Not that they asked us, but for the past several years The Columbian has offered some sound advice for elected officials: Don’t Do Stupid Stuff. It’s a pretty good philosophy, one articulated often by editor emeritus Lou Brancaccio, and it rings as true today as when Brancaccio adopted it as a mantra.
Before the 2019 legislative session gets too far behind us, we would be remiss to not point out some Stupid Stuff that occurred or came to light during the final weeks of the session.
Leading the way is Rep. Matt Shea, R-Spokane Valley. Shea was revealed to have been part of a 2017 group chat through a messaging app, using an alias, in which participants advocated violence and intimidation against left-wing activists; some of the comments recommended extreme violence using graphic language. The participant identified as Shea did not advocate violence but also did not condemn it; he also offered to assist in spying on people the group considered to be political enemies.
Shea responded to the revelation by criticizing the report as a “hit-piece” and writing, “I will not back down. I will not quit. I will not give in. Ever.”
Shea is no stranger to controversy or to being associated with far-right ideology. Last fall, it was revealed that he has distributed a manifesto under the headline “Biblical Basis for War.” The document includes opinions such as: “God is a Warrior”; “War is a fact of life”; “Make an offer of Peace before declaring war” and then “If they do not yield — kill all males”; “Assassination to remove tyrants is just, not murder”; and “Freedom is in Jesus Christ. Where the Spirit of God is, there is Liberty.” As Columbian columnist Greg Jayne wrote: “Basically, it is Sharia law with a Christian bent.”
The people of Washington’s 4th Legislative District, which runs from east of Spokane to the Idaho border, have elected Shea six times to represent them; that is their right. But other Republicans in the Legislature must recognize that we all are judged, in part, by the company we keep and must censure Shea. He should be kicked out of the Republican Caucus and be isolated to limit his influence on his party and the legislative process.
While Shea’s actions are more extreme than those of other lawmakers, they are not the only ones to qualify as Stupid Stuff in recent weeks.
In a floor debate about making legislators’ required financial records easier to access, Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlach, told a story about an unnamed elected official whose wife, a Hispanic woman, was supposedly kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico. The story might or might not have influenced the vote, in which senators banned their personal information from being posted online; but it definitely was false.
In truth, according to Crosscut, the incident happened to the relative of a friend of an elected official and had nothing to do with any politician’s disclosure form.
Then there was another floor debate in which Sen. Maureen Walsh, R-College Place, argued that nurses should be exempt from required meal breaks and mandatory overtime protection because they “probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day.” That did not sit well with nurses or with many other people, and Walsh’s office received about 1,700 decks of cards amid the ensuing outrage. She has since apologized for the remark.
In truth, politicians are no more prone to doing Stupid Stuff than the rest of us; they just do it in the public eye. And when they do, it remains incumbent upon the media and the public to hold them accountable.
