Starting in the late summer of 2017, I was hired by ShareBlue on a contract gig to provide beat coverage of Ed Gillespie’s run for VA governor. My first assignment was to attend a fundraiser to record his stump speech. I had been to GOP campaign events before, but it had been a really long time. And this event was disconcertingly intimate since it was held at former Republican Attorney General nominee Mark Obenshain’s home. I was already a bundle of nerves when I arrived; making eye-contact with John Norton, one of my former law professors, provided no relief. Thankfully, he didn’t recognize me.
Some people can work a room. Any room. They simply walk in and their charismatic shine allows them to mingle with and win over everyone they meet.
That’s definitely not me. I could never be a wedding-crasher.
So venturing into this den of Republicans and trying to fit in was… shall we say… discomfiting. I did my best to make small talk, and ended up spending most of my time speaking with Bill Holtzman, the owner of the Liberty gas station chain. He regaled me with the story of how he became a billionaire and talked a little about about his daughter, Jill Vogel, the GOP’s nominee for Lt. Governor. (In a not-so cosmic twist of fate, her firm has been retained to sue me; I’m currently awaiting service).
Anyway, eventually Gillespie made his way through the crowd and spent a little time with me. I asked about the trail and his fundraising and the difference between running for Governor and Senate (he had challenged Mark Warner for Senate in 2014). We parted amicably, and he took the floor to give his stump speech.
The speech was mostly unremarkable, except one throw-away line: Obenshain introduced him and mentioned how hard Gillespie was campaigning. He said he even saw Ed in Northern Virginia working the Metro stations… Ed chimed in, “Yup, it’s enemy territory, but I was working it!”
Well, you just can’t call the most populous part of the state “enemy territory” when you are running for state-wide office. Not if you want to win, anyway.
So I flagged the recording for use later in the race and escaped the fundraiser without raising any suspicions.
Next up for me – a few weeks later – was a town-hall style public forum in Kilmarnock, VA. It was your typical political event – Gillespie told his personal story, put a gloss on what it meant to him to be a conservative Republican, and then opened the floor to questions. I had my hand up from the beginning, but the microphone never seemed to find me until the very end, when Gillespie personally picked me out of the crowd, saying I had my hand up the longest. Of course, the truth was everyone had their hands up from the beginning, but he had recognized me from the fundraiser and thought I’d lob a softball. So he must’ve been surprised when I pointed out that in the 90’s everyone in America knew that the big tobacco companies had been lying about what they knew with regards to cancer, that they had been manipulating nicotine levels in cigarettes to maximize addictions and consumption, and that they had developed strategies to market their deadly product to children… so, I asked, could he please walk me through the moral calculus he went through that made him think it was OK as a lobbyist to take Big Tobacco as a client.
I have to give Ed credit. If he was rattled, he didn’t let on. He smoothly brazened his way through the answer, explaining he was proud of his work as a small business owner that advocated for a settlement agreement with the government that provided a lot of money for health care and smoking cessation programs. (Of course, that was a lie – he didn’t care about people’s health or smoking cessation, but rather he was looking out for his murderous clients’ interests and did everything he could to minimize that settlement).
The funny thing about that event was that I met with American Bridge’s tracker that afternoon. He told me that I’d have one and only one chance to ask Gillespie a question. And he was right.
A couple of days later, Gillespie was scheduled to speak to a group of education professionals at a hotel in Charlottesville. I arrived early, registered as media with my ShareBlue credentials, and quietly sipped coffee while waiting for Gillespie to speak. I had a question ready for him: “Generally speaking, what’s a good salary for an experienced and competent teacher in Virginia?”
Alas, I never got to ask.
While making small talk with other media, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the event organizer summoning me into the hallway. I knew before the words left his lips that I was going to be asked to leave. Gillespie’s advance staff had spotted me, and they didn’t want anymore surprises from the sneaky liberal reporter.
(To be honest, the whole go to a fundraiser undercover, then pose as a concerned citizen at a townhall… Well… I just don’t know where that stacks up in terms of journalistic ethics, but thinking about how I’d feel if I were in the Gillespie campaign’s shoes, I cannot blame them for thinking of me as something less than an honest broker. Moreover, from a practical perspective, I cannot deny that the ultimate goal of my coverage was to help Gillespie lose his race, and they knew that. So, given it was their job to win, I cannot blame them for taking steps they felt necessary to protect their candidate. But on the other hand, there is this thing in the United States called the “First Amendment” and “Freedom of the Press”. Excluding unfriendly media from political events certainly gave off a strong whiff of un-American unseemliness.)
Anyway, I was kicked out of the event and because it was held on private property, there was nothing I could do. I had to leave or risk arrest for trespass. So I left.
But that made clear where I stood with his campaign, which was a good thing, because…
…fortuitously, Gillespie had a second event that day in Richmond: another public forum, only this one was held at a Virginia state memorial where the hosts were a consortium of urban (black) radio stations.
Before I go further, it’s worth reminding you that a searing controversy driving water cooler discussions across America – but especially in Virginia – was the discussion of what to do about Confederate monuments. Even more important, Heather Heyer had just been killed while counter-protesting the torch-bearing white supremacists that had seemingly taken control of Charlottesville.
Race would be an issue at this event.
And true to form, Gillespie’s silver tongue served him well. He talked a good game about equality and the disgust he felt at the events in Charlottesville.
But I knew Gillespie was hiding something. I knew he had made the noted racist (and former Governor and Senator from Virginia) George Allen, a Chair of his campaign. I also knew that George Allen kept a Confederate Flag and a noose in his office. And I knew that Allen refused to sign into law a bill that would have made Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday, but he was happy to officially recognize “Confederate Day”. And I knew that in 2006 scores of people attested to the fact that George Allen loved to use the n-word.
So as the event wound down and Gillespie worked the crowd, I stationed myself at his elbow, asking him loudly enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear, why he kept George Allen on his senior campaign staff. Either he abhors racism and racists, or he doesn’t, right? So why campaign with a man that adores he Confederacy and would keep a noose in his office? Why keep a man that opposed celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday and constantly used the n-word on your campaign staff?
Gillespie gamely ignored me. It wasn’t the most comfortable question to ask, but it seemed mighty relevant, especially at that event.
Five or ten minutes of this was all he could tolerate: Gillespie hastily found his way to an exit.
After that, the lines were drawn. His campaign realized that this was something new: a hybrid reporter/activist that really didn’t give two shits about access; that for me it was all about accountability. And if Gillespie was going to ignore me, or have me thrown out of events, or sneak in and out of venues through side doors or kitchen entrances… well… I was going to do everything I could do to defeat the campaign’s countermeasures and ask the questions that needed to be asked.
Again, a full measure of honesty requires that I say something about how fun this could be at times – for both sides! Don’t get me wrong: there’s no doubt I consistently annoyed Jimmy (Gillespie’s bodyman) and Tucker (another of Gillespie’s invaluable campaign aides). They were working incredibly hard, and at every turn, there I was trying to gum up their events. I remember one day I said “Hi” to Tucker at an event they couldn’t have me removed from, and she said “Hi” back, but in a way that was incredibly reminiscent of the way Jerry Seinfeld used to say “Newman”. I pointed that out, and it became a running joke between us.
But none of that took away from the fact that I had a job to do, which was to hold Gillespie accountable by showing Virginian’s the different things he wanted to keep hidden from voters. For example, in Northern Virginia, he certainly didn’t want to answer questions about guns, or about immigrants. He was running a base-driven campaign that required him to embrace the NRA and support Donald Trump. The problem for him was that both those positions were anathema to Northern Virginia, which happened to be the largest voting bloc in the state. So again and again, at event after event, I’d catch Gillespie going in and coming out of events and ask him questions about these issues. He’d always ignore me. We’d publish the videos at ShareBlue and write our story: “Ed Gillespie won’t denounce Donald Trump’s immigration policies” or “Gillespie avoids gun questions”.
By the end of the campaign, we had settled into a routine. Since almost all of Gillespie’s announced events were held at private venues, I’d show up early, and catch him on video as he traversed the parking lot on his way into the event. I’d then immediately leave (so nobody could tell me I’m not welcome and make me vulnerable to trespass charges), and only to return an hour or so later to catch Gillespie again when he left the event. I’d ask him a question about refugees, or his relationship with Donald Trump, or why he wouldn’t release his NRA questionnaire, or maybe something about his racist and fear-mongering ads that all but suggested most Latino immigrants were affiliated with MS-13.
There were times this devolved into a theater of the absurd. After one event, I literally hid in the bushes, lying in wait to ask Gillespie a question as he left an event. He saw me come running toward them, started running himself, and made it into his campaign SUV just as I got close enough to begin my question – but not finish it. I was laughing, and inside his SUV, I could see that, along with his driver Jimmy, Gillespie was laughing just as hard as I was.
When I was interviewed for this job, I mentioned that if Gillespie was going to make a mistake, it’d happen in late October. By then, nobody on the campaign is getting any sleep, and everyone is in a constant cold-sweat. The election is looms, and nobody is in the mood to take risks.
And so it was that on October 28, 2017 the annual Halloween Parade was held in Annandale, VA.
Of course, parades are public events.
Annandale is one of the more diverse neighborhoods in Virginia.
You see where I’m going with this, right?
I was excited! This was an opportunity to repeat what I had done in Richmond when Gillespie couldn’t escape my questions about racist campaign chair George Allen while he was surrounded by a bunch of folks with real reasons to care about the issue. But in Annandale, rather than catching him for five minutes as he left a venue, I’d be at his elbow for the entirety of the 90 minute parade route, asking him about his racist MS-13 ads.
Alas, it was not to be.
I was filming Gillespie’s campaign bus, waiting for him to disembark, when a policeman told me to leave them alone. I’m a reporter, and I’m there to get a story for ShareBlue, so I challenged the cop’s authority. I told him I was going to do my job.
It didn’t end well for me. (video)
Remember how I said late October was the time things would go sideways? Well, that applied to me too. I was dead-committed to holding Gillespie accountable for the duration of this parade, and I was pissed off that Gillespie thought he could commandeer the police force and keep me from doing my job.
So… The cop swore at me, I swore back in kind. They told me that if I were to swear at them again, I’d go to jail. I’m a lawyer and I knew that statute had to be unenforceable, so I turned away from them and said, “Fuck this!”
The cop said, “Take him to jail.”
I tried to put my cell phone away, knowing it had my “get out of jail free” evidence on it because I had been recording the entire interaction. The police took that as resisting arrest and I ended up on the ground with six cops beating on me.
And I missed the parade, and any opportunity to hold Gillespie accountable.
I was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. At District Court (a kind of junior varsity court for low level offenses where the judge didn’t appear to pay much attention to the law (or the case – he was shuffling through paperwork while my attorney was putting on my defense), instead going with his gut) I was found not guilty of resisting arrest, but guilty of disorderly conduct. I immediately appealed which had the effect of nullifying the conviction, but damage had been done. The press reported that I had been convicted.
Ultimately the appeal was never heard. The Circuit Court judge encouraged both sides to negotiate a deal. In exchange for the case being dismissed, I gave up any rights to sue over the incident and promised not to disparage the police. The appeal cost me $2000, but I felt like it was something I had to do. My arrest and trip to jail was all over the news and it was horribly embarrassing for my wife and kids. And considering the job I was about to take, I just couldn’t abide having a criminal conviction on my record, no matter how insignificant.