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.