One of the minds behind the legendary music of Halo fell short in his mission to pivot to politics. Marty O’Donnell, formerly a composer and audio director for Bungie, lost his bid to join the U.S. House of Representatives by a wide margin.
With 86% of votes counted, AP News called the race in Nevada’s 3rd congressional district for incumbent Representative Susie Lee, a Democrat. O’Donnell ran as a Republican and had the endorsement of President Donald Trump. The current count has O’Donnell with 38.6% of the vote, trailing Lee’s 59.1%. Nevada’s 3rd district includes much of Clark County and part of Las Vegas.
Lee, who has held her seat since 2019, has been a target of Republicans in previous election cycles. As it became clear early Wednesday morning that Lee was favored to win re-election, her social media account posted the famous “Halo theme song performed by 80 guys in 1 bathroom” video to mock O’Donnell. O’Donnell responded by saying in a post: “Susie has a lot of class. And it’s all low.”
O’Donnell heavily leaned on his video game industry background, hosting a campaign event that doubled as a celebration of early Halo games. At the event, O’Donnell declared that “gamers are not woke” and insisted that games, movies, and comics were “co-opted by left-wing politics.”
As Lee’s social media video hints at, this wasn’t O’Donnell’s first attempt at entering national politics. O’Donnell ran for the same congressional seat in 2024, placing fourth in the Republican primary. He won the Republican nomination in 2026 with the backing of Trump.
O’Donnell began his career in video game music composition as a freelancer, producing the music for Bungie’s Myth and Myth 2. He joined Bungie as a full-time employee starting with 2001’s Oni and went on to compose music for all of Bungie’s Halo titles and the first Destiny game. O’Donnell was fired from Bungie in 2014; the composer claimed that he was terminated “without cause” and pursued legal action against the company afterward. According to his campaign website, O’Donnell is now retired from the game industry.
