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Offer Vince Shlomi, known for high-energy sales pitches on late-night TV, running in Texas in memory of Charlie Kirk and to ‘make America happy’, he says
Joe SommerladMonday 24 November 2025 15:42 GMTComments
CloseThe ‘ShamWow Guy,’ best known for selling kitchen towels, is running for Congress
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Offer Vince Shlomi, an infomercial pitchman known to millions as the “ShamWow Guy” for his energetic promotion of highly absorbent dish cloths, has announced he is running for Congress as a Republican in Texas on a one-man mission to “destroy wokeism.”
Shlomi, 61, is hoping to unseat incumbent GOP Rep. John Carter, 84, who is seeking re-election in the Lone Star state’s 31st congressional district, which takes in the northern suburbs of Austin, Temple, and Fort Hood.
Also, the president and CEO of the TV marketing company Square One Entertainment, and sometimes movie director, Shlomi, becomes the fifth person to enter the upcoming Republican primary in the deep red district.
open image in galleryTV personality Offer Vince Shlomi has announced his intention to run for Congress in Texas as a Republican on an anti-woke platform (Getty)Speaking to Fox News Digital on Sunday, the entrepreneur said he was motivated to run in memory of Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder who was assassinated on a college campus in Utah in September, whom he described as the original “woke buster.”
Shlomi, who was born in Israel but raised in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, also said that a desire to end “political infighting in the country” had inspired his run for elected office, declaring that he hoped to win in order to “make America happy.”
The all-action late-night commercials for which he is famed find Shlomi giving domestic products like ShamWow, Slap Chop (an innovative kitchen utensil) and The Schticky (a washable lint roller) the hard sell.
Speaking directly to the camera and sporting a headset, Shlomi delivers motor-mouth run-downs of their many virtues in an endearingly forthright, if exhausting, manner.
“Get your ShamWows now and save time, save money and save yourselves,” he declares in one video from 2019, leaving the viewer temporarily feeling convinced that they have no choice other than to stop wasting money on inferior paper towels and reach for the phone to take advantage of his latest offer immediately.
open image in galleryOffer Vince Shlomi, otherwise known as the 'ShamWow Guy,' appears in an infomercial promoting highly-absorbent household cleaning cloths (ShamWow/YouTube)Away from the cameras, Shlomi has not always been as spotless as his surface tops and made unwanted tabloid headlines in 2009 after he was arrested in Miami Beach over a violent altercation with a sex worker, which left him with a bloody jaw visible in his notorious police mugshot.
He has since said the embarrassing episode “probably saved my life.”
“People understand you make mistakes in life,” he reflected in 2013. “Hopefully I won’t make another mistake.”
Shlomi is currently involved in a lawsuit with Australian YouTuber Chad Roberts after he filmed a parody video for the latter’s channel Cold Ones – mocking his own presenting style in a video promoting “HamWow,” a fictional wipe made of pork – only to find it was locked behind a paywall on Patreon.
Shlomi argues that, in addition to lost views, subscribers, and YouTube ad revenue, his reputation has been negatively impacted by the video’s inaccessibility.
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