Sophie Rain's Victory Lap

In case you missed it, OnlyFans star Sophie Rain had a pretty public feud with a Republican political hopeful from Florida. James Fishback, a far-right investor-turned-political activist made headlines during his campaign for promising to tax OnlyFans creators - and anyone in the adult industry - by 50%. This, unsurprisingly, came as an outrage to everyone in the adult community, especially Rain. 

Fishback was trounced in the primary, only receiving about 10% of the vote. The winner, Byron Donalds (who has yet to pick a side on the issue of taxing adult industry workers) got around 48% of the vote, receiving about 811,000 votes to Fishback’s 177,000. 

Fishback spent most of his campaign admonishing adult creators for their work and wanted to “disincentivize and deter” the porn business from operating in Florida. He called the people purchasing OnlyFans content online “sick”, adding that he didn’t want “impressionable men who are straight from Christ… to be told and drawn into lust, and have their entire brain rewired.”

“I don’t want young women who could otherwise be mothers raising families, rearing children - I don’t want them to be selling their bodies to sick men online,” Fishback said in an interview. 

Florida’s 175,000 adult creators (an estimate by Free Speech Coalition) may be a fraction of the state’s total population, but it’s generally not a good look to bash people earning their keep gainfully. Even worse for Fishback, Florida ranked 4th in OnlyFans spending, meaning the “sick” people he referred to are more numerous than he’d care to admit. This much, one could argue, was reflected in just how badly Fishback lost this race.

After such a repudiation of Fishback’s policies, Rain is making sure to rub it in. She says Fishback “wanted to take 50% of my income because he didn’t approve of how I make my living, and now he got about 10% of the vote.” Rain, whose estimated net worth is in the hundreds of millions, understands the importance of taxes (she already pays millions to the IRS each year). “I’ve never had a problem paying my fair share,” said Rain. “If you want to raise teachers’ salaries or pay for kids’ lunches, I’m all for that - but come up with a serious policy instead of using women and content creators as a political punching bag,” Rain said. She added, “What I had a problem with was a politician deciding that people like me deserved a special ‘sin tax’ because he personally disapproved of our careers.”

The irony is, Rain claims most of her clients are conservatives and there’s data to back her up. According to a 2009 study by Harvard Business School’s Benjamin Edelman, eight out of the top ten states that spent the most on porn subscriptions voted Republican in the 2008 Presidential Election. While traditional Republicans consider themselves to hold “old-fashioned values about family and marriage”, they’re some of the porn industry’s best customers.

Rain already pays taxes at a rate of 37% and OnlyFans takes a 20% cut of all her transactions on the platform. Ceding over half of an OnlyFans creator’s income to taxes isn’t something they were likely to be onboard with. But, since Fishback was defeated, these adult creators don’t have to worry about that. As for Fishback, it’s not clear what’s next. His lack of status in the Republican party was made glaringly obvious in the last election and it appears his values are too extreme to build meaningful traction with any voting group. 

But we know Sophie Rain’s next move. Not only is she going to keep churning out the content that’s made her a multimillionaire, but she’s also being incredibly generous to educators in Florida. Education was one of the fields Fishback wanted to support with his 50% “sin tax”. Now, in celebration of his defeat, Rain has pledged to purchase every item on every teacher’s classroom wishlist. Rain said in a post on X (formerly Twitter), “If you’re a teacher in need please reach out to me and I will clear your classroom wishlists! I’m here to make a real change instead of false promises.”