In some ways, Dennis Kucinich is made for this moment in Democratic politics. Like Senator Bernie Sanders, the quirky former Ohio congressman embodied progressive populism long before its current vogue. He ran on single-payer healthcare, free college, and gay marriage as a presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008—years when all those ideas remained decidedly outside the political mainstream. Kucinich was ahead of the curve on opposing the Iraq war and the North American Free Trade Agreement, protecting the environment, and even embracing veganism. For all his idiosyncrasies—he claimed in a nationally televised debate that he’d seen a UFO, and proposed an official Department of Peace—his liberal peers were fond of him. “At the end of the day, we’re really going to miss Dennis. Dennis is a transformative leader,” Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, now the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, told Politico before Kucinich left Congress in 2013. “He stood up and spoke eloquently, passionately about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran. He was a consistent voice for peace.”

Yet in one of the many strange subplots of today’s political drama, the proudly progressive Kucinich has not been a consistent voice against President Donald Trump this past year. As a Fox News contributor, he repeatedly aligned himself with the president. Now, as Kucinich attempts a political comeback and officially announces his run for governor of Ohio on Wednesday, he’s centering outreach to Trump’s constituency. “The one thing I can do,” he told Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning, “that I don’t know if there is another Democrat in Ohio who could run for office and do, is that I can reach out to the people who voted for President Trump. I can show them that there are Democrats who stand solidly for economic progress, who want to protect our markets, who want to stand up for everyday Americans. So, you know, to me, that’s my constituency, too. And I’m reaching out, and I’m not going to leave anyone out of picture.”

It’s one thing for Kucinich to reach out to Trump voters in a state the president won handily in 2016. But given Kucinich’s record over the past year, national progressive groups are questioning his credibility with Democratic voters. The man Politico once dubbed the “lovable loser of the left” is at risk of seeming simultaneously too liberal for many Ohio voters and insufficiently anti-Trump for others.

“Dennis Kucinich may have previously enjoyed some progressive cred for his anti-war stance during his quixotic presidential bids, but his pro-Trump stances over the past year cast real doubt on his qualifications as a Democratic candidate,” said Carolyn Fiddler, the political editor at the liberal blog Daily Kos. “Progressive Democratic candidates are stepping forward to run in record numbers for offices at every level of the ballot, and if Kucinich thinks that leaves room for a Trump apologist, he hasn’t been paying attention.”

Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy for America, was more blunt: “Frankly, many of the things he has said over the past year will be profoundly disturbing to progressives.”