The kremlins not gonna be happy about this, hopefully Stien is enough of a spoiler on her own but i think they aimed to take votes from different demographics and with west trailing stien has been trying to win over more uninformed black voters and getting clowned in the attempt.
Pixel is the best option, you dont need root these days for anything good, you can still root if you really want to but it defeats a lot of security that you’d otherwise have and for what gain?
I don’t think any other phones would have a larger modding scene then Pixels either.