Bend City Council candidate Jonathan Curtis, who is challenging incumbent Megan Norris in Tuesday’s election, has made his presence known at Bend City Council meetings, criticizing the city’s policies on transportation, homelessness, housing and other issues during public meetings since he began his campaign this summer.

Meanwhile, his online presence has been lined with controversial rhetoric, including comments about Muslims, migrants and women, anti-LGBTQ+ statements and promotions of Christian Nationalism.

Curtis is a 26-year-old former wildland firefighter who works as a loan consultant. He was born and raised in Bend and graduated from Marshall High School. As a social media “influencer,” he has 20,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), which he uses for campaigning and to post songs, videos and other content.

In a Tuesday interview with The Bulletin, Curtis stood behind most of the content on his social media accounts. He said some controversial posts were meant as jokes, while others were posted without his consent by one of the handful of other people with access to his account.

“Sometimes, they don’t always post things that I agree with,” he said.

The Bulletin also obtained several screenshots of posts from July and August that appeared to have been posted on Curtis’ main X account, and were not online as of Tuesday.

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When first contacted by The Bulletin on Tuesday, Curtis said his account had been hacked at one point. Later, he confirmed making some of the captured posts but not others.

Curtis denied reposting a video caption linking Muslims with “low IQ, irrational rage and fanaticism” due to “symptoms of inbreeding,” but said he does believe Muslim countries have the highest rates of marriages between blood relatives.

He did not confirm reposting another user stating, “Evil is real. It is gay. It will not win,” but also said he did not view the post as problematic.

Reposting is when one social media user recycles a post from another into the person’s own profile page.

He did confirm making another apparently deleted post promoting sales of a T-shirt inscribed “1 God, 1 Nation,” and #40BOYS. According to Curtis, the 40 Boys are a group with which he is producing a TV show, but the group is also “a lot bigger” than that.

“It’s a movement, actually,” he said. “A good movement, people that believe in God.”

Earlier this year, Curtis established what he calls NCO, or New Christian Order, which he said he created as part of his effort to create a nonprofit to help homeless people. The group’s official X account states, “We are a Christian political promotion group and looking to combat foreign interests that promote anti-Christian agendas.”

Curtis said his Christian faith plays a large role in his life — and that Christian values “should go back into government.”

“This nation was the best nation when the majority of people in government had Christian values,” he said in an interview.

On July 20, the New Christian Order account on X made a post criticizing the Republican Party for hosting Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican official from California who performed a Sikh prayer at the Republican National Convention, saying, “The United States was built for Christians.”

Curtis said he does not run the New Christian Order account on X.

In a video posted Aug. 8 on a separate account, Curtis appears in a video smoking a cigar and uses a homophobic slur to categorize people who smoke marijuana. Curtis told The Bulletin the remark was a joke, and that he was making fun of an alleged event in which a YouTube star hired a sex offender.

“I’m a big comedian, too. I joke a lot,” Curtis said, adding that he has many friends in the LGBTQ+ community.

Other captured posts show anti-transgender images and memes.

On June 9, his account posted an image asking, “Would you rather be pulled over by a female cop or run into a bear in the woods?”

In April, his account posted that “vaccine people are animals.”

On Wednesday morning, Curtis’ account appeared to have removed a handful of posts dating back to the beginning of October, including a video of Curtis speaking to a crowd in which he called Democrats at the federal, state and local level “communists.”

“Those government people need to be removed,” Curtis said in the speech. “They’re trying to break against the Constitution every chance they get. They’re trying to take our rights away.”

On Wednesday afternoon, posts on Curtis’ account dating back to July appeared to have been deleted.

Curtis said his Facebook and Instagram accounts have been rendered inactive, which he said is because members of the City Council organized a campaign to mass report the accounts.

Norris called his accusations “untrue and baseless.”

She said some of Curtis’ posts had been previously brought to her attention.

“His social media posts speak for themselves, and from what I have seen, they are inappropriate and contrary to the values of our community,” she said in a text message.

She said she has used social media for event announcements and endorsements this campaign season.