First-term U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida is already among the House’s most conservative members, but his Republican primary challenger claims to be even more so — and has a quixotic, longtime hobby as a costumed, role-playing “gamer.” Challenger Jake Rush (in his day job, a lawyer) portrays supernatural characters as a prominent member of the national Mind’s Eye Society and Florida’s Covenant of the Poisoned Absinthe, including vampire Chazz Darling, who, according to a Yahoo message board, once left an explicit, body-parts-bloodying threat to a role-player with whom he’d been feuding. Florida political report SaintPetersBlog broke the story — and was quickly criticized, less by Rush’s defenders than by the indignant cosplay community, which felt mocked.
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