The Shea Exposé

Dear Group,

On October 26, twelve days before the November election deadline, an article by Chad Sokol was published in the Spokesman. It was entitled “Rep. Matt Shea takes credit, criticism for document titled ‘Biblical Basis for War.’” Mr. Sokol followed this with several articles detailing corporate sponsors who wanted their money back from the Shea campaign.

How did this article take shape? How did Chad Sokol come upon Shea’s manifesto? It did not happen in a vacuum. The leads came from local people. With Mr. Sokol’s writing the story spread. There are lessons here.

Some credit is due Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich. For years he has gotten local media attention over his running feud with Matt Shea over Shea’s ties to white supremacists and far right “Christian” groups. Sheriff Knezovich has never shied away from the threat he feels the Matt Shea wing of the local Republican Party represents [from The Inlander on August 2]:

“I’ve grown tired of the media going, ‘Oh, this is just a fight between Matt [Shea] and Ozzie,” Knezovich says. “No. This is a fight between this ideology. This ideology is dangerous, and if we do not address it, it will eventually hurt this community and this nation.”

But it wasn’t Ozzie who acquired and brought attention to Shea’s now infamous manifesto. It was a young man with a long goatee named Tanner Rowe of Nine Mile Falls. Rowe was mentioned as the source in Chad Sokol’s article in the Spokesman on October 26 I referred to above. Tanner Rowe posted Shea’s “Biblical Basis for War” in a video on Facebook three days earlier. Facebook posts are frustratingly ephemeral. At this writing one can still see Mr. Rowe’s post by visiting his page (here) and scrolling way down to October 23. Based on his other Facebook posts, Tanner Rowe appears to be right of center himself. Nonetheless, in his video Mr. Rowe presents his disgust with Shea’s theocratic bent. Rowe likes the idea of a 51st State, but he’s very leery of theocracy under a man like Shea. (That said, I wonder for whom Mr. Rowe would have voted if he lived in the 4th District, Shea, Cummings, or “none of the above”?)

What prompted Chad Sokol to write his Spokesman article on Matt Shea October 26? He had written an article critical of Shea and mildly complementary or Cummings on October 8th. How did Mr. Sokol become aware of Tanner Rowe’s Facebook post of Shea’s manifesto? Was Mr. Sokol monitoring Facebook or did someone bring Rowe’s Facebook video to his attention? Or was he further tuned to Shea’s extremism after reading an article in Rolling Stone on October 23, the same day as Rowe’s post? That article, “Something’s Brewing in the Deep Red West” was written by Leah Sotille, an excellent Portland-based freelance writer who once covered Spokane’s music scene for The Inlander. Does Chad Sokol know Leah Settle and/or follow her writing? [BTW, check out Ms. Sottile’s other writing at Rolling Stone. It’s well researched and exemplary.]

From Mr. Sokol’s October 26th article on Shea’s “Biblical Basis for War” the story catapulted to the national media scene. It was covered by Rachel Maddow, the Associated Press (AP)Newsweek, the New York Daily News, and U.S. News and World Report. The story rattled around the internet for a few days, no doubt buffing up readers’ memories of the Inland Northwest hosting the odious Aryan Nations for several decades in the recent past.

Several contributors to Shea’s campaign funds, presumably embarrassed by the national media coverage made local news by withdrawing their support. (More about that in a later post.) Matt Shea did not lose the election but he lost some votes and his infamy is growing. His time will come…

The larger point is this material doesn’t appear out of thin air. Writers and broadcasters in the local and national media need leads. Leads are provided by local observers, by email, telephone, and through personal relationships. I cannot connect every one of the dots in this story, but I am aware the the leap from a local Spokesman article to Rachel Maddow and Associated Press was aided by local people who were paying attention and passing the story along.

Get to know your local media people. Interact. Send them ideas and stories. They cannot possibly keep tabs on everything by themselves. Like us, they depend on human interaction for the material with which they work…and without their work (and ours) we have no democracy.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. With a brief nod to the AP article, even Fox News mentioned Shea’s manifesto on November 1. But with the exception of that article, stories covering the “Biblical Basis for War” are notably absent from the right wing media silo. Searching two of my favorites, Brietbart and the Daily Caller, draws “No Results.” They appear thoroughly immunized against criticism of their own kind. 

“Politics is War for Power”-Newt

Dear Group,

In the November 2018 Issue of The Atlantic is an article entitled: The Man Who Broke Politics; Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise. Now he’s reveling in his achievements. I encourage you to read it.

Gingrich was elected to Congress for the first time from the 6th Congressional District of the State of Georgia in 1978, after unsuccessful runs for the same seat in 1974 and 1976. Before Gingrich’s success  in 1978, the incumbent Democrat, Jack Flynt, decided to retire. Gingrich beat the Democratic candidate for Flynt’s seat, Virginia Shapard, by 7500 votes. 

From the Atlantic article: 

During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.

The Gingrich story intersects with the story of eastern Washington, specifically, Congressional District 5. In 1994 Tom Foley was both the WA CD5 Representative to Congress and the Speaker of the House. In November of that year George Nethercutt beat Foley at the ballot box by a tiny margin, ending much of eastern Washington’s influence on the national stage. In that election Republicans acquired the majority of seats in the House for the first time since 1954. Newt Gingrich was instrumental in this takeover with his in-your-face tactics. As part of the strategy Gingrich and Dick Armey wrote and popularized the Contract with America,” a document that helped focus the 1994 election on a national Republican agenda and minimize regional and local issues. Newt became Speaker of the House partly because of his militant bluster and Republican’s electoral success. In 1994, Gingrich was only fifty-one years old. 

After stamping his brand of pugilistic politics on the Republican Party in the 1994 election, Gingrich lasted in Congress, and as Speaker, only four years. In late 1998, after the Republicans lost five House seats (the worst showing in 64 years for a Party not holding the Presidency) and facing a rebellious Republican Caucus, Gingrich resigned the Speakership and announced he would resign his House seat, less than a month into the term for which he had just been re-electied. In an interview after his resignation he said, “I’m willing to lead but I’m not willing to preside over people who are cannibals. My only fear would be that if I tried to stay, it would just overshadow whoever my successor is. Frankly, Marianne and I could use a break.” [Marianne was the second of three wives.]

Gingrich hasn’t held an elected public office since January 1999, but his name re-appears frequently in Republican politics. He appears on Fox News as a commentator. At age 75 he is enjoying the good life in Rome, while his third wife, Callista, serves as ambassador to the Vatican, courtesy of Trump’s nomination and the Republican Senate’s approval. Gingrich keeps sending me emails praising Trump and fundraising for him.. He lives in style on money he makes giving speeches, and revels in the form of militarized politics with which he has afflicted the nation.

Gingrich started out in Congress in January 1979, age 35. He was already an assistant professor of history. He was already a man with high aspirations and an inflated opinion of himself and of his place in history. To me he is an example of intelligence gone awry. He and his brand of politics rank right up there with Mitch McConnell and Steve Bannon.

Fix Gingrich in your understanding of U.S. political history. I strongly recommend reading both the Atlantic article and the Gingrich article in wikipedia

Contrast the lasting influence of a Newt Gingrich to that of our Representative McMorris Rodgers. She rode in on George Nethercutt’s coattails in 2004 with hardly a fight, no three attempts for her. Her supposed expertise is in communicating the national Republican message, not shaping it, and, now, post election, even her pretense of leadership as chairwoman of the Republican caucus is gone.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Gingrich, as revealed in the Atlantic article, is fascinated by dinosaurs and with his Darwinian concept of struggle in the natural (and political) world. It is no stretch to assume that Gingrich understands and appreciates the science around geologic time and biological evolution. Nonetheless,from Wikipedia: “As Speaker, Gingrich sought to increasingly tie Christian conservatism to the Republican Party. According to a 2018 study, Christian conservatism had become firmly ingrained in the Republican Party’s policy platforms by 2000.” Note the irony of his courting a segment of the voting public many of whom strongly reject concepts central to Newt’s understanding of the world. Politics makes odd bedfellows…

* Many of the policy ideas in the Contract with America originated at the Heritage Foundation, an institution heavily supported by funds from the Koch donor group of libertarian leaning business people and one of the first institutions to pop up in response to the Powell Memorandum.