WA GOP chairman says party ‘lost a lot of talent’ to sanctions and infighting

If it were up to Rep. Jim Walsh, the new head of the Washington state GOP,  Spokane Valley Rep. Matt Shea never would have been kicked out of the House Republican caucus.

Shea was removed from the caucus by House Republican leadership in 2019 after an independent report concluded that he had participated in acts of “domestic terrorism” in connection with the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge and that he presented “a growing threat of risk to others through political violence.”

Walsh said the House GOP needs to avoid having a constant “circular firing squad.” House GOP leaders have, externally and internally, criticized and penalized their own members for everything from lying about military service to mistreating Capitol staff.

“Across the board there’s just been a lot of members who have, in different ways, been drummed out,” Walsh, R-Aberdeen, said in an interview with InvestigateWest. “We’ve lost a lot of talent in that process.”

That difference in approach is one of the ways that Walsh’s ascent to the leadership of the state party highlights a rift between elected Republican legislators and the more right-wing state party, a divide that goes beyond ideology and into standards of behavior and how they should be enforced. Walsh, who is not part of the House Republican leadership, has established a record as one of the more outspoken members of the state House, opposing Democrats on gun control, abortion and pandemic restrictions. His election as party chairman last year was seen as a sign of increasing conservative influence over the party.

It’s a reflection of the moderates-versus-conservatives tension in the party that has played out nationally, a tension that surfaced in the Washington state GOP convention earlier this year when delegates from the party’s base passed resolutions opposing direct democracy.

The dispute over the disciplining of House members stems from a handful of cases going back several years. The lawmaker who played a key role in that housecleaning, former House Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox, is proud that the state’s Republican legislators have upheld standards of behavior.

“When you’re in the minority for a long time, it’s hard for people to maintain their focus on the most serious issues,” Wilcox said. “Elected Republicans in the state of Washington have done that better than any other Republican in a blue state. They have stayed serious about serious problems, rather than becoming trolls.”

Walsh sees the disciplinary steps as their own kind of problem.

“Something happens when you’re in the minority for a long time: Sometimes the infighting gets worse,” Walsh said. “(There’s) the old joke: The infighting is so fierce, because the stakes are so small.”

Shea’s World

When the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, a national organization that tracks extremism, attempted to catalog how many state lawmakers around the country were members of “far-right” Facebook groups in 2022, Jim Walsh topped the national list.

Walsh was part of the Washington state Facebook group for the People’s Rights movement of Ammon Bundy, the right-wing leader responsible for the 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.

“Walsh also co-sponsored voter suppression bills to end mail-in voting and require voter identification,” the report noted.

Walsh dismissed the institute as a “a joke organization” and said its “so-called research is hyperpartisan.”

Walsh is sympathetic to Bundy’s cause, if not always his methods.

“I’m a constitutionalist,” he said. “I think Ammon Bundy and his supporters have raised some legit issues of governmental overreach and infringement of property rights. I don’t agree with everything they’ve said or done.”

Some of the most conservative legislators in Western states supported the Malheur occupiers, sometimes directly. In 2019, House leaders hired an independent investigator to dig into Shea’s involvement. Ultimately, the investigator determined that Shea had played key roles behind the scenes during the standoff, including having “authored and circulated an operations plan” for the militants.

Wilcox kicked Shea out of the House Republican caucus.

“There were no voices within the people who were elected to lead the caucus who disagreed with what I did,” Wilcox said. “I thought, look, I’m the elected leader. If someone’s gonna get the blame, it should be me. I knew it was going to be painful.”

Wilcox was officially condemned by the local Republican parties in Kitsap County, Grays Harbor and elsewhere. And Walsh is critical of the decision today.

“I don’t think that we should be in the business of booting out conservatives,” Walsh told InvestigateWest. “We’re too small of a minority in the Legislature.”

Rough-Hewn Legislators

Ultimately, Walsh said, the larger question goes beyond Shea.

“It involves other legislators who were pushed aside too,” he said, rattling off a list of conservative legislators who had been chided and punished by leadership:

• Rep. Graham Hunt, R-Orting, quit in 2016 after The Seattle Times exposed that he claimed to have won military medals he had never actually received.

• Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Ellensburg, stepped down following months of condemnation from House leadership after being accused of having a sexual relationship with an underage former student. Before he stepped down, leaders booted him off the labor committee.

• Rep. Jesse Young, R-Gig Harbor, had his ability to supervise staff taken away due to a “pattern of hostile and intimidating behavior” with his legislative assistants.

• Rep. Robert Sutherland, R-Granite Falls, was condemned by House leadership after a March 2022 incident in which he yelled profanity at the Capitol security chief.

Walsh acknowledged that Sutherland’s behavior ran afoul of a recently adopted code of conduct.

“So yes, it was a bad move on that legislator’s part,” Walsh said. “But I think the real umbrage some of the critics took toward it is that they thought it was kind of low-class for him to drop an F-bomb to an employee.”

Just because Sutherland’s “rough-hewn guy” does that mean he’s not a good legislator, Walsh said.

“I wish that we were not as harsh on our own members, and found ways to rehabilitate more than ostracize,” Walsh said.

In one sense, he feels that more conservative members have been penalized, but he doesn’t think it’s just a matter of conservatives vs. moderates. He suspects it’s more about tone and decorum.

“Some of it is cultural,” Walsh said. “Some of it is social status. Some of it’s personal style. There are tensions that are multilayered. I think there’s a sense that some of the more conservative members are ‘crude.’”

In his time at the House, Walsh himself has gained a reputation for bombastic speeches and heightened language — it has gotten his microphone cut off and the House gaveled into recess at least once, when he was testifying about a health insurance proposal. He has apologized for letting his emotions get “the better” of him.

Wilcox stepped down from his leadership position last year, fulfilling a promise to leave if Republicans didn’t make gains in the 2022 election. But current House Minority Leader Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn, hasn’t been afraid to criticize Walsh’s actions, either.

In 2021, Walsh wore a yellow Star of David to protest COVID vaccine mandates, intending to echo the badges the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust.

“In the current context, we’re all Jews,” Walsh, who is not Jewish, wrote on Facebook.

Stokesbary didn’t name Walsh on social media directly but countered that equating vaccination and the Holocaust “devalues the lives and memories of 6 million people systematically slaughtered, and brings unnecessary pain to their families.”

Walsh initially defended his remarks, but eventually apologized profusely. He says he was not penalized by leadership.