Every campaign season, especially ones as intense as this one, will churn up stories that aren’t so much about lying or scandal or low-rent tactics as they are simply some mix of desperate, weird and hilarious. The one I’m about to share manages to be all of those but mainly just hilarious and weird. Let’s go to Pennsylvania’s 10th congressional district, where longtime Freedom Caucuser and election denier Rep. Scott Perry (R) appears to be in the race of his life. Members of the Freedom Caucus, as you’d expect, are usually from very, very red districts where you can indulge the Freedom Caucus lifestyle with few electoral repercussions. But that’s never really been the case with Perry. Cook Report says it’s an R+3 district and Perry beat Janelle Stelson, a former local news broadcaster, by only 5,000 votes in 2024, hardly a strong Democratic year.
Stelson is challenging Perry again this year and now most polls show him running behind.
So he has a new campaign attack: Stelson walks around naked!
This is one of those stories where it’s hard to piece together what is even being alleged let alone which parts of it might be true. Mostly because the details are hardly the point. But I’ll do my best. Perry has an ad up alleging that Stelson was caught “exposing herself totally naked to a neighborhood child” and then flashes on screen something labelled an “Affadavit” (sic) which purports to detail this activity and gives the impression that the document comes from some sort of legal proceeding. Only it’s not an affidavit. It’s the account Stelson’s neighbor, Sharon Orr, had notarized and gave to the Perry campaign.
The Philadelphia Inquirer notes that Perry’s decision to run the ad might be evidence of a kind of creeping Ramaswamyism since it went live just after Ramaswamy released his now notorious ad attacking Democrat Amy Acton over charges her stepfather raped her when she was 12. And it’s received a similarly frosty response. (Perry’s ad also includes the apparently debunked charge that Stelson hired a pantsless undocumented immigrant from Nigeria as a canvasser, a charge first leveled in a DHS press release based on the claims of a New Jersey-based blogger.)
Stelson’s campaign categorically denies the claim, saying: “This false accusation is a pathetic, desperate attempt by Scott Perry to rescue his failing campaign, with easily disproven lies.” Stelson’s campaign says she is considering suing Perry for defamation.
So let’s dig in, shall we?
According to local news accounts Orr’s home is positively festooned with Scott Perry signs. Meanwhile, Stelson moved in only in 2025. During the 2024 campaign she lived just outside the district lines. So presumably she relocated in anticipation of challenging Perry again this year since living outside the district, while entirely legal, is never a good look. However that may be, it’s clear that as Scott Perry’s Certified Number #1 Fan Orr probably wasn’t destined to get along great with Stelson.
As best I can tell, what Orr alleges is that back on August 14th, Stelson was in her backyard insufficiently dressed, at least to Orr’s standards, and that Orr’s granddaughter, who lives with her, either did or could have seen her. She writes in her testimonial that she called the police after seeing Stelson “walking around outdoors in the public sphere” with her “breasts and buttocks fully exposed and in plain sight of my minor aged grandchild.”
But it turns out Orr’s account has evolved. Back in the summer, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Orr said Stelson wasn’t naked but rather “in a shirt and undergarments.” She was concerned because of the “effects on my grandchild who is on the autism spectrum and mirrors behaviors and actions.”
And apparently the part about her granddaughter seeing anything, even Stelson “in a shirt and undergarments,” didn’t happen either.
When a PennLive reporter went to Orr’s door to ask about the incident, Orr threatened to call the police. But when local TV news ABC27 reporter Dennis Owens subsequently spoke to Orr she clarified that her granddaughter never saw Stelson naked or with a shirt or any other way. Only that she could have. In response to that admission the Perry campaign revised its charge from exposing herself to a minor child to “public exposure next to the home of a minor child.”
At least some of it happened.
The Patriot-News was able to confirm that Orr did at least call the police. East Pennsboro Township police confirmed this but declined to share any details about what happened. The paper interviewed one neighbor, Steve Dillon, who found the claim quite improbable based on what he’d observed of Stelson and also because all these homes abut a creek where people are routinely floating by on canoes. “All I know is that she wasn’t [naked]. She was just sitting in her back yard or her back deck,” said Dillon.
In any case, Orr claims in her testimonial that she took a photo of the naked Stelson, thus proving her accusation, notwithstanding earlier saying she was fully clothed. But she refuses to show the photo to anyone. The Perry campaign says it hasn’t seen the proof photo either.
Let’s cut here and note that we’re talking about a purportedly nude photo Orr took of Stelson in her backyard and whether the cops, Scott Perry, the local papers and presumably local teenaged boys in the neighborhood get to see it. The whole sorry tale reeks of the kind of desperation you see when a guy like Perry is in his final bowl swirlage and is lashing out in any and every direction. Reporters caught up with Perry leaving the Country Club of Harrisburg late last week and peppered him with questions about whether he’d seen the alleged nude photo that has I guess you’d say become the kind of holy revenge porn grail of this whole sordid escapade. Perry repeatedly refused to answer whether he’d seen it and told a PennLive reporter, “Your publication is full of lies and garbage and propaganda, and I’m not going to be involved in it.”
