Informercial star Offer Vince Shlomi, best known as the “ShamWow Guy” who hawked super absorbent towels on late-night television, is running for Congress in Texas.
Shlomi, 61, is vying for the Republican primary nod against incumbent Rep. John Carter, 84, to represent a swatch of Central Texas, which includes the northern suburbs of Austin, Temple and Fort Hood.
So far, Shlomi is one of five candidates to enter the GOP primary for the reliably red 31st Congressional District. The primary is March 3.
On Sunday, Shlomi told Fox News Digital that he was motivated to run to “destroy wokeism” and as a tribute to Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September while speaking at a university in Utah. Shlomi called Kirk the original “woke buster” and said he wants to end “political infighting in the country” and “make America happy.”
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Shlomi, who was born in Israel and raised in Brooklyn, skyrocketed to infomercial fame in the 2000s with his energetic pitch for the absorbent towels that became a household name. He went on to sell the Slap Chop, a handheld chopping device, the Graty, a cheese grater, and the Schticky, a reusable lint roller.
“You’ll be saying ‘wow’ every time you use this towel,” he would say, looking directly at the camera and spilling soda to demonstrate the towel’s absorbency. “It sells itself.”
But Schlomi’s rise to success as a pitchman was complicated by a 2009 arrest in Miami Beach after an alleged violent altercation with a sex worker, which left him with a bloody jaw in a viral police mugshot. Prosecutors declined to press charges.
After the arrest, he told NBC News in 2013 that he had stepped back from the public eye, cut down on partying and recommitted to his work. The arrest, he told the outlet, probably saved his life.
“People understand you make mistakes in life,” he said. “Hopefully I won’t make another mistake.”