This Daughter Doesn’t Want You To Vote For Her Dad. Here’s Why

Earlier this week, a Michigan woman named Stephanie Regan went viral on Twitter after she urged her Twitter followers not to vote for her father, Robert Regan, who is a current candidate for the state House and is a Republican.

“If you’re in Michigan and 18+ pls for the love of god do not vote for my dad for state rep. Tell everyone,” she tweeted. After the tweet started to pick up on the platform, she added that she wanted everyone to google his beliefs and do their own research as to why she believed that he shouldn’t be supported as a candidate.

Her dad, for his part, seemed unsurprised that her daughter had publicly come out against his beliefs, which include pro-life, anti-immigrant, pro-gun, pro-religion in public schools, making English an official language, and reinstating a “constitutional militia,” because they had always butted heads over his hyper-conservative beliefs. But while he said he respected his daughter for expressing her opinion, he also, at the same time, seemed to dismiss her ability to think for herself altogether.

“A lot of students, when they go off to these liberal university campuses, like the University of Colorado, the University of Texas, and Austin… they just kind of get sucked into this Marxist, communist ideology and she and I just don’t see eye to eye when it comes to the whole socialism, communism, Marxist philosophy.” While there’s no evidence that his daughter is a socialist, communist, or a Marxist (which are not all interchangeable terms) she does appear to be more liberal than her dad.

He also added that she’s a “big believer” in systemic and that he is not. “The only place where I really see systemic racism would be the abortion clinic cause they seem to target the African American community.” Huh.

He also went on to explain that he doesn’t believe in white privilege. He posited, instead: what about people judging you because you’re white. “As a rich, white, Christian male, people look at me a certain way. And it’s not always good,” he said. He also referred to Black Lives Matter as a Marxist group.

Steph went on to explain part of the reason why she really didn’t want to vote for her dad. When someone explained her dad’s views, she responded “this is what i was raised with!! Took YEARS to educate myself and feel proud to have diff beliefs, it’s still hard… ask yourself if ur beliefs are truly urs, or if they were implemented by an authoritative figure?” She asked Twitter. That statement really highlights the irony of her dad functionally suggesting she had been brainwashed at UC-Boulder.

Stephanie suggested, rather, that she had been brainwashed at home — and that it took getting out of her house in Michigan to realize that many of her beliefs had just been parroted to her, without her critical engagement in the issues. Still, Regan supports his daughter’s freedom to speak out her own opinions, so… that’s nice.