A Moms for Liberty activist who caught heat last summer after her Indiana chapter quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter is back—and now she’s running for governor.
Paige Miller, who leads Moms for Liberty (M4L)’s Hamilton County branch, has entered the race as an independent alongside her scripture-quoting running mate, Jamie Reitenour.
On May 23, the women sat for a Facebook Live discussing their candidacy, with Reitenour in a baseball cap with a M4L logo and sharing a Bible story from Nehemiah.
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“I don’t belong to a party,” Miller told viewers. “I belong to Jesus Christ. And the one thing that I will tell you about our team is we’ve never been about the title.” She then listed off her only important titles: child of God, wife, and mother.
“I could go off and live a very quiet life,” added Miller, who taught elementary grades in Carmel for 33 years and, as a M4L activist, once called for a “mass exodus” from public schools with the help of private school vouchers.
“There’s kind of a joke about the fact that I’d like to go scuba diving eventually, and that was my plan after I retired from teaching in 2020, and it’s yet to happen,” Miller continued. “And God keeps giving me different directions and things that he wants me to do.”
Miller did not return messages left by The Daily Beast, nor did Reitenour via her campaign.
According to the Indianapolis Star, the conservative tag-team must collect nearly 37,000 signatures by July 1 to be placed on the November ballot. The women, who met at a Bible study, announced the same on Facebook with a photo of themselves and supporters under a Donald Trump flag featuring the words “Miss me yet?”
Weeks earlier, Reitenour was a longshot Republican gubernatorial candidate before placing second to last in the May primary with 4.9 percent of the vote. (Miller was originally billed as Reitenour’s pick for the state’s Secretary of Education; now she’s taking the lead, with Reitenour running as lieutenant governor.)
Their campaign website mirrors some common M4L talking points and lists education at the top of the platform. “Teachers’ opinions on political and social topics, critical race theory, and sexual orientation and gender identity issues have no place in the classroom,” the site says.
The website also advocates for keeping trans athletes out of women’s sports, the state’s “school choice” program, and anti-abortion policies.
Miller was in the spotlight last June over her chapter’s Hitler newsletter flub that arrived not long after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labeled M4L, generously bankrolled by right-wing organizations and donors, an anti-government extremist group.
It also sparked national headlines ahead of the parental-rights group’s annual summit in Philadelphia that brought in days of protests from LGBTQ activists and allies and appearances from Republican presidential candidates.
The Hamilton County chapter’s bulletin had featured the words of the Führer on the front page—“He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future”—before issuing a clarification and eventually removing the quotation altogether.
“The quote from a horrific leader should put parents on alert,” the clarification read. “If the government has control over our children today, they control our country’s future. We The People must be vigilant and protect children from an overreaching government.”
Ultimately, Miller apologized for quoting the Nazi leader. “We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history,” she said at the time. “We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology.”
But M4L bosses and speakers at the summit defended Miller, including M4L co-founder Tiffany Justice, who told an awards dinner to applause, “I stand with that mom. No one thought she was quoting Hitler. No one. That’s a lie.”
Meanwhile, another member of Miller’s chapter appeared to justify the passage, according to a Vice report.
Co-founder Shelly Stewart explained in a Facebook comment, “We have had a few questions around the quote from Adolf Hitler and why it was used. His quote is meant to shock and scare every liberty-loving adult. We the People must protect our children and keep government in check.”
Miller has also advocated for other right-wing causes, writing in her chapter’s Facebook group in 2022: “It would be AWESOME to get a Turning Point USA club in all of our Hamilton County schools where kids can have a place where they won’t be silenced and cancelled for loving America and having Christian and Conservative views!”
In other posts, she’s posed for photos at trainings with the conservative Leadership Institute in Sarasota and alongside Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell, whose group was added to SPLC’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups this year.
Miller has also stoked fears about schools teaching identity issues while ignoring poor test scores in a podcast with Reitenour.
“We don’t have time to talk about social justice and if you’re a boy or a girl, or a rabbit or a gopher, or whatever you want to be today,” she said. “We’re going back to required minutes, where they have to have so much instruction.
“I want you to know, when I’m back in charge of that, we’re going back to teaching.”
