This controversial Montco couple wants to repopulate the earth — and get elected to the Pa. House

Simone Collins stopped mid-sentence during an interview about her state House campaign when her infant distracted her.

“Aww, sorry, my infant was smiling,” she said, interrupting a reflection about the hate she and her husband, Malcolm, receive online. “That’s, like, smile number five. It takes them a while to figure it out.”

Collins, 36, would know, because baby Industry Americus Collins (Indy for short) is her fourth child.

Collins, who lives in Audubon, is a pronatalist Republican with a sizable following on YouTube, and in November, her name will be on the ballot in Montgomery County, challenging Democratic State Rep. Joe Webster, 66, to represent Montco’s 150th District, which includes Upper Providence, Lower Providence, Collegeville, Trappe, and part of West Norriton.

A pronatalist, by definition, is someone who encourages an increased birth rate. But Collins’ definition says the pronatalist movement aims to make it easier for those who want kids to grow their families, in turn staving off demographic collapse and creating a future of “human flourishing.” She plans to have at least seven of her own — and up to 12, despite having to use IVF because of a teenage eating disorder.

If elected, she expects to go to meetings in the state Capitol with a baby strapped to her.

Collins wants the government to take its “foot off the neck of parents” and aims to explore how laws in Pennsylvania make it “unnecessarily cumbersome to have a family,” thereby supporting pronatalism. For example, although she isn’t against car seat regulations, she believes they have gone too far – it’s simply harder to fit more kids in a vehicle with more car seats.

So far, she’s reported only a few campaign donations, one of which was $10,000 to herself. But she didn’t face a primary challenge and the election is still months away; a third-party or write-in candidate can still enter the race.

Collins believes progressive policies ruined her hometown in California’s Bay Area, citing efforts to change offensive school names when there are bigger fish to fry, as an example.

“You don’t have to be partisan to be anti-woke,” she said. “I see ‘woke’ as bureaucratic bloat, and ossification.”

She described her decision to run for office in terms of her parenting philosophy: She encourages her kids to clean a mess when they see it, regardless of who made it.

“We feel that way about government systems ... ” she said. “And of course, I’m sure everyone does, but I think most people aren’t masochistic, dumb or crazy enough to actually decide that they’re going to try to fix things.”

But the impetus for her political ambition comes from her husband, Malcolm, whose grandfather, the late Republican U.S. Rep. James Collins, of Texas, taught him that there were stages in life. First, you start your career and family in your 20s, then you build up your savings in your 30s — and your 40s are the time for a political career.

“It was just seen as a life stage to him since he was a very little kid,” she said. " … Approaching our late 30s, we need to start thinking about transitioning to that stage in life.”

So why didn’t Malcolm run, instead?

Well, the two are essentially “interchangeable” Collins said, and they believed that a woman would be more electable.

Through their various projects, Collins signs emails with her husband’s name, and vice versa, depending on who they think the respondent will be more receptive to.

“We use whatever face of the two of us is going to be more palatable to other people, but we’re the same person, really,” she said. “We work as a team. So the fact that I’m running is just that my face and my name are there, but everything that we do, we do together.”

Collins already engages in robust political and philosophical discussions with her husband every weekday in YouTube videos for the couple’s podcast Based Camp, often while holding her baby. They have 15,200 subscribers and although their videos often garner a few thousand views, some get more traction, such as one about “stats on declining wokeism,” which got 22,000 views.

They also run the Pragmatist Foundation (through which they published a five-book “pragmatist’s guide”), Pronatalist.org (a pronatalist advocacy effort), and the Collins Institute (a nontraditional educational model in the works).

The couple also shares a day job working in private equity running Travelmax, a travel agency they acquired through a search fund. They’ve “operated companies on five continents that collectively pulled in $70 million dollars annually,” according to their website. Collins herself served as managing director for a secret society co-founded by PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.

They have gone viral for their pronatalism and embryo testing, and they’ve faced plenty of backlash because of the movement’s controversial undertones, and a scene in a Guardian article in which Malcolm slapped his son in the face, a moment the couple has defended.

The couple’s long conversations about transgender people haven’t gotten as much attention, with just 2,500 views on a video in which they “explore the fine line between genuine gender dysphoria and the allure of a ‘trans cult’ that may lead non-trans individuals to make life-altering decisions.”

The district — whose voters are 43% Democratic, 38% Republican, and 18% unaffiliated or third party — is not a sure bet for either party.

In 2019, Collins’ opponent on the ballot became the first Democrat elected to represent the district since 1990. In each of Webster’s races, his Republican opponent won more than 40% of the vote.

“This district absolutely could vote for a Republican … it is a very purple district,” said Webster, an Air Force veteran from Collegeville who worked at a tech start-up and a Fortune 500 company before pivoting to local politics. Webster, who said he never expected to run unopposed, plans to campaign on his record rather than attacking Collins.

Webster also likely did not expect to face a rival like Collins. She supports school choice, lowering taxes, and shrinking government like the Pennsylvania GOP mainstream, but opposes parental leave — instead believing that companies should accommodate parents working from home or bringing their infants to work — and is a spirited advocate for artificial intelligence, which she believes can improve government efficiency and allow for more creative human jobs.

In many ways, Collins’ political platform and lifestyle both tie into conservatives’ frustration over the amount of control parents have over their children’s upbringing – a hot-button issue in the Philadelphia suburbs, where heated battles have played out over book bans in school libraries, transgender policies in student athletic programs, and mask mandates.

But how the first-time candidate would play in Harrisburg’s GOP sandbox is an open question.

In a voter guide survey, Collins indicated that she doesn’t support policies that would require public schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms or play on sports teams that correspond to their gender identity. The couple doesn’t support medical interventions for trans youth. Some of the couple’s views could certainly make transgender rights advocates’ stomachs churn, but Collins still recognizes being transgender as valid, which some conservatives call into question.

“If you have a kid who’s like legit trans, they’re legit trans, but I think a lot of people obviously are transitioning for the wrong reasons,” Collins said on YouTube.

Collins also supports school choice vouchers — a Republican priority that has fueled recent battles in the Capitol — because she believes public education funding should follow students, whether they go to public school, private school, or are homeschooled, like her own kids.

Webster opposes school choice vouchers, saying the program would exacerbate existing school funding issues in the state.

“I should add, there are choices for parents in Pennsylvania,” said Webster, who has three adult children. “They can pick their local public school; they can find a private school; they can homeschool. There’s no rules that eliminate those choices. But the idea that every parent or every child would independently become a variable in how you fund public schools is untenable.”

But for Collins, the calculation is more about redirecting funds to the choices parents make for their kids. She doesn’t buy the mainstream suburban education model. She isn’t planning to pay for her kids to go to college, or drive them around to extracurriculars. If her children decide they want to attend public school for social reasons, “we’ll always consider their education home-based,” she said.

The Republican acknowledges that her candidacy will be an “uphill battle.” But like many political newcomers, she makes the case that she can change the status quo and will be more transparent than politicians already in office. Being trusted is more important than being liked, she said, noting that she’s transparent about her views.

After all, they’re on YouTube.