From Emily Nohr at the Daily Nonpareil:
A Libertarian candidate who has filed for election to fill the Iowa Senate seat vacated by Joni Ernst is facing a sexual assault charge in Sarpy County, Neb.
Don Brantz, 69, has been charged with third-degree sexual assault, third-degree assault, disturbing the peace and interfering with a public service company. The charges are misdemeanors.
According to the complaint filed last month in Sarpy County Court, the charges stem from an incident on Oct. 10 near 36th and Emiline streets in Bellevue.
Deputy Sarpy County Attorney Alyson Roudebush said Brantz is accused of inappropriately touching an adult victim and threatening to choke her. When the victim called 911, Roudebush said, Brantz disconnected the phone line.
Brantz has pleaded not guilty.
Read the full article here.
Thanks to Nathan J. Hetzel for this news.
The forum software probably doesn’t recognize them.
hmm, I had symbols between “charge” and Smoking, and “technicality” and “mass” to indicate a range. Not sure why it didn’t take….
JK, another way to think of the decision matrix:
a) Obviously trumped charge Smoking gun evidence made public
b) Minor infraction or technicality Mass murder
Stuff way to the left would probably not indicate repudiation. Stuff way to the right probably would.
A person is entitled to an opinion, and that opinion is going to play into his opinion on other questions, such as whether or not the charges are likely to hurt the party. I disagree with your position.
jk: Are you seriously trying to claim that the party should not consider, at all, whether or not they believe the charges, before deciding how to proceed?
me: Correct. They SHOULD consider whether the charges hurt the party, but have the wisdom to remain neutral on the specifics of the case. IF it DOES hurt the party, then the party should protect its reputation.
I have no idea what you’re arguing about, or why you think you have a complaint with my criteria. The party is not sending anyone to jail, nor removing anyone from jail. Are you seriously trying to claim that the party should not consider, at all, whether or not they believe the charges, before deciding how to proceed?
“Hopefully the Party can do so without much public jockeying, and simply get the candidate to quietly withdraw if the situation is damaging.”
That is the best case; however, this is often challenging considering they can’t be removed if the ballots have already been printed and that news stories do a good deal of their damage very quick. I wasn’t aware of this assault charge until a reporter called me about it and within an hour it was in the newspaper, and within 6 hours on every television station in the metro for the 6:00 p.m. news.
more….
And then there’s the possibility that Ls don’t support the law that a candidate is alleged to have broken. Say, for ex., drug or prostitution laws. Or, for some Ls, NAMBLA-type situations.
jk: if “did it” were not preceded by “we think.”
me: Hard to ever avoid epistemology. All beliefs are thoughts. Did Oswald do it, or was he a patsy?
I personally have no idea if the candidate in this case “did it” or “did not do it.” I think you are trying to be fair, to not repudiate an obviously falsely accused candidate.
I agree with P that it’s a balancing act. If the charges are hurting the Party, the Party needs to protect itself. Hopefully the Party can do so without much public jockeying, and simply get the candidate to quietly withdraw if the situation is damaging.
In my opinion, an affiliate should do due diligence on this kind of thing. An accusation should not immediately mean a denial, but should be considered (if the affiliate is in a state where candidates need their blessing to run as Libertarians.) The questions to be asked are:
1. Do we think this person did it?
2. Will this candidacy hurt the party and our other candidates?
3. What is the benefit to be gained by this candidacy?
I like this criteria, and I generally agree with the comments made by JK and Paulie on this issue.
An accusation can be damaging even if it isn’t true. It’s a balancing act to determine a number of things, including whether you think it’s true and whether you think sticking by that person (regardless of if you think it is true or not) is worth the damage to your reputation and long term prospects. None of these require a conviction.
I don’t think 2 implies credibility. A literally incredible accusation could still be damaging.
“Did it” and “credible” would, in fact, be very different, if “did it” were not preceded by “we think.”
initially, jk said: 1. Do we think this person did it?
at 451, he said: I’m suggesting that one of the things to look at if a candidate or potential candidate is accused of a crime is whether or not the party finds the accusation credible.
me: “did it” and “accusation credible” are quite different, don’t you agree?
jk: 2 Will this candidacy hurt the party and our other candidates?
me: Assumes the accusation is credible. If it’s not explicit enough, then determining whether the accusation is credible is a fine replacement for #1.
These issues need to be looked at case-by-case. It seems to me the crime that someone is charged with should be considered, also. If the charge is for driving without a license, most people could understand that. If it was for sexually abusing a child, though, I don’t think we should take any chances. That could be something that could truly harm the party, true or not.
Exactly. We aren’t the judge and jury, except for who we want to be associated with and in what ways. Just as we have to do that as individuals we have to do it as a party, and legal standards of conviction are a separate issue…an accusation or arrest isn’t necessarily sufficient grounds to disaffiliate, but conviction isn’t necessarily mandatory in order to do so. We have to use our own judgement to some extent, which is a separate matter from legal conviction standards.
It seems to me that Paulie and AC are saying the same thing on convictions, and I agree with both, and understand RC’s point even less after his clarification. I’m not suggesting that the party imprison a person accused of a crime – I’m suggesting that one of the things to look at if a candidate or potential candidate is accused of a crime is whether or not the party finds the accusation credible. I agree it is unwise to have a pitchfork brigade acting with little information, but I don’t see the relationship between that and looking into an accusation before knee-jerk dropping a candidate.
It is true that our then-chair was quite focused on pot. But her story is laughable. She also claims that her position was something like “not now” and that we should have been satisfied with that because…famous?
I agree.
But what if I had an employee that I believed was falsely accused? I may say that I’ll stick by that person because they are getting shafted by the system and I won’t add to the screw job. Or I may decide that they have become a liability to my business, whether guilty or not. I may have little way to gauge guilt or innocence, so it’s a judgement call for an employer – or a political party.
I agree, but the opposite extreme doesn’t strike me as any better.
I don’t think it’s unwise or unjust or somehow violating the presumption-of-innocence for a party to look at a criminal accusation against a candidate and decide that they find it both credible and unacceptable and, on that basis, withdraw their nomination. Presumption of innocence is a legal standard, and an important one, but it doesn’t mean outside individuals and groups have some obligation to wait for a formal verdict before drawing their own conclusion. If you find an employee of yours stealing, you don’t have to wait until they’re convicted in court to fire them.
It’s a judgement call, for sure, but “nothing short of a conviction can even be considered” is a totally unworkable standard.
@Paulie- we haven’t raised any real campaign funds yet, but possibly LPWI could make a small disbursement. I’ll talk to our Chair about it.
@JoshuaKatz- Thanks for the backstory about Ann Coulter’s abortive campaign. That story gets funnier every time I hear it (including when she tells it, her version being that the stupid Libertarians were all hung up on pot legalization and so she went from undecided to opposing legalization out of spite. I never believed that version for a second, but that it’s the narrative she tells herself is seriously amusing.)
We might be willing to nominate a guy who turned his skin blue with too much colloidal silver, but even we have standards…. 😉 :p
She’s sideshow entertainment, and she knows it.
It’s also unwise to let police officers and/or news reporters serve as judge and jury.
If the other defaults offered are either to always believe that anyone arrested must always be presumed guilty and removed from the ticket or unendorsed, or that we can’t take the arrest and evidence of guilt into account at all until the legal system has had a full chance to evaluate it, I think it’s reasonable to offer a judgement of sorts from the LP state or local leadership in determining whether to continue to associate with a candidate who stands accused of something as an alternative. But only to gauge political association – I wouldn’t be comfortable in suggesting that is the standard to use in determining whether someone should be imprisoned, and no one here has suggested that it should be.
I’m glad the LP had nothing to do with Ms. Coulter. I find her to be one of the most unpleasant people to walk this planet.
JK, because it’s unwise for onlookers with little information to serve as judge and jury. Such is the stuff of Pitchfork Brigades.
Why is Q1 dangerous? It seems that, while we don’t want to hurt our brand, we also don’t want a partisan of another party to get us to abandon our candidates by swearing out an accusation, particularly in places where there are no laws to protect against false reports. Or, for that matter, honeypotting if we have a particularly credible candidate in an upticket race.
I agree that Q1 should not be decisive – just because the answer is no does not mean we should immediately drop the candidate, that’s why there’s 2 other questions, but it seems rather relevant to me. (Also, just because the answer is yes won’t always mean dropping the candidate if we’re looking at a victimless crime that can be used in the campaign.)
If it’s dangerous because we don’t have all the evidence, remember that we’re deciding whether or not to endorse a candidate, not deciding a criminal verdict.
Strikes me that Q1 is quite dangerous. Q2 and 3 seem more than sufficient.
Sounds like a reasonable set of standards in such cases.
Do you have any money? I am not really interested in working right now – health issues, etc. – but I could probably find you someone if you can pay for a few hundred signatures.
I’m still waiting for her to come to my house & try to drown me.
LOL. Thanks for the laugh. BTW, whether she knows her own address or not depends on how hard she has been partying on any given night, if the rumors I have heard from people I have known who know her are to be believed.
>Why not? Shunning someone simply because they were falsely accused is a blatant example >of blaming the victim.
In my opinion, an affiliate should do due diligence on this kind of thing. An accusation should not immediately mean a denial, but should be considered (if the affiliate is in a state where candidates need their blessing to run as Libertarians.) The questions to be asked are:
1. Do we think this person did it?
2. Will this candidacy hurt the party and our other candidates?
3. What is the benefit to be gained by this candidacy?
We should not blindly allow an accusation sworn out at a police office to disqualify a candidate. Marion Barry won from a jail, and I believe there’s an article elsewhere here about a Congressman running as an independent from a jail cell. We also shouldn’t blind ourselves to the public perception of our actions if we want to be viable as a party.
There are plenty of times when a candidate should be turned down, including those without criminal charges pending. We turned down one candidate because of his timing – he presented himself one week before the endorsement deadline, with completed petitions in hand (and certified), never having spoken to the party prior. We didn’t have time to decide if this person should be our candidate or not, so we didn’t run him. Also, I didn’t like that he told me, directly, that he thought he could get on the ballot simply by petitioning and then was told, when he turned in his petitions, that he needed the endorsement of the party in whose name he was running – in other words, he fully intended to simply put himself on the ballot in our name without talking to us.
Thanks for mentioned Ann Coulter above. In retrospect, maybe we should have run her – she probably would have voted for herself, and presumably knows her own address, so…
Just so people know the story – yes, libertarian ‘purism’ was a part of it, but it wasn’t the whole story. She waltzed in as if she already had the nomination, which pisses people off regardless of philosophy. She tried to avoid vetting by the SCC, which, at the time, vetted candidates in petitioning races (in other races we have a convention as per state law.) She tried to avoid answering questions, and when she did answer, showed distinctive antipathy to the libertarian viewpoint – most of her criticisms of the Republican party, when asked why she was switching parties, had to do with not being socially conservative enough or warlike enough. (Nor is she unique in this – I used to deliver pizzas – shades of Sean Haugh – and so spent a lot of time in the car. I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh say he was considering become a Libertarian because he was tired of the Bush administration not pushing the war hard enough, not sending enough troops, not arguing persuasively enough for the war…) She gave no indication of any intention of staying with the party after the race, which is something everyone is pretty much expected to at least say – I asked that question to Gravel and he assured me he was Libertarian for life. (So far as I know, he hasn’t actually gone back to the Democrats, but he certainly has not been the party activist he told me would be – nor has he even campaigned actively for national initiative and referendum, but I understand he’s had some serious health problems ever since his last race.) So if a person won’t even say it…
Glad to hear all that, and thanks for the info from my fellow Midwestern LP 2014 candidate for Secretary of State. I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on the decisions to nominate him, given the information known at the time. Just making a general observation about the LP and candidates that embarrass the party.
Similar story here in Wisconsin, we broke all-time records in terms of vote total total across all offices (230k), total number of candidates on the ballot (11, incl. full statewide slate) and percentage in a race for partisan office (24% for state senator).
We’re also running a candidate in an upcoming special senate election. We have until January 6- from an announcement date of December 16- to get 400 valid signatures. The timing of that is deliberately obnoxious, and we tried to cite some friendly precedents about reducing thresholds in special elections with shorter gathering periods, to no avail. Going to try to make a serious push to make it, though.
fb.com/Atwood4Senate
(full disclosure: I’m Phil’s campaign manager.)
I should probably clarify a few things:
A December 30 special election with nominating paperwork needing to be in by the 15th with 100 valid signatures and only one executive committee meeting on December 4th doesn’t leave much time for research. Don wanted to run and he had spent much of the summer traveling with us to help us campaign. He walked with us in several parades, went door-to-door, etc. In fact, Don was with Lee (our candidate for Governor), Doug, and I on Doug’s airplane a week before the plane crash to fly to the eastern part of the state to campaign with us. This news of this was not public information until a few days after the nomination paperwork was filed with the Secretary of State’s office.
As for the state party, 2014 was our second most votes in the history of the state party and the highest ever for a Libertarian candidate for Governor and Congress in Iowa. This is also the first time that several county parties have formed. We are doing very well and will continue the fight in 2015.
I would argue that even if he’s not guilty (which I make no judgement on), had the party known about the charges before they probably wouldn’t haven nominated him regardless. At least, I would hope not.
Why not? Shunning someone simply because they were falsely accused is a blatant example of blaming the victim.
Should the LP also sever its ties with Steve Kubby, Jim Duensing, and everyone else who has ever been wrongfully accused of a crime? Or perhaps that standard only applies to old men that you have prejudged to be “rape-y” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean).
Agreed with Andy Craig. We need to be more careful to avoid the embarrassments.
I’m not saying that anybody should run fewer candidates in general, just that sometimes there will be races where somebody (often but not always new to the party) will step forward to run as a Libertarian, and the party will be better off not running that person if they do their due diligence, either for personal or ideological reasons. It’s happened in the past, not saying this is necessarily one of those cases, but it’s something party leadership in each state should always have one eye on. And I would argue that even if he’s not guilty (which I make no judgement on), had the party known about the charges before they probably wouldn’t haven nominated him regardless. At least, I would hope not. Another example I could name, for different reasons, would be LP-CT refused to nominate Ann Coulter for Congress (in 2002, I believe it was), or when an Indiana congressional candidate this year made a big show of leaving the party and dropping out of the race because he was an ill-informed social conservative dissapointed that his fellow Libertarians weren’t. Or when LPKY actually renounced their endorsement of Sonny Landham for Senate in 2008, based on virulently racist remarks he made.
And at no point, can a political party, not even the LP, afford to say “Popular perception aside…” 😉
Popular perception aside, arrest =/= conviction, and even conviction not necessarily = actually being guilty as charged (although at that point the burden of proof is decidedly on the other foot). As you note that also was not something the state party could have known ahead of time, any more than they could have predicted the death of another candidate.
Yes, running fewer candidates would mean fewer embarrassing surprises. But it would also mean fewer positive surprises as well — ie unexpected circumstances where the other parties embarrass themselves and we find ourselves in an unexpected position to take advantage of it.
*Sigh*
Not been a great run for LP-Iowa, between this and the tragic death of their Senate nominee. This is why parties need to sometime consider that running no candidate is in fact better than running the only willing candidate. (Though I don’t know that there was any information available at the time that would have warned them, or what his past reputation is like in the party, and of course he’s presumed innocent, etc., etc.) IBut it goes without saying that it really doesn’t help our popular perception when one our candidates gets busted for being a little too rape-y.
Sounds intriguing. What kind of dirty laundry?
Last year a female Libertarian candidate in the mid-Atlantic was threatened with an airing of dirty laundry if she did not withdraw (by an ex boyfriend)
See http://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/browse-chapters.php?chapter=28 and look for subsections 317-322.
What is third degree assault? As opposed to first or second?