By Seth Grossman, Esq.
Last month, national GOP leaders did to Ted Howze what they did to me. Ted Howze is a smart, articulate, veterinarian from Modesto, California. He ran for Congress as a Republican and won the Primary last March. He has an excellent chance of defeating the freshman Democrat in November.
Last month, GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy publicly withdrew his support for Houze. He and other GOP leaders including the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) repeated Democrat lies calling Howze a bigot. They also found a handful Facebook comments he had posted over the years as “disturbing”.
This what these GOP leaders did to me when I ran for Congress in 2018. This is why Republicans got clobbered that year, and let Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats take back control of the House.
For years, I gave my honest opinions on issues that matter most on talk-radio, letters to the editor, and social media. I often changed my opinions on important issues after learning new facts or hearing better arguments from others.
Ben Franklin recognized the importance of this 300 years ago. He said that when people with different views have honest conversations, “sparks of truth fly out and political light is obtained”. When Americans did that, we were smart, and admired around the world for our “Yankee Ingenuity”.
Early in my campaign, I was videotaped at a debate for truthfully saying that people should be hired and promoted based on talent, achievement, and work, and not on how many “diversity” boxes they could check off.
In 2015, I openly condemned the many murders committed in the name of Islam against non-believers. That included the kosher deli and Bataclan Theater in France, and refugee boats leaving Africa. What angered me most was when a moderate Muslim shopkeeper in Scotland was condemned by a religious court, and executed for wishing his non-Muslim friends “Happy Easter”. That prompted me to post that “Islam is a cancer”. Perhaps my words were “offensive”. However, I believe saying nothing about those atrocities was far more offensive.
During the Ebola epidemic, I said it was important to quarantine visitors from infected countries to keep us safe. I said that thousands died needlessly during the AIDS epidemic when we put HIPAA patient privacy “rights” of those who were infected above the need of healthy people to protect themselves.
When police around America were being murdered in 2014 because of the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” lie, I shared a Facebook post from Allen West. The beginning of the post describing the culture of hate and violence among too many young black men in our inner cities. However, both Allen West and I both made the mistake of not noticing passages buried in the article that made racist generalizations about all blacks. We both apologized when we learned of them.
When Democrats published those comments after I won the Primary Election in 2018, Republican state and national leaders repeated Democrat claims that these comments proved I was a bigot. They publicly withdrew all support for my campaign.
Yet I almost won without them. I got 116,000 votes or 46% of the vote against an experienced and well-known State Senator. I did raised only $300,000 and was outspent 8 to 1. I did better than other GOP candidates backed by national leaders.
Republican leaders need to learn that if they want to win elections, they need candidates who speak openly and honestly about the issues that matter most to voters.
They need to remember that politics, like all contact sports, requires skills that can only be learned through practice. And that means making mistakes.
Democrats understand this. Democrats stay loyal to their candidates who make far worse mistakes. That is why they end up with smarter and tougher candidates.
Meanwhile, Republicans stupidly cut their best players for making rookie mistakes when they were rookies!
The best way GOP leaders can learn and get smarter is for good candidates like Ted Howze win without them.
