LAS VEGAS — The porn industry is turned off by thought of a Republican president.
The AVN Adult Entertainment Expo inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is not normally concerned with politics. This is a place to window-shop for dildos and take in “Kinky Cabaret” or the “Xburlesque Dance Show.” You can swing by a variety of “VIP” parties in the evenings and sip on overpriced wine while trying to snap a few after-hours selfies with your favorite, “AVN-award-nominated” actresses. Instead, we asked a few about the hottest thing outside of porn: the presidential race.
“I’m voting for Bernie; I don’t want a corporate candidate,” Karla Kush, a young, blond porn star told The Daily Beast. She admires Sanders’s “revolutionary stance” on the issues, and decries how “royal family” Hillary Clinton is “in bed with” the big banks.
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“Women distrust her,” Kush said. “Bernie is generally about equality in how he sees gay marriage, or cannabis reform, or civil rights. … I believe he supports my independence as a woman and as a professional.”
She had nothing flattering to say about Trump, the clear Republican frontrunner who was actually holding a rally in Vegas as she spoke. She was more concerned about what his campaign’s success says about “the collective consciousness of the nation.”
Dani Daniels—the 2016 XBIZ female performer of the year who got into porn because she is “bisexual and wanted to fuck girls but I had no game”—was even more vocally, viscerally anti-Trump.
“Hell. No.” Daniels said. “If Trump wins, I’m leaving this country, I’m going to Europe to shoot porn.”
As for who she plans to vote for?
“I like Bernie Sanders,” she said. “I don’t like anyone else [who is running].”
No matter where I strolled around America’s leading annual porn convention, hatred of Trump was high and the Bern was being felt.
“Trump is a ridiculous showman,” David Lord, a director with the studio Adam & Eve, said. “He preys on the simple, good Americans throughout the country with theatrics, not substance.” Lord, who identifies as an “independent, leaning left,” stated that he likes Sanders, but that the senator reminded him too much of his “old, Jewish uncle,” and that he “can’t imagine my old, Jewish uncle getting elected president.”
“[Virtually] everyone here leans left, and everyone here will end up supporting Hillary,” he said. “It’s a mix here Hillary and Bernie [fans].”
Sarah Vandella, a “masterful deepthroat sex bomb,” echoed the sentiment. “Bernie’s the man, I definitely feel the Bern,” she said. “For the industry,” I would love to see Bernie [as president]. I feel like Bernie gets it [and that he] wouldn’t nitpick us to death. He would look at it like these are consenting adults, so why can’t they have sex without a condom?”
Anikka Albrite, who bills herself as your “clASSy salacious slut-next-door,” wasn’t on board with Sanders’s campaign, or any of the Republican or Democratic candidates’, for that matter. She has yet to decide which lucky 2016 candidate will get her vote.
“Personally, I feel this whole election is a media buzz, “ Albrite submitted. “None of [the candidates] are going to be good for us.”
And thought she found Trump’s political incorrectness and bluntness somewhat “refreshing,” she said that it all came at too high a price.
“It’s very scary,” Alrbite said. “He is being very racist.”
John “Buttman” Stagliano, former porn star and the “Maharajah of poontang,” has a personal stake in the next president. In 2010, Stagliano overcame federal obscenity charges brought due to the explicit nature of his companies’ films—the “squirting,” the “gargling, gushing, and the two women choking on [a hard, thick] penis,” for starters.
“I don’t hear any of [the Democratic candidates] talking about pornography at all,” he said.
“I’m personally gonna vote libertarian…because I don’t think Rand Paul has a chance,” Stagliano continued. (Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson is running for the libertarian nomination.)
Despite his strong libertarian views (e.g. he hates Obamacare), Stagliano had a few kind words to say about President Obama (“not a warmonger”), as well as the Iran nuclear deal and negotiations.
“Barack Obama was a star compared to these [Republican candidates],” Stagliano said, save for Paul.
Evan Stone (star of such titles as “Father Fucks Friends” and named by CNBC as one of porn’s most popular marquee names) also identifies as a libertarian. Unsurprisingly, he’s not wild about Cruz or Trump, either.
“I think Trump is gonna take this election,” he predicted. “Do I want that? No.”
Personal views aside, the business is afraid a Republican will be a downer.
“If a Republican wins in 2016…all bets are off,” J. Michael Murray, a First Amendment lawyer said. The precise fear is that a Republican in the White House will pander to the religious right, which is not fond of pornography.
For porn honchos and their civil-libertarian allies, the memory of President George W. Bush’s “summer of censorship” is still very fresh in their minds. In early 2012, the last GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney—along with his then rivals Newt Gingrich (who ironically helped save Internet porn in the mid-1990s when he was Speaker of the House) and Rick Santorum—promised to crack down on porno, championing the “strict enforcement of our nation’s obscenity laws.”
It’s a conservative track record that makes someone like Hillary Clinton seem like a presidential godsend to the producers of adult entertainment.
“Since 1985, when President Reagan was sworn in for his second term, every Republican administration has supported and enforced 2257 and has brought obscenity prosecutions; and no Democratic administration since then has done so,” Las Vegas lawyer and sex-law columnist Clyde DeWitt wrote in an info packet distributed at an Expo seminar titled, “Election 2016: Which Candidate Is the Best Bet for the Adult Industry?”
DeWitt, who says he would love to see Barack Obama get nominated to the Supreme Court, was encouraging his readers—and all manner of people who care about pornography—to vote Democrat all the way down.
