The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
When a man allegedly attacked a Seattle nurse in early March, knocking her down the stairs of a light-rail station for no apparent reason, breaking her ribs and clavicle, many people were shocked.
When it was revealed the 40-year-old homeless man has an extensive criminal record, as well as a history of not showing up to court, and may have stabbed another woman multiple times the previous day, many were outraged.
The man, who was arrested shortly after the attack at the station, was arraigned on multiple assault charges and held on a $650,000 bond. But that didn’t stop the discussion of what steps should have been taken to prevent a person with such a long criminal history from being out in public where he could commit more.
Loren Culp, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate now seeking to unseat U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse in Washington’s 4th Congressional District, offered a solution that set off a back-and-forth between him and the Seattle Times.
“Get a rope,” he tweeted about 10 days after the arrest, “not only for the low life scumbag who did this but for the worthless judges and prosecutors who continually let this happen by turning violent criminals back out only to make new victims. No rope, firing squad and I’ll volunteer for it.”
This prompted Times columnist Danny Westneat to wonder about the silence from others in the state Republican Party about Culp calling for a lynching, not only of the suspect in the assaults but judges and prosecutors.
While the state GOP remained mostly mum, Culp later posted a long rebuttal, of sorts, on a notice of an upcoming campaign meet-and-greet in Grant County. He argued the phrase “Get a rope” was merely a metaphor that doesn’t mean vigilante justice — “which was clear to anyone with an IQ above room temperature,” he contended — “and means accountability (due process and jail time) for the violent offenders, the prosecutors who enable them and the judges who set them free.”
There are three problems with his explanation.
First, it’s not strictly a metaphor, as a simple declarative sentence where there’s no comparison of two seemingly different objects. If he intended it as a figure of speech, it is perhaps more correctly a hyperbole expressed as an exclamation. But this is politics, not English class.
Second, it is much more likely to be understood by anyone reading the tweet in the historic context of a call for vigilante justice as in an Old West hanging, or the racial injustice of a Jim Crow lynching.
Paul Stekler, a documentarian and professor of public affairs and radio-television-film at the University of Texas, said there’s only one clear meaning of the phrase.
“You’re essentially making a comment that is about a hanging,” said Stekler, who wrote about the phrase and its context after a pair of Texas politicians, including Gov. Greg Abbott, used it then tried to pass it off as a mere joke related to an old commercial for a brand of salsa.
The third thing that undercuts Culp’s suggestion that he was just calling for accountability, not an execution, is the end of his original tweet. Firing squads aren’t a metaphor for anything, and they definitely mean more than “due process and jail time” when applied to judges and prosecutors, as the former police chief might be expected to know.
Culp finds himself in a hotly contested primary for the congressional seat, one of five Republicans trying to unseat the incumbent. Based on the most recent Federal Election Commission reports filed at the end of last year, he’s running third in fundraising, behind Newhouse and newcomer Jerrod Sessler.
Even if the funding disparity continues, Culp has one thing that might be more valuable: Donald Trump’s endorsement. His “get a rope” comment is unlikely to hurt him with the segment of the former president’s voters who applauded when Trump called on a crowd to “knock the crap” out of hecklers.
The real question is, will it hurt him with other Republicans whose belief in law and order has evolved beyond a rope and a tree limb?
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