Crowdsourcing Request: Whither the Wingnuts of Yesteryear?
Until last month’s news about the legal difficulties of onetime Delaware GOP nuisance Mike Protack, I had no idea he had decamped to San Diego, which got me to wondering — whatever happened to some of the deluded fools who did so much to make the Delaware GOP a laughingstock throughout this century?
A few are right where we left them. David Anderson, for example, still serves on Dover City Council. But his partner in the rightwing blogosphere, Don Ayotte, has kept a low public profile since their Midlantic Dispatch, itself devolved from the defunct Delaware Politics blog, withered into a Facebook page. Ayotte and Wolfgang von Baumgart are still listed among the officers of the irrelevant Independent Party of Delaware.
Others apparently have moved on. Dave Burris, who founded Delaware Politics, wasn’t actually a wingnut — he fought a losing battle to keep the Republican Party relevant as it succumbed to Christine O’Donnell — but he apparently saw no future in Republican politics. As the Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported, he’s now making and selling sea salt at the Delaware beaches. Evan Queitsch, who fancied himself O’Donnell’s bodyguard and then ran for office unsuccessfully as a Tea Party conservative in 2012, seems to have become an apostate to the wingnut cause, judging by his authorship of this anti-racism essay posted to LinkedIn.
There’s an interesting commonality to all these once worrisome Republicans who rose up with the Tea Party — they disappeared with the arrival of Donald Trump. O’Donnell actually spoke out against Trump as he was rising to the top of the Republican nomination cesspool. She hasn’t been heard from since.
One other noticeable trend: Ever since William Swain Lee retired to the sidelines, the GOP has struggled to find statewide candidates with staying power. Formerly coveted positions on the statewide ticket started going to self-funding newbies, and post-Trump to anyone who’ll step forward. That means we should expect more grifters like Lauren Witzke. A high-profile performance artist can bring in more national wingnut bux than any local can raise from the state’s business community, which wants nothing to do with the off-putting behavior of such buffoons.
The party’s lack of success in even lower statewide offices, combined with the inability of extremism downstate pols to appeal even to swing voters, pretty much guarantees that this trend will continue, regardless of slight gains in downstate representation as the population shifts. The inability to elect
Here’s the ask: I’m sure I’m forgetting a few of the goobers, and I couldn’t any information on O’Donnell’s whereabouts, though she’s rumored to be living in New Jersey. Help me fill in the blanks — who am I forgetting, and where have these people gone? Leave anything you’ve got in the comments, or if you prefer, in the tip file.
WEHT the Sheriff of Nuttingham? Is he still around? Does he consider himself a sovereign citizen?
And don’t forget Christian soldier and sex abuser Eric Bodenweiser, who brought new meaning to the term ‘family values candidate’:
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2015/04/17/bodenweiser-sentenced-sex-offenses/25929017/
And who could forget yet another ‘God-fearing’ Rethug sexual predator like Vance Phillips?:
http://delawareliberal.net/2016/09/30/the-vance-phillips-civil-suit-comes-to-an-end-with-no-justice-for-the-woman-he-assaulted/
Yes, those are some of the people who’ve fallen out of the public eye, the last two for obvious reasons. All I could find of the sheriff was a Facebook page that says he’s “sheriff — retired.”
Glen Urquhart seems to have moved to Virginia; I think that’s where he came from in the first place. I can’t find any trace of Sher Valenzuela, but I didn’t look very hard.
Wellwellwell, it looks like Sher’s company was paying bribes to an AMTRAK procurement officer to keep their contract with them:
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/money/business/2019/01/28/delaware-first-state-manufacturing-executive-scott-crothers-indicted-amtrak-bribery-case/2659676002/
How could you forget Lacey Lafferty and her wonderful displays of gunship? Alas the videos on YouTube seem to have disappeared.
So many wingnuts…
She was a favorite. These guys burn bright but very briefly
I forgot her because all these people melted away like slugs on a salt lick.
She’s currently promoting no-mask idiocy on Twitter. Fitting for a twit.
O’Donnell posts occasionally on Facebook. She mentioned in December that she was studying for the bar exam (didn’t say where) while holding out hope that Biden’s victory would not be certified.
She also offered last December a wager with anyone who wanted. The loser had to donate to the political candidate of the winner’s choice. There’s no evidence that she has done so yet.
And no, she’s not a witch.
No, she’s not. Witches are competent.
Charlie Copeland has moved to the propaganda arm of the GOP. He is now with Caesar Rodney Institute, having left that other wingnut factory (ISI) in 2020. Charlie seems content to be out of retail politics, having achieved his life’s ambition by getting Democrats to repeal Delaware’s estate tax. Charlie recently eulogized his brother in a tweet that still managed to be mostly a bitter attack on “the left.”
There’s a reason: He’s not a Trumper. Very few of the OG Republicans in NCCo are.
The state party’s problem is that their rank and file have no money, and their upper crust despise the unwashed downstate rank and file. They won’t donate to loser-from-jump reactionaries — they didn’t accumulate it by setting it on fire — so the slackjaws dominate the party but can’t win anything because they have no money and no ideas.
You forget about WGMD’s blowhard Bill Colley, who’s now broadcasting his ramblings to the poor citizenry of Idaho: https://newsradio1310.com/author/bcolley/
Jud Bennett, once a Sussex County Council candidate and the darling of the anti-development folks, seems to now have drunk every single gallon of the TransPerfect kool-aid: https://twitter.com/judson_bennett?s=21
I don’t how you can stand to live in a place populated with so many slapdicks.
The late Jody Hudson and Abraxus Hudson father son wingnuts:)
I loved tormenting Jud over his Multiple lawsuits ( Velcro wall jump) and bankruptcies when he lost his council race in ’04 by 5 votes.. Atkins even before Ocean City was an endless source of material!