A competitive Nevada state Senate primary featuring a former Bachelorette contestant is heating up, with allegations flying about the former contestant’s treatment of women.
Christian Bishop, 35, competed on the 12th season of The Bachelorette in 2016 and is now competing against former lobbyist Jennifer Atlas to become the Democratic candidate for Senate District 5—one of four races Democrats hope to flip to secure a supermajority in the state legislature.
Bishop is hoping he’ll do better against Atlas than he did on the reality show, where he only made it through the third week. But his past with the franchise is coming back to haunt him.
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On Tuesday, Atlas’ campaign dropped mailers, shared exclusively with The Daily Beast, featuring a photo of Bishop and the words “Warning! Completely creepy and seriously disgusting.”
The mailers quote from a February 2022 episode of “She’s All Bach,” a Bachelorette-focused podcast, in which two women alleged that Bishop paid for them to visit him in Las Vegas and then canceled their hotel room when they refused to sleep with him.
The women, identified in the episode only as Lanae and Taylor, said Bishop contacted Lanae in an Instagram DM, asking her to come visit him in Vegas. Lanae said she agreed to the trip only if Taylor could come with her, and if they could drive out instead of flying on his dime, so they would have a car if they needed it.
Lanae said Bishop pressured her to send nude photos of herself before the trip and she declined. When she and Taylor arrived at the hotel, she said, Bishop came up to their suite with a friend and started complaining about her refusal to send the photos. She says he told her: “Now that you’re here, if you’re not gonna send me nudes, why don’t you suck my dick?”
Later in the night, the women say, Bishop explained the dominant/submissive relationship style he wanted to have with Lanae. In audio the women say they recorded of their conversation, a man who sounds like Bishop can be heard saying: “If I told her to do something, then I’d want her to do it because I told her to do it.”
The women say they pushed back on this idea and Bishop eventually stormed out of the room in anger. When they woke up the next morning, they learned that Bishop had canceled their hotel room for the next night and blocked them on social media.
The girls recorded two TikToks about their experience, one of which included the alleged recording of Bishop.
“We just wanted to tell what happened and we wanted to make other girls aware of guys that think like this and guys that treat girls like this and actually think that’s ok,” Taylor said on the podcast.
The Atlas campaign is distributing two different mailers about the allegations to more than 13,000 likely Democratic primary voters this week, three weeks before the June 11 primary. Nevada Legislative Victory, a PAC that supports Democratic candidates running for the state legislature, also issued mailers featuring the allegations earlier this week, calling Bishop “unfit to serve in the state Senate.”
"We have the opportunity to show our kids it is never okay to treat women this way,” the Nevada Senate Democrats, who have endorsed Atlas, told The Daily Beast. “We believe voters will agree and vote against Christian Bishop.”
Bishop pushed back on the allegations, telling The Daily Beast he asked Lanae several times for consent when texting her and that “at no point was I given any indication that there was an issue with our conversations or interactions via text or private conversation.”
“Once the women arrived in Las Vegas, it became clear to me that the dynamics had changed and that I no longer should be engaging in the relationship,” he said. “Part of consent is talking openly about your likes and dislikes in a relationship and coming to an agreement that everyone involved is comfortable with. When the dynamics changed I left because I no longer felt comfortable being in the situation any longer.”
Bishop provided select screenshots of his conversations with Lanae in which he asked twice if she was uncomfortable with him requesting photos of her and she said she was not, and others in which she requested photos of him. (The selected screenshots included no mention of nude photos, so it was unclear if or how the discussion around those proceeded.)
The screenshots also included an exchange in which Lanae asked if Bishop was “just trying to sleep with us.” He wrote: “Pretty sure I want to have fun and yes sleep with you if you are cool.” to which she responded: “Well who knows what’ll happen.”
“I apologize if at any time I made either of the women feel uncomfortable,” Bishop said in his statement. “I also know that I learned from the experience and would not put myself in that type of situation again. I believe this situation is not unique and speaks to the need for open and honest conversations about relationships, relationship dynamics, sex, preferences, and sexuality for all Nevadans. I commit to continuing to educate myself and doing better as a man.”
The race is high stakes, as whoever wins the primary contest will go on to face incumbent Sen. Carrie Buck (R) for a competitive seat that Democrats hope to flip in November. There has been little advance polling, but both candidates reported having similar amounts of cash on hand—about $72,000 each—as of March 31. Bishop donated $25,000 to his own campaign and spent nearly four times as much as Atlas in the first quarter.
Bishop is considered the underdog in the race, a political outsider who previously worked in esports and currently oversees sales and monetization for the streaming service Twitch. Atlas is seen as the establishment favorite, racking up endorsements from progressive groups such as Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood Votes Nevada, and several unions, on top of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
Bishop is presenting himself as a clean-cut family man, posting frequently about his wife and their two children. (A photo of Bishop with his family is the second image on his campaign website, after a photo of him shaking hands with President Joe Biden.) He recently tweeted several photos from the campaign trail with female supporters, writing: “Great time with some incredible women today. I got asked why politics is so negative. They said it comes off desperate! More votes today!”
During his short-lived time on the Bachelorette—and his second shot at fame on the spinoff Bachelor in Paradise—Bishop positioned himself as a fitness guru, posting shirtless selfies and snapshots from his workouts on Instagram. According to an interview with Chilled Magazine, he went on to star on another reality show called “Single and Hungry,” and launched at least three startups, including an athletic body wipe called the ShowerPill.
Atlas is a single mother who moved to Nevada nearly two decades ago as a competitive ballroom dancer. She worked in hospitality before becoming a lobbyist for a variety of causes, from tech companies like Zillow and Uber to nonprofits like Everytown for Gun Safety. She currently works as a paralegal for Coburn and Martin.
In an interview with the Nevada Independent, she cited her 9-year-old son as one of the reasons she is running for office.
“I look into his eyes, and I want Nevada to make sense for him and his friends,” she said. “When they go out into the world, I want them to have every chance at success.”
