Leading the polls among Republican recall candidates, AM radio talk show host Larry Elder faces allegations from his ex involving gun threats, exploitive kinks, and lots of marijuana.

The Gavin Newsom recall election just got even stranger, so much so that even Caitlyn Jenner is starting to look like one of the saner Republicans on the ballot. An AM talk-radio shock jock named Larry Elder is the leading Republican in the polls, which is unsurprising, given the current GOP affinity for outlandish media personalities who make unhinged declarations. But being in first place puts a target on any politician’s back, and opponents are throwing dirty laundry at Elder now.

The dirty laundry comes from Politico, in an interview with Elder’s former fiancee, whose most explosive charge is that he threatened her with a loaded gun while high on marijuana. But the report also invokes Hugh Hefner, Heidi Fleiss, and Snoop Dogg, winding it all into a tale of scary alleged abuse from a candidate who’s already got some issues with neanderthal views on women.  

The former fiancee Alexandra Datig is also his former radio producer, who says the gun incident happened in 2015. “For a minute there ... I thought it was a Phil Spector moment,’’ she told Politico, saying that Elder produced a .45 caliber pistol while they were arguing “He checked if it was loaded — while I was talking,’’ she said, and that “He wanted to make sure I saw that he had it.”

On the less-deadly and just plain creepy side, Politico also adds that he forced her to get a “Larry’s Girl” tattoo on her lower back, displayed a nude photo of her with the tattoo in their household, and forced her to sign an NDA agreement regarding their relationship. Politico said it has seen both the NDA and the photo.

Elder’s camp will likely come at Datig with personal attacks, and she does have vulnerabilities there. She was a sex worker in the infamous early 90s Heidi Fleiss stable, though also a primary informant who helped bring Fleiss down. Dating’s Twitter account, where we see the above tweet in which she demands Elder release her from the NDA, is a pretty partisan feed wherein she often promotes the campaign of Elder’s recall opponent Kevin Faulconer. Elder’s campaign has not yet commented on the allegations, but Datig’s vocal support for Faulconer will likely be used in an attempt to discredit the claims.

And just to throw more gossipy claims out there, she also says Elder had been recording radio the show wearing just a robe a la Hugh Hefner. She showed Politico a video wherein Elder claimed of Snoop Dogg, “I introduced him to the evil weed,” and, “I’m the one who made him what he is, I can’t believe he turned his back on me, motherfucker.”

The notion that a conservative talk radio show host introduced Snoop Dogg to marijuana seems implausible, but we digress.

If this is campaign dirt, it’s more likely to be from GOP rival Kevin Faulconer’s camp than Gavin Newsom’s. Faulconer stands to gain more from knocking down Elder than Newsom does, as Newsom just needs to maintain a 50% vote. But the optics here may help Newsom, giving him more scare tactics to use and paint all of his recall opponents with a broad brush of being Trumper types with maturity issues.

Related: Kamala to Campaign for Newsom; Court Orders Larry Elder to Be On Ballot [SFist]

Image: @larryelder via Twitter