Constitution Party’s 2024 Nominee Randall Terry to Lead Training Effort for Pro-life 2026 Congressional Candidates

The following is a transcript of several interviews with 2024 Constitution Party presidential nominee Randall Terry. The interviews were conducted over the past few days and have been minimally edited by topic for readability. Punctuation, expansion of initialisms, expansion of contractions, and hyperlinks to sources have been added. Filler words and other distracting speech disfluencies have been removed.

In this interview, Mr. Terry also provides Independent Political Report with exclusive, breaking news of a planned protest at the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C., early next year.

IPR: You’ve been running for office apparently fulltime for over two years – first as an Independent candidate for President, then with Pastor Boden for the Constitution Party’s nominations, then as their POTUS nominee, then for the US House in a 2025 Special Election in Florida, and now you have announced you are not only running in 2026, you’re recruiting and training 25 candidates to run with you; “26 in (20)26”.  What is the motivation for such a high level of political commitment?

TERRY: Our mission is to inject a strong Pro-Life message into the election cycle so that stopping abortion, the murder of innocent human beings, becomes a top priority again.

Today, abortion is no longer in the top 10 voter issues.  The only way that ending this genocide can be a top voter issue again is to have social tension.  To create social tension we need political candidates who bring the following message to every voter: We are killing children and this must stop.

IPR: How do you create sufficient social tension to change voter attitudes and behavior?

TERRY: Every successful social revolution in American history has succeeded only when sufficient social tension has been created. The Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, the end of slavery, the end of child labor, the expansion of basic worker rights, the end of Jim Crow laws and segregation; each one of these movements, and others around the world, has  employed these four requisite methods: 1) incendiary images, 2) radical rhetoric, 3) aggressive action, and 4) serious sacrifice.  Do those four and you will have a verifiable victory.

IPR: I notice the alliteration.

TERRY: It’s intended.

The biggest problem the Pro-Life movement has today is that we do not behave in a way that is an equivalent response to the nature of the crime. If abortion is murder, we must act as if it is indeed murder.  This is a crisis of courage. There are people reading this who really believe that abortion is murder, but they are risk averse. They do not want to pay the price necessary to have the impact that is required to end the genocide.

So my plea with people is, count the cost and then ask yourself, what would you want someone to do for you if your head was about to be ripped off? Is this the time to write a letter to the editor, time to make a meme and put up a little social post . . . or is it time to make significant sacrifices?

We are not asking people to lay down their lives. We are not asking people to spend 10 years in prison or to go to a concentration camp. We are asking them to run for office. We are asking them to create social tension by acts of peaceful civil disobedience in their own community in a way that brings the plight of the children front and center in the American political debate.

IPR: You see these candidates as diminishing the chances that Democrats are elected in the hope that the Republican will be eventually more Pro-Life.

TERRY: Yes.

IPR: What changed from when opposition to abortion was a top-ten voter issue?

TERRY: The Pro-Life movement has lost our fire; we have been tamed. Our mission is to revive a serious, aggressive, sacrificial, incendiary, Pro-Life movement that . . . that shouts to the Heavens that we are committing genocide and it must be stopped.

IPR: You have a training center, a college campus, where you are going to prepare candidates to be aggressively effective in 2026?

TERRY: Yes. We were able to buy a small campus in Memphis (Tennessee) with a beautiful church, a school, two houses, a playground, and a big parking lot.

We have our first event, this week – December 3rd through 5th, where we will combine recruiting and training candidates with street-level activism.  Our first major protest will be at a local Planned Parenthood clinic, the first protest in over 30 years. We have been promoting that event on Pastor Ernie Sanders’s radio show, What’s Right, What’s Left; and with Frank Pavone of Priests for Life.

The purpose of the December event is to create the momentum we need for a far bigger event that we are having in Washington, D.C. on January 22nd at the Food and Drug Administration . . . no other news outlet knows that we are going to the FDA on January 22.  January 22^nd will be the (53^rd) anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision (22 January 1973).  We will be using civil disobedience to protest RU46, the two-stage pill that is now responsible for a huge portion of the babies that are killed in many states.  Then in late February or early March, we will have another event in Missouri.

We are recruiting like crazy every day. Retail recruitment, one-on-one, calling people who I have not spoken to in 5 or 10 years. Other people are doing multiple interviews and putting it out on their social media. I am anticipating a good crowd and a good mix of seasoned Pro-Life leaders and rescuers, along with many young people who have perhaps never participated in civil disobedience.

IPR: Please keep us updated on the event.  You plan to run 26 candidates for the US House and Senate in 2026?

TERRY: My motto is 26 for 26, and we’re at six already. So we’re looking for 20 more. Almost all will be for the US House. There will be a couple for the Senate.  Our candidates will advocate for Pro-Life, period.  Their other political positions or party affiliations can cross almost all other ideological, economic, and religious lines. This is the Human Rights issue; we must end the killing.  These candidates will be learning street-level action.  Action that will create social tension, at times with protests, civil disobedience, signs and words – a radical rhetoric designed to create tension, combined with incendiary images, including television advertising.

IPR: You ran incendiary video ads in 2024.

TERRY: Yes, during my 2024 campaign for President as the Constitution Party nominee, my ads were seen by somewhere between 50 and 60 million Americans.  We ran ads on ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Good Morning America, Jimmy Kimmel, The View, Univision, and others.  We had them available on our website for sharing on social media.

NOTE: ABC ran the following disclaimer on 17 October 2024 (other media ran similar disclaimers):

We want to take a moment to tell you about a graphic political ad you may have seen airing on ABC stations. The ad is for anti-abortion rights advocate and presidential candidate Randall Terry and features graphic images of aborted fetuses. By law, our TV stations must air the ad. According to the Federal Communication Commission, broadcast stations are “prohibited from censoring or rejecting political ads that are paid for and sponsored by legally qualified candidates.” Terry will be on the ballot in at least 12 states so he has met criteria to be considered legally qualified nationally.

IPR: You ran an anti-abortion, Terry for President, television commercial in game seven of the World Series?

TERRY: Yes, just before the election. We were seen by almost 10 million people with that one ad alone. Then in the spring of 2025, Pastor Stephen Broden and I each ran for the US House in Florida.  In the special elections on April 1st, between the two of us, we ran hundreds of television ads in Northern Florida, from coast to coast, and as far south as Orlando.

Neither one of us live in Florida, but the way the US Constitution is written, you do not have to live in the district where you are on the ballot.  It is a throwback to the British Parliament. You have to be a resident in the state you run in for a certain number of years for the US Senate, but for the US House, you just have to move there only after you win the election, and before you are sworn-in.

IPR: Let’s debrief your 2024 campaign for POTUS.  How did it go?

TERRY: We spent about fifty-percent of our revenue directly on Pro-Life television ads, which is a huge portion. When you consider the cost of running a campaign: paying staff, production costs for the videos, the fact that we spent literally fifty-percent of the money that we brought in on television ads, it is amazing. I did not take any salary, and I put in about $12,000 of my own money for ballot access with the Constitution Party.  We were on the ballot in 13 states. The threshold for a presidential candidate is 10 states in order to run national television advertising.

Millions of people in swing states saw our ads.  We targeted swing states and voters who were 50 to 80 years old.  That is who still consume their news and entertainment from traditional television, and they are historically mostly Democratic voters.  They know that there is something radically wrong with the unfettered killing of our offspring. So our mission was to create a crisis of conscience for those voters, swing them to another candidate, or keep them home, so that pro-abortion Democratic candidates lost.

There are some key races in Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta area where the margins are so tight that if we run a candidate who can get two or three percent of voters, the historically Democratic vote, to refuse to vote for that candidate, whether they vote for the Republican, whether they vote Independent, or whether they stay home . . . as long as the baby killer loses, we have accomplished our goal.

Only Heaven knows, and someday I hope to find out, precisely how many people did not vote for Kamala Harris because they saw our ads, because they felt social tension – they heard and responded to our message. You know . . . how many times do you have to see a dead baby on television and hear somebody tell you that if you vote for Harris, you will have the literal blood of this dead child on your hands, forever? That is a powerful message, a message that only has to be heard once in someone’s heart and conscience.  It will resonate there permanently and change their behavior.

Traditionally, one of the dirty secrets of the church is that the largest single voting block inside the Democratic Party are Roman Catholics; the second largest voting block are African-Americans.  If it were not for the treachery of Roman Catholics who hypocritically profess a Pro-Life religious belief, and yet vote for child killing candidates, if it was not for the treachery of those voters, the Democratic Party would implode; it would be no more.

IPR: Treachery?

TERRY: Yes. 100 percent.  It is treachery against the teachings of the Christian church. More importantly, it is an assault on Jesus Christ himself because Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me.” He said, “Whoever harms a child, they should be better off with a millstone tied around their neck and drowned in the sea!”  He said, “Whoever receives a child in my name, receives me.”

So our betrayal of innocent children with our votes as Catholics is treachery – it is an assault on Christ himself. Regarding those who really hate what we are saying and doing – in the Gospels the only ones to ever accurately identify Jesus Christ were people who were demon possessed. The demons would shriek out, “We know who you are! You are The Christ, the Son of God!”

I have noticed in my 40 years of political activism, that the most shrill voices that support the murder of children will identify who the real threats are against their murderous agenda. So when you have a story like People for the American Way published in Right Wing Watch (Anti-Abortion Zealot Randall Terry Buys Church Campus To Train Pro-Life Warriors) and now this article in Ms. (Antiabortion Militants Open Training Facility in Memphis, Aim to Restart Large-Scale Clinic Blockades), you can see that they hate us more than most Pro-Lifers.

Why?

Because the traditional Pro-Life establishment is not a threat to ending this genocide. They are raising enormous sums of money; they are getting photo ops with politically powerful people; they are handing out awards to each other, but they are not a real threat to the child killing industry, to the abortion-industrial complex. They are going to shriek the loudest because they recognize that we are the threat. Their accusation that we are against birth control is ludicrous. But that has been one has been a “straw man” that they have heralded for years.

IPR: Is your mission directed solely at the Democratic Party?

TERRY: If we would just not vote for child killing candidates, then we could have a Pro-Life majority in both chambers of congress, and in the presidency.  We could criminalize the killing of unborn humans. Republicans are actually following through, but they need a swift kick in the pants, or gentle encouragement, whichever works best.

Abortion was also not a top 10 voter issue in 1987. But, after protests at abortion clinics and thousands of arrests, ABC Evening News had an exit poll in 1988 and abortion was the number one voter issue. What happened in that one year between 1987 and 1988? Operation Rescue, and the broader rescue movement.

IPR: Do you have to be arrested to create social tension? To gain earned media?  Is that what you meant earlier when you advocated for aggressive action, and serious sacrifice?

TERRY: We had thousands and thousands of people getting arrested. News story after news story saying that we have to end the killing now. We were on Oprah, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, 2020, all the evening news shows, the Today Show, Meet the Press, CNN . . . everywhere.

We copied the playbook of the 1960s Civil Rights movement and moved a dormant political issue to the front and center of American politics. That is what we must do again.

IPR: How did Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement affect you?

TERRY: My mom taught in the inner city.  I came from a very liberal family that had friendships and relationships across racial lines from the time I was born., so it was normal for me. But when I started my Pro-Life work, I became a deep admirer of Dr. King because of his eloquence and because of the logic of nonviolent resistance.  I wanted to be like him.

So I read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail over and over again, and then Stride Toward Freedom and Why We Can’t Wait, the autobiography by his wife, My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr., the Eyes on the Prize documentary . . . Eyes on the Prize, I could not watch it enough. As I watched those heroic nonviolent protesters, I saw the path for Operation Rescue.

I have studied nonviolent movements and believe that they hold the key to our success in America. But, please understand, I am not a pacifist. My commitment to nonviolence is tactical, as well as ethical. I believe in just war, I believe in the use of force. But I believe in this situation, for our movement to accomplish our goal of giving the full protection of law to unborn human beings, our only chance of achieving that is with nonviolence, and peaceful civil disobedience. 

We literally took the nonviolent Pledge of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, changed a couple words, and made it our own. If you look at the original Operation Rescue literature, and the nonviolent pledge that people had to sign, it is almost word-for-word from what the Civil Rights movement used. I knew that was the path to victory for us.

IPR: What does that path look like; what do you see as the keys to victory?

TERRY: That is why I have started this academy – to train people in activism and running for office to gain a verifiable victory, by fully implementing the four rules of social revolution, again, incendiary images, radical rhetoric, aggressive action, and serious sacrifice. We are taking students and potential candidates to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis when they come for the launch of the school, because that is the best template in America for what we want to do.

My long-term vision is a school where people can come for four days, or four weeks, or four months, and get the training that they need for a very narrow band of political activism. But while they are with us, we can help them get CLEP (College-Level Examination Program) credits for American history, world history, English, and others. There are all kinds of tests that people can take to get college credit that will transfer to another university or college.

IPR: What is the name of the academy?

TERRY: We are working on the name. We have strong discussions going on right now, but it has to be a name that communicates passion, valor and purpose to end this genocide.

IPR: Do you have a website?

TERRY: Go to rescueresurrection.com.  Currently that is for our event this week. You can see we have some great speakers, young and old, across the political spectrum.

IPR: How can those who might want to be trained in your Academy, who might want to run on an anti-abortion platform in 2026, register for classes?

TERRY: The website will take you to the registration for this upcoming event. If somebody is interested in running for office, they can reach us through the contact form.

I need to emphasize, we are not asking them to campaign to win; we are asking them to campaign to cause someone else to lose. So these are not campaigns with yard signs, bumper stickers, buttons or door-to-door canvassing; this is a campaign where somebody does three things: 1) they give their name, 2) their face, and 3) their voice. They use our videos and then look into the camera and say, “I’m (name) and I approve this message.”  That is it. In 2024, we had multiple candidates who used the same video, but at the end, rather than me, it was their face in the advertisement.

IPR: Do you see these candidates affiliating with the Constitution Party, running as Independents, or affiliating with another Party?

TERRY: Pro-Life candidates can be virtuous people from all political stripes.  If you go to our website, you will notice that one of our speakers is another presidential candidate from 2024, Terrisa Bukovinac. Terrisa ran as a Democrat in two primaries and she was able to run ads on television in New York and in Boston. She is a leftist on many issues, but is Pro-Life. She founded PAAU (Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising).

We are simply saying to people who would like to run, we don’t care what your political affiliation is historically; we don’t care what your religious affiliation is; we care that you want to end the killing of children.  Period.  The mission is to bridge every other political divide so that we can unite to end the killing.  When I was a young man, there were pro-abortion Republicans and there were pro-life Democrats. But both parties have made it a litmus test at this point, and neither one of them is going to give up that litmus test in the immediate future. The Republican position has softened, and part of what we want to do by this is to embolden so-called Pro-Life Republicans to really behave like they are Pro-Life, so we have some legislative items that we are working on that we are going to introduce in 2026.

IPR: Legislation?

TERRY: One of our primary missions is to get the FACE Act (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act) repealed. It is absolutely draconian. It is not a part of the American experience of self-government.

If any one of the social revolutions I referred to earlier had faced federal felonies and the full weight of the Department of Justice crashing in on them, most of them would not have prevailed. If Martin Luther King, Jr., the Freedom Riders, and the lunch counter sit-in protestors had to face federal charges, they would not have prevailed. When tens of thousands of people were getting arrested in the 80s and 90s, we faced local charges – maybe a misdemeanor, a violation, a fine, a weekend or three months in jail. But it was all local and state charges.

When a federal law is used against peaceful protesters, the federal government can grind people up, spit them out, and just lock them away in a federal prison for years. That is the kind of stuff you see in communist China, or communist Russia, or in Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or North Korea, for peaceful protest where you accuse your peaceful protesters of advocating for violence, and then you have these draconian measures to shut them down. Then that social, peaceful redress of issues with the government, that right is lost in the face of political and judicial terrorism. Remember, I have a degree in terrorism. This is not part of America’s history of peaceful civil disobedience.

The purpose of terrorism is not for the dead. The purpose of terrorism is for the living. When you murder someone, it is an act of vengeance or retribution. Terrorism is for the living.  It is designed to put fear in the hearts of everyone else who sees it, so that they modify their behavior. When you stick 23 people in federal prison for years, for simply a peaceful protest against the aborting of human beings, you literally scare the hell out of every other potential activist; and then they are going to comply rather than protest.

We are peaceful protesters, and yet it is we who face unleashed judicial and political terrorism. So we must repeal this law. Repealing this law will be critical to us prevailing in our defense of the unborn. They literally broke our back when that law was passed in 1994.  It was the end of large-scale civil disobedience on behalf of the unborn. Because the cost was just too high as the people who were pardoned by President Trump displayed.

IPR: Your critics would say that the FACE Act was to protect physicians and others employed by Planned Parenthood from being murdered.

TERRY: We have always advocated for nonviolence. That has been a part of the pledge people had to make in order to be with us. Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights protesters, Women’s voting rights protesters, those protesting against child labor – they were successful because they were nonviolent. Gandhi was nonviolent.  Nonviolent protest captures the imagination, it pricks the conscience in a way that violence does not. The fact of the matter is that any act of violence against any human being in any state of the Union already has laws against it.

You do not need a federal law to deal with the handful of acts of violence that have occurred at abortion facilities in the last fifty years. The real mission of the FACE Act, according to Attorney General Janet Reno was to stop Operation Rescue. She said that publicly in a press conference when she took office.  Her priority was to stop Operation Rescue because the Pro-Life protests and civil disobedience were growing; we were on the verge of achieving our verifiable victory.

IPR: So you are willing to train Libertarian candidates, Green Party candidates, Socialists and Objectivists, LGBTQA candidates – so long as they advocate for ending abortion.

TERRY: To end the killing of the innocent; to end the killing of children? Yes! Nothing else matters.  I have caught hell for affiliating with people who are Pro-Life but left wing, or in the LGBT community who, like me, also catch hell for working with me.

But my message to my otherwise Christian friends is Christ where he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself;” where there was a man who was beaten and left to die in the ditch, and a priest and a Levite passed by on the other side, they left him to die. They might have had great theology, but they did not have love for the man.  Christ introduced the Samaritan who would have been the most despised of human beings by the Orthodox community; he introduced the Samaritan as the hero of the story.  And he was; he stopped a killing; he saved a human being.  So my thought is this, if it takes me and one other person to save my daughter from drowning, and that person is a left-wing atheist, or a Satanist, or a gay Mormon – I do not care. Just help me save my daughter, please. If my daughter’s life is worth it, then every little girl is worth it; and every little boy is worth it.

IPR: Someday we will all die, or perhaps you believe we will all leave Earth for somewhere else; how does Randall Terry hope to be remembered?

TERRY: On the “next life” part of the question, I hope I make it to Heaven, and the Lord pats me on the head, and says, “Good job, Randy. Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

On how I hope to be remembered, if I can go to my grave having helped spur on a movement that incorporated young and old, every color, every religious belief, every political background, if I could do that, if I could have assembled the most diverse crowd ever in the history of the United States of America, into a movement that brought an end to the killing of the innocent, the unborn, I would go a happy man.