Republican civil war: Loren Culp lashes out at Kim Wyman and J.T. Wilcox after big loss

Polit­i­cal jour­nal­ists at the nation­al lev­el have spent a good por­tion of the last few weeks chron­i­cling how frac­tured the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty sup­pos­ed­ly is. But as Jim Brun­ner’s report­ing reminds us today, the Repub­li­can Par­ty has some pret­ty seri­ous divi­sions of its own, includ­ing here in the Pacif­ic Northwest.

Loren Culp lost Washington’s guber­na­to­r­i­al race by more than 545,000 votes, but he’s not con­ced­ing — and says he’s not going away.

Culp, the Repub­li­can who took 43% of the statewide vote against Gov. Jay Inslee, has tak­en a page from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s play­book by attempt­ing to sow doubts about the elec­tion results and lob­bing unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims of vot­er fraud.

In recent days, he and his cam­paign man­ag­er, Chris Ger­gen, also have turned their anger on top Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­cans, includ­ing Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman and state House Minor­i­ty Leader J.T. Wilcox.

Culp does not need to con­cede for Jay Inslee to begin a third term, as con­ces­sions don’t have any legal sig­nif­i­cance. But in a coun­try and state with free and fair elec­tions, con­ces­sions are a noble tra­di­tion that have served us well. It is cus­tom­ary, in a con­ces­sion, for the los­ing can­di­date to acknowl­edge defeat and wish the win­ner well. Occa­sion­al­ly, los­ing can­di­dates will offer to help the win­ning can­di­date with their tran­si­tion into office, espe­cial­ly if they cur­rent­ly hold it.

Culp has no inter­est in uphold­ing such tra­di­tions. He expect­ed to win, even though all the polling showed that he would­n’t (includ­ing ours). Hav­ing nev­er led in a sin­gle vote count, or been any­where close to a lead, he has been angri­ly alleg­ing, with­out a shred of evi­dence, that the elec­tion was rigged and improper.

Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman — who did pre­vail in her reelec­tion cam­paign over NPI’s Gael Tar­leton — has con­tin­u­al­ly asked Culp’s camp to pro­duce evi­dence of the “irreg­u­lar­i­ties” they keep say­ing exist, or else shut up, but Culp and his peo­ple have done nei­ther. Like the Trump fam­i­ly and its enablers, they’d rather just mak­ing sweep­ing alle­ga­tions in the court of pub­lic opin­ion, where no proof is required to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, unlike in a court of law.

Angry that Wyman is not sid­ing with them, Culp’s peo­ple have lashed out at her and her staff, accus­ing her of treach­ery to the Repub­li­can Par­ty, which is real­ly now the Trump Par­ty. Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Chair Caleb Heim­lich has not sur­pris­ing­ly tak­en Wyman’s side, call­ing her “a nation­al­ly respect­ed elec­tions admin­is­tra­tor who pri­or­i­tizes the fair­ness and secu­ri­ty of our elections.”

Culp’s cam­paign man­ag­er has also vowed vengeance against State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive J.T. Wilcox, the leader of the House Repub­li­can caucus.

“I will make sure you are unseat­ed, because you want­ed to run your mouth in front of the cau­cus and throw my guy under the bus. It’s a debt you’ve cre­at­ed and it’s a debt you are going to pay,” Ger­gen said in a video post­ed to Facebook.

Wilcox rep­re­sents a safe Repub­li­can dis­trict, is well liked by his col­leagues (he was reelect­ed with­out oppo­si­tion to his cau­cus lead­er­ship posi­tion this week), and is respect­ed across the polit­i­cal spec­trum as some­one who believes in dia­logue and look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to coop­er­ate on issues. He isn’t going anywhere.

It is Ger­gen who is run­ning his mouth. Repeatedly.

But there’s a rea­son for that.

Culp and Ger­gen know they’ll get a sym­pa­thet­ic hear­ing on right wing talk radio and that their unfound­ed claims will be duti­ful­ly picked up by media out­lets com­mit­ted to objec­tiv­i­ty. Fol­low­ing in Trump’s bad exam­ple, they are spread­ing poi­son as fast and as furi­ous­ly as they can, out of the belief that attack­ing democ­ra­cy itself is good pol­i­tics that will ben­e­fit them now and down the road.

Our cur­rent objec­tive report­ing mod­el (tell both sides of the sto­ry and let the read­ers draw their own con­clu­sions) does not serve democ­ra­cy well against foes like Loren Culp, Tim Eyman, or Don­ald Trump. Espe­cial­ly in the polar­ized, hyper­con­nect­ed envi­ron­ment we are in. Bad actors know that objec­tive media can be manip­u­lat­ed to serve their pur­pos­es, legit­imiz­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion. Culp wins — and democ­ra­cy los­es — just by hav­ing his posi­tion tak­en seri­ous­ly and report­ed upon by news organizations.

Loren Culp’s alle­ga­tions and state­ments are ludi­crous. If they are to be dis­cussed at all, then it should be a con­text where they are com­ment­ed upon as being ludi­crous — includ­ing by the per­son doing the writ­ing, as I’m doing with this post.

All of the pub­lic opin­ion research con­duct­ed before the elec­tion sug­gest­ed Jay Inslee would win big, and that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. We had a well run elec­tion in which more than eight out every ten reg­is­tered vot­ers participated.

None of Culp’s sup­port­ers have demon­strat­ed that any “nonci­t­i­zens” vot­ed, or that any­one vot­ed twice. Nev­er­the­less, they are ask­ing peo­ple to donate mon­ey so that the imag­i­nary “irreg­u­lar­i­ties” they say exist can be investigated.

This sounds to me like a Tim Eyman style gam­bit to keep their cam­paign run­ning well into the future, as some kind of con­tin­u­ing polit­i­cal com­mit­tee. I doubt any of the mon­ey donat­ed will actu­al­ly be used for the stat­ed purpose.

But Ger­gen and Culp will per­son­al­ly benefit.

Eyman, who is cur­rent­ly on tri­al for seri­ous pub­lic dis­clo­sure law vio­la­tions, has made prey­ing on the gullible a career. Loren Culp’s occu­pa­tion before run­ning for gov­er­nor was police offi­cer, but now that the town of Repub­lic has elim­i­nat­ed his job due to wors­en­ing finances, it looks like Culp could be fol­low­ing in Eyman’s foot­steps, and becom­ing a full time right wing agi­ta­tor and provocateur.