Two weeks ago, I reported on a fake website for the Democratic gubernatorial campaign of environmental advocate James Ehlers. Since then, the site has been revised, taken offline and then revived under a new domain name. And the saga around it has gotten stranger and stranger, with Ehlers and prominent Republicans throwing some serious accusations at each other.
The original site, jamesehlersforvermont.com, was a nasty piece of work, full of personal attacks and juvenile humor.
The new site, jamesehlers4vermont.com, has toned down some of the extreme stuff and adopted a new focus. It now features screenshots of Facebook posts supposedly taken from Ehlers’ own page.
The posts in question include cartoons and memes attacking President Donald Trump, along with accompanying captions allegedly written by Ehlers that are profane and vulgar and attack Vermont Republicans for failing to adequately distance themselves from Trump.
Ehlers says the screenshots are fakes. But some Republicans say they were taken aback last winter by his online behavior, including posting harsh negative comments on their Facebook pages and “tagging” them so that the offensive posts showed up on their own timelines.
“Ehlers was attacking any Republican who was not disavowing Trump,” says Rep. Kurt Wright (R-Burlington). “I talked with a number of people at the Statehouse. We were all wondering, What happened to Ehlers? He was out of control, just launching on people.”
Ehlers vehemently denies the accusations of abusive activity.
When reached by phone on Monday, he claimed never to have visited the fake site and refused to even entertain the allegations. “I’m not going to spend my time responding to the nonsense they crank out,” he said.
He asked for the screenshots to be emailed to him. Afterward, he responded via text.
“All fakes. Doctored captions,” he wrote. “These are tactics of an ideology and party that want to distract us from their racist, homophobic, classist, misogynistic trickle-down. [Gov. Phil] Scott needs to find some surrogates with integrity. Not playing their disgusting games.”
The material does not currently appear on Ehlers’ Facebook timeline. He has denied altering anything.
It’s simple to fabricate stuff like this, and the fake website was created anonymously: There’s no way to identify the people behind it. And the site itself doesn’t speak well of its creators’ ethics. The Vermont Attorney General’s Office has received complaints that the site violates campaign finance law by failing to identify those responsible; the complaints are currently under review.
But Wright is not the only Republican questioning Ehlers’ online behavior. Len Britton, a former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who now lives in California, says, “After the election, [Ehlers] started putting up aggressively nasty Facebook posts about the incoming president, what a bad guy he was, and lumping all Republicans with Trump. Vulgar, nasty stuff. Very hateful.”
Former Rep. Job Tate (R-Mendon), a Navy reservist who resigned from the legislature in April when he was recalled to active duty, told his story via email from the Horn of Africa, where he is currently deployed.
“I always enjoyed James’ company,” Tate wrote. “He’s an unapologetic intellect who has devoted his life to a worthy cause, and I find those types pretty engaging. We also had the shared fraternity of our service to the Navy, upon which we had built an easy, friendly rapport.” (Ehlers served four years in the Navy.)
All of which, he added, made Ehlers’ online behavior “that much more mystifying.”
During the campaign, Tate said, Ehlers often posted argumentative comments on Tate’s Facebook page. “As the fall gave way to winter, his ire seemed to increase,” Tate wrote. “His comments became more pointed (and obscene) and he would often tag me (and others) in his own Facebook posts.”
Tate, who uses Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends, “made many, many requests for him to cut back the tone of his comments … to a PG-13 level.”
Instead, the posts grew “increasingly unhinged,” and Tate resolved to confront Ehlers.
“When I saw him in the Statehouse card room, I said, ‘James, I need to talk to you,'” Tate related. “He raised his shoulders in a ‘What, me worry?’ way, smiled and sped away. Literally picked up speed … On another occasion, I told him from across the entryway into the House that cyber-bullying is a serious national epidemic, and he once again smiled and made a beeline in the opposite direction.
“Ehlers remains the only soul I’ve ever ‘blocked’ on Facebook,” Tate concluded. “The act itself felt childish of me, but I really felt it was the only way to end the saga.”
When asked to respond to Tate’s account, Ehlers labeled it “fiction” and blasted Tate’s “failed attempts … to advance his anti-woman agenda at the expense of immigrants, suppress wages, deregulate eco protections, and sponsor tax-break bills for his affluent friends.”
There are enough independent complaints that it’s hard to write off the allegations against Ehlers as a political dirty trick. But as long as the creators of the website remain anonymous, there is no way to verify the truth of its claims — or the authenticity of the screenshots.
One thing’s for sure. If this keeps up, the 2018 campaign is going to be a barn burner.
Turncoat
A former union official is making waves in Vermont’s labor community and is beginning to attract attention from the national conservative media. That’s because Ben Johnson has committed what some see as the ultimate betrayal: The onetime president of the Vermont AFL-CIO and American Federation of Teachers Vermont has come out publicly in favor of right-to-work legislation.
And he’s done so in a big way: with a video and a lengthy essay posted on the website of the National Right to Work Committee.
Right-to-work laws prohibit a union from collecting dues from workers if they have not joined the union or agreed to pay. Labor leaders see this as a deathblow because, they say, workers can opt out of paying dues and still reap the benefits of collective bargaining. The result, they claim, is a downward spiral for unions.
Johnson left his leadership posts in the summer of 2016. After that, he says, he undertook a period of soul-searching. “The labor world is a massive bubble,” he says, wrapped up in its own worldview. Getting outside the bubble gave him fresh perspective.
And while he has “tremendous affection for the union,” he has come to see unions’ ability to collect fees from workers as a crutch. Right to work, he says, would force unions to convince workers to part with their money.
He says the words posted on the NRWC website are entirely his own. “I was not paid for any of that,” he says. “I’m not on their payroll. They haven’t hired me for anything.”
Some Vermonters who fought alongside Johnson for years are dumbstruck by his conversion.
“Those of us working hard in the labor movement see this as deeply, deeply disappointing and surprising,” says David Mickenberg, an attorney and lobbyist who works on behalf of Vermont unions.
Jill Charbonneau, who succeeded Johnson at the Vermont AFL-CIO, measures her words carefully. “I’m surprised at his departure from trade unionism,” she says. “It’s unfortunate.”
Much harsher views can be found on the Facebook page of former AFT organizer Kelly Mangan of Burlington. She posted a link to Johnson’s video, which prompted comments along the lines of “disgusting worm,” “piece of shit” and “scum.”
Johnson claims not to be concerned about burning bridges. “I don’t think you can lose friends over something like this,” he says. “I’ve spoken with my actual friends, and they understand where I’m coming from.” So his union colleagues were fake friends?
Johnson has launched a new consulting business, Progressive Labor Solutions, which offers his services to employers dealing with established unions or with organizing campaigns. If that sounds like a former insider selling secrets to the other side, he insists that’s not the case.
“I know issues that agitate employees,” he says. “Employers are often blind to them. I want to work with employers who want to develop a thoughtful, systematic approach to their employees, not those who just want to make the problem go away.”
At the same time, he hints of a darker view of union shops.
“When workplaces organize, there are lots of things that change,” he says. “It’s much more difficult to address individual situations. It becomes a militarized workplace.”
He should hope his consulting business is a success. It’s hard to imagine he’ll ever get another chance to work for a union.
Media Note
There’s a new and unusual entrant in the Vermont blogosphere that aims to provide a thorough understanding of how the state is governed.
The Informed Vermonter promises a comprehensive yet readable guide to state government, with a particular focus on finances. And perhaps most unusual for a blog, it takes the long view, eschewing the give and take of current controversies.
The website, theinformedvermonter.com, is the brainchild of Malcolm Stewart, a retired investment banker who splits his time between his hometown of Randolph and London, England, where he spent part of his career. The Informed Vermonter is the unplanned product of a postretirement research project that took Stewart two years to complete.
“I was steeped in financial research, and I’d always been curious about government,” he says. “I delved into it. I looked at the town of Randolph, the state of Vermont and the federal government, all through a fiscal lens.”
When he finished his work, he says, the next question was, “What do I do with all of this?”
The answer: a website sharing the fruits of his labor.
The first four posts, he says, will provide “a refresher in basic civics.” After that, a short course on Vermont economics. “Then, I’ll look at every single aspect of government — here’s what they spend, here’s where the money comes from,” he says. He says he will try his best to stick to the facts and eschew opinion, although he acknowledges that his readers will be the judge of that.
And here’s another unusual — likely unprecedented — aspect of Stewart’s venture: Before he launched the site, he had already written four months’ worth of posts, “which cover the entire government.”
That’s way too organized for a blogger, sir.
Stewart promises a new post every three days until the end of this year. After that, he’ll start exploring related subjects. “There’s no shortage of topics,” he says.
Ain’t that the truth.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Keyboard Warfare”
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2017.
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I would not be surprised if “alt-right” trolls are behind the fake Ehlers website. If we go by their logic, it’s “wrong” to criticize Donald Trump and that’s why they’re attacking Ehlers and attempting to tank his campaign before it even starts.
Phil Scott and other prominent VTGOP members should come out and condemn this nastiness towards Mr.Ehlers. He and others are merely exercising their 1st amendment right to criticize the President of the United States. That is not illegal and as long as a person is not explicitly threatening the President, there shouldn’t be an issue, right?
Thank goodness people struggling each day know who said what and when. After all, that’s what matters most.
To be clear, I was not one of the people charging James with cyber stalking and was not a target of any of that. I simply responded to a call from John Walters for this column that I had seen some of over the top nastiness on James facebook page.
As a person that has been critical of Trump myself, I of course believe Ehlers has a right to be as critical as he chooses. It is just unfortunate in my opinion when the level of political discourse sinks to this level, of attacking others that have a different opinion than you. That is part of the problem in our country today.
I also would happily give James the benefit of the doubt, that all this is fiction. The problem is, his very response in this article was an extreme attack of the kind that people are suggesting. The only nastiness in this article came from James Ehlers. I really just hope it stops.
On March 18th of this year, after being ganged up on by James Ehlers & his #resist friends, & studying their methods, I posted this public warning: “James Ehlers & his “James Gang” flash mob brand President Trump and his supporters as Nazis, Racists, Islamophobes, Anti-Semites, Homophobes, Fascists, & Misogynists- ad hominem attacks which are unfounded & untrue. Use caution when approaching discussion with them. They will index you & your friends, & selectively engage the ones they feel are vulnerable. They remind me of a pack of coy wolves. It is distasteful to even have to discuss such a hateful group of leftist activists out to destroy our Constitutional Republic.” And I also had to block him. The stories are all too true.
I am one VT Republican who did not block James, although I did have to ask him multiple times to stop tagging me in his harassing posts. James is a long-time fishing buddy of my father’s, and I have worked alongside James at several weigh-ins, so to be targeted by James in such a manner came as quite a surprise to me. I’ve always considered James a friend, but from the rhetoric he was using to describe my beliefs and those of friends of mine was deeply insulting, and suggested he did not consider me a friend in return.
By the way, the reporting on this seems to be pretty lazily done. A simple scroll through James’ personal Facebook page reveals all of these posts, and a simple scroll through the comments will show James “tagging” several of his supporters in order to “call in the wolves”, to piggyback on what a previous commenter said. If an attempt was made to check for the veracity of these screenshots, it would not take long to confirm that all of them are in fact real. And then the question would become, why does James feel the need to lie, and continue lying about this?
Nothing in Vermont politics happens by chance. It’s important to question the motives of folks like Lachlin Francis and others who surface during campaign season to spread discord and controversy. For the record, Mr. Francis is friends with Ms. Christine Hallquist’s campaign manager and a surrogate for the Hallquist campaign.
For those who haven’t had the pleasure of getting to know James Ehlers here is a link to a Facebook post from a gentleman who did meet Mr. Ehlers. It speaks volumes for why folks should give themselves the opportunity to meet candidates like Mr. Ehlers instead of relying on cherry picked or altered graphical images circulating on social media.
https://www.facebook.com/mikeluoma/posts/1…