started an anti-smoking campaign.

Legistorm listed Woytek as a 2024 graduate of The Citadel, a public military college in South Carolina, and as a former legislative aide to Ohio state Rep. Haraz Ghanbari, a Republican. His LinkedIn profile said he serves in the Ohio National Guard. The Ohio National Guard did not respond to a request for comment.

An account using Woytek’s name and photo recently created a public Spotify playlist titled “Tales From Rhodesia,” with the caption “homesick for a place that no longer exists.” The playlist was made private on Friday. Tracks were still being added last month, including “One Fire.” That song says, “Oh, Rhodesia I’ve given you my vow.”

Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was a former British colony in which a small White minority governed a larger African population. It declared independence from Britain in 1965 after Britain pressed for majority rule. Ian Smith then led the country. 

He had earlier said that White men were the “master” of the country. Rhodesia later became a symbol used by some 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. The shooter who killed three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2023 also wore a Rhodesia patch.

Another track on the playlist, “Zimbabwe Ruins,” describes trash “piling up” and includes the line, “Your heart is dead and all that’s left are bones.” The song also uses a slur to refer to African troops. Under Woytek’s name, a playlist called “War” includes Bonnie Blue Flag, a song celebrating Southern secession, and the Union anthem We Are Coming, Father Abraham.

Another playlist is devoted to military bugle calls. The same account also has modern playlists, including one titled “Grindset” and one focused on country music.

Woytek did not answer questions about the Rhodesian playlist or what it was meant to convey. Some Republicans have expressed concern that a small but growing group of younger people in the party has interacted with, or shown support for, white nationalist and racist ideas that had long been treated as fringe.