I posted the original version of this column several weeks ago. Here is the version the Tribune ran in their print version today, with several updates and revisions.
Tommy VanHill had previously run as an unabashed Ottawa Impact candidate and lost, and is on the ballot once more as an official Ottawa Impact candidate. Joshua T. Spurr and David Olthof have been endorsed by the chair of the Ottawa Impact-run Ottawa County Republican Party.
Olthof’s social media shows regular posts from the far-right group Restoring Ottawa, which has been behind repeated attacks on our public school system. In his answers to the ONTRAC questionnaire that was sent to all candidates, he is clear that he homeschools his own children.
Spurr’s social media includes a video from May 2023 that has him shooting at Bud Light cans, presumably part of the far-right protest of Bud Light’s brief promotion with transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. Spurr heard of my concerns, and, to his credit, he reached to me personally. He confirmed that he did indeed post the video shooting cans because of Bud Light’s partnership with Dylan, something that, in his words “was meant to be a funny video.” He said he is not opposed to transgender people in general, just Dylan in particular.
I asked Spurr if he thought that the parent of a trans teenager in our school system would think that was a funny video. He declined to answer, simply saying that “a company protest does not translate into me not treating all kids unequally.” We ended the conversation cordially, with me letting him know I still have concerns and him saying he appreciated keeping lines of communication open.
Though not endorsed by the Ottawa County GOP chair, two other candidates still concerned me as well. Helen Brinkman made news in 2023 as an attorney in Kent County that sought to ban books in school libraries that her clients deemed unsuitable, part of a continued pattern of attacks on books with LGBTQIA+ characters and storylines. She also represented Marlena Pavlos-Hackney, the restaurant owner who refused to follow health department guidelines during the pandemic. One only needs to read the news articles to see the ways that her efforts are part of the larger attacks on the LGBTQIA+ population. In her answers to the ONTRAC questionnaire, she expresses her own support of Ottawa Impact and says she would welcome their endorsement.
Steve Skodack has repeatedly denied his connections to Ottawa Impact and yet his views tend to align with those of the movement. Skodack lost his bid to get on the Grand Haven City Council and apparently now is trying this route of school board candidate instead. However, he has no campaign website and his candidacy page on Facebook still, with only a few days to go before the election (as this column was being written), names him as a City Council candidate, so it’s rather difficult to suss out why he is running for this position.
I was reminded that though Ottawa Impact did indeed lose ground in the recent primary election, that group and those who support their far-right views are far from done with Ottawa County – and that includes Grand Haven.
This is perhaps also a helpful time to remind everyone that the waste, corruption and vengeful governing tactics of Ottawa Impact were not an aberration or something that only happened in our neck of the woods. Ottawa Impact is only one manifestation of a national movement by Christian nationalists seeking to seize local control of counties and school boards.
Much of this movement can be traced to Mike Flynn, who served as Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor for a whopping 22 days until he resigned after it was revealed that he had lied about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. He pleaded guilty to a felony count of making false statement to the FBI. Before he was sentenced, he was pardoned by Donald Trump.
During the Great Lie, as Donald Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Flynn encouraged the president to silence the press, suspend the Constitution and hold a new election run by the military. When he was deposed about the insurrection on January 6, Mike Flynn repeatedly pleaded the fifth.
After the failure of the insurrection, though, Flynn took to calling for a different approach to seizing control of government. Claiming danger from everything from Critical Race Theory to LGBTQIA+ rights, Flynn began urging Christians around the country to take over their school boards and county commissions in order to stop the “woke” infiltration of these bodies.
As the Associated Press has reported, “Flynn’s movement envisions Christianity as the basis of American life and institutions; where the right to bear arms is paramount; where abortion is illegal; where concepts such as systemic racism and gay or transgender rights have no place in the schools; and where people who disagree are called ‘Marxists,’ or perverts, and are excluded from American civic life.” Sound familiar?
Make no mistake, Mike Flynn and those who share his views will not rest in their attempt to take over local boards and governments. As Ottawa Impact’s brand continues its downward spiral into toxicity, it will become harder to identify candidates who are a part of this attempted far-right takeover of our community.
Naturally, all of the candidates I have identified above whose views concern me don’t share all of Flynn’s views. But voters must dig deep and do their research to know how far-right a candidate’s views swing.
Thankfully, groups like the League of Women Voters help out from a non-partisan perspective (though Olthof, Brinkman and Skodack declined to participate in that forum on Oct. 15). And, we also have the gift of Organize Ottawa, an organization that has carefully vetted all candidates and is working to keep extremist control out of our schools and government. You can access their information at organizeottawa.com.
Because, conservative or liberal, independent or progressive, there are lots of followers of Jesus out there who do not believe in the hateful rhetoric against queer people, who believe families and households of all shapes and beliefs should have equal access and rights in schools and the broader community, and who are more interested in showing love than banning books and using terms like “Marxist” so that you don’t have to engage in actual conversation with others. It is those followers of Jesus who must continue to stand against these far-right misrepresentations of his life and teachings.
After all, protecting the marginalized from religious extremism, that’s the sort of thing Jesus actually did do.
The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com. The views in this column are his alone as a Grand Haven resident and parent of a student in Grand Haven schools and do not necessarily reflect the views of his congregation.
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