NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, November 4th, 2022

Clyde Shavers responds to father’s letter charging that he embellished his resume

For sev­er­al days now, the Trump-wor­ship­ing Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and its oper­a­tives have been glee­ful­ly try­ing to spread the word that Demo­c­ra­t­ic State House hope­ful Clyde Shavers got rebuked by his own fam­i­ly for embell­ish­ing his back­ground as a can­di­date — some­thing that we know would be brushed aside in an instant and ignored were Shavers an ultra MAGA Republican.

The late home­stretch cam­paign dra­ma began when Clyde’s father Brett Shavers wrote a let­ter to his son’s oppo­nent Greg Gil­day alleg­ing Clyde was mis­rep­re­sent­ing his pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al background.

Gil­day, who was bare­ly edged by Shavers in the Top Two elec­tion, was delight­ed, and imme­di­ate­ly sought to bring the let­ter to the atten­tion of the mass media.

The younger Shavers has point­ed out that his father is a Trump-fol­low­ing Repub­li­can who trav­eled to our nation’s cap­i­tal on Jan­u­ary 6th for the Trump-incit­ed insur­rec­tion. While that may be true, his father would have no grounds for try­ing to under­mine his son’s can­di­da­cy if Clyde Shavers had made sure to cor­rect­ly describe his expe­ri­ence and qual­i­fi­ca­tions in cam­paign materials.

It was Clyde Shavers who chose to file a per­son­al finan­cial dis­clo­sure form list­ing him­self as an attor­ney, when he has not passed the Wash­ing­ton State Bar exam. It was also Clyde Shavers’ deci­sion to say that he had served as a nuclear sub­ma­rine offi­cer in pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, when in fact he had served our coun­try in the Navy as a pub­lic affairs offi­cer and not as a submariner.

What is on Shavers’ resume is impres­sive. He served his coun­try hon­or­ably as a Navy offi­cer and worked for the Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil as an envi­ron­men­tal lawyer. His per­son­al sto­ry reflects the life of an active and engaged indi­vid­ual who is com­mit­ted to pub­lic ser­vice. It need­ed no embellishment.

Clyde Shavers is learn­ing a tough les­son: out­side of MAG­A­world, there is lit­tle tol­er­ance for resume embell­ish­ment. Vot­ers, jour­nal­ists, vol­un­teers, and donors right­ly expect can­di­dates to be hon­est and forth­right in their campaigns.

Sad­ly, in MAG­A­world, embell­ish­ment isn’t even con­sid­ered a minor offense. In MAG­A­world, out­right lying and dis­tort­ing is not only tol­er­at­ed, it’s encouraged.

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, which has hard­ly let a minute go by with­out say­ing some­thing about Brett Shavers’ let­ter, has not only stood by ex-Liar-in-Chief Don­ald Trump through every­thing (includ­ing the insur­rec­tion), but is present­ly pro­mot­ing extreme can­di­dates like Joe Kent who are spin­ning total fab­ri­ca­tions on a dai­ly basis. Kent was recent­ly caught in a tan­gled web of lies about his own employ­ment. Pre­dictably, Repub­li­cans have not crit­i­cized him.

Nor have Repub­li­cans shown the slight­est hes­i­ta­tion in embrac­ing Jesse Young, a can­di­date who has a record of abu­sive behav­ior and isn’t qual­i­fied to hold office.

Tim Eyman, Glen Mor­gan, and oth­er grifters active in right wing Repub­li­can pol­i­tics have also notably not been repu­di­at­ed by the WSRP or its agents.

It is impor­tant that can­di­dates use accu­rate lan­guage and ter­mi­nol­o­gy to describe them­selves in their mate­ri­als, whether those be required pub­lic dis­clo­sure forms, cam­paign mail­ers, web­sites, or voter’s pam­phlet statements.

If a can­di­date can­not be truth­ful about their own back­ground, then how can vot­ers trust them to serve with integri­ty in a posi­tion of pub­lic responsibility?

Shavers is already pay­ing for his mis­takes: The Her­ald of Everett with­drew its endorse­ment of him and he’s been sub­ject­ed to neg­a­tive news cov­er­age in numer­ous media out­lets. Whether or not his unforced error costs Democ­rats a flip­pable seat remains to be seen, but that is cer­tain­ly a strong possibility.

Shavers has writ­ten a let­ter to his sup­port­ers and the pub­lic explain­ing what hap­pened and respond­ing to his father’s let­ter, which is avail­able here.

“I would like to apol­o­gize to any sup­port­er who felt mis­led by any state­ment I have made regard­ing my ser­vice record – this was nev­er my inten­tion,” the let­ter’s clos­ing para­graph states. It was good that Shavers took own­er­ship of his mis­takes. He’d now be wise to review all cam­paign mate­ri­als to ensure that they use accu­rate terms to describe his back­ground and cor­rect any that don’t.

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  1. […] seemed head­ed for vic­to­ry last month too. But his prospects took a hit when Gil­day’s cam­paign pub­lished a let­ter from Shavers’ fat… alleg­ing that he embell­ished his resume. Despite Repub­li­can attempts to exploit the […]

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