“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
-Matthew 7:3
A lot of politicians, journalists and commentators such as myself are rightfully condemning the threats of violence toward State Sen. Laura Woods (R-Arvada) by Dylan Hopkins. The media is all over this story, and rightfully so. Threats of violence should absolutely not be tolerated in a free society. This is categorical.
I’m compelled to wonder then, why calls to violence by current and former GOP candidates in Colorado are not investigated or reported quite as vigorously as this random person’s threat has been.
You may not have heard of Raymond Garcia. He’s running as a Republican for the second time in the State House District 1 race. On Facebook Raymond always refers to Hillary Clinton as “Hitlery” and President Obama as “Osama”. There are dozens of examples but I’ve posted one below.
On one occasion Garcia suggested that Hillary Clinton should be beheaded in reference to the “Let them eat cake” quote commonly misattributed to Marie Antoinette, who was beheaded during the French Revolution.
Raymond Garcia routinely accuses Hillary Clinton of murdering people, and even claims that if he’s ever found having committed suicide, it’s because Clinton did it.
Raymond isn’t the only one calling for and threatening violence. Remember Nate Marshall? He’s the guy nominated in 2014 to run as a Republican for State House District 23. I was was sent screen shots of him seeming to threaten Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Colorado) with physical harm.
He posted about murdering people after Donald Trump takes power.
He posted about wanting to “lynch” black people to show that black lives “don’t really matter”.
He praised the Planned Parenthood shooter as a “hero”.
I bring up Marshall because I found it interesting that the candidate currently running against Congresswoman Diana DeGette—Casper Stockham—was recently spotted on Facebook promoting an endorsement by him and asking for a picture together so he could use it to drum up some publicity. I’m not sure if Stockham is aware of Marshall’s history of making threats, but he did seem to indicate he knows he’s a white supremacist.
All of this is not to diminish the nature of the threat against Woods. I condemn violence and threats of violence. My purpose here is to provide some context. What is more important to report? Threats made against officials by random people on the internet, or threats made by official candidates for office? The answer is that both are important to cover. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I have not been able to get the Colorado media interested in the latter.
