Here is how ugly it can get.
In today's edition of Oklahoma City's daily paper, The Oklahoman, reporter Nolan Clay writes that republican law maker, Cliff Branan received an edgy and threatening email from Sooner Tea Party co-founder Al Gerhart. Gerhart is hot to trot on House Bill 1412 which is Sally Kern's anti U.N. Agenda 21 measure. It passed the house, but is now sitting in Branan's committee in the senate.
Clay quoted Gerhart's email which said, Get that bill heard or I will make sure you regret not doing it. I will make you the laughing stock of the Senate if I don't hear this bill will be heard and passed. We will dig into your past, yoru (sic) family, your associates and once we start there will be no end to it. That is a promise.
Yes, that does seem a tad over the line doesn't it. Branan certainly thought so. According to the story he turned the email over to a Highway Patrol officer who gave it to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. Clay writes that once their investigation is complete the OSBI will hand over the results to District Attorney David Prater. The possible charge? Blackmail.
Clay notes that under Oklahoma law blackmail can involve a written communication that threatens to expose information about someone which would in any way subject that person to the ridicule and contempt of society. He adds that it is blackmail if the communication is meant to "extort or gain any thing of value from another, or to compel another to do an act against his or her will."
Brother Gerhart initially told Clay that he was simply a constituent who was telling a senator about what repercussions there might be if he didn't get the bill to the floor. When Clay pointed out that Branan is term limited and can't run for re-election, Gerhart went off. He was quoted as saying, We want to know what is going on down there. We want to know if his wife has a criminal history. We want to know everything about him. We want to find out if this man is a responsible citizen, if he's even got his family under control, much less his office.
How charming.
He went on to tell The Oklahoman reporter, These politicians need to know that it doesn't end when their term is over. They need to know that their decisions are going to follow them the rest of their days. They need to know the Tea Party is not going away--that if we don't win it the first time, we're going to come back the next year and the next year and the next year after. And we don't forget these people that are traitors to the Oklahoma people. He assured Clay that the tea party investigation would report what it found on the internet, in Branan's district, and his church. He ended the tirade by saying, I want people in his church to know what he is doing. That its wrong.
So who is this vicious little rodent? Besides being co founder of the Sooner Tea Party, he was, briefly anyway, state coordinator for the Ron Paul presidential campaign in Oklahoma. They fired him when they found out he apparently told Paul supporters that any Paul delegates to various county and district GOP conventions had to be vetted and approved by the national campaign. It turned out he and he alone was doing the "vetting." If you didn't pass the Al Gerhart purity test you weren't going to be a delegate. To this day his tea party "meet up" site, which claims 36 members, warns that anyone who wishes to join the group must first be approved by one of the "organizers." He is one, the other is listed as, Guy Fawkes
A brief look at the internet shows that Mr. Gerhart is utterly loathed by not just a few members of the republican party. Conservative activist Kaye Beach wrote in her blog that she had received an email from him that said, This would be a good time to take your medicine and remain silent about anything I do or say.
Cherokee County Paul supporter, Oadoshyah Fish claimed Gerhart ultimately cost Paul a win at the republican district two convention. Porter Davis, a long time local conservative politico, has written that he never understood how Gerhart got to be Ron Paul's state coordinator in the first place.
Now he may have taken his poor man's Joe McCarthy act a bit far. Looking at the letter of the law Al Gerhart seems to be standing on some shaky ground. It doesn't help that another one of his favorite whipping boys is, you guessed it, District Attorney David Prater.
In the end, he fell back on the old, "I'm being martyred" argument that so many of these right wing hacks do. He told Clay, My friend, they get me, they'll be after you next. That's all I can say.
Why do I think Al Gerhart is eating all of this up at the moment? I mean someone wrote a front page story about him in the state's largest newspaper, he got his picture on page three, and he worried a politician enough to make him call the cops. It is a bully's wet dream.
And in the final analysis that is all Al Gerhart is. He is a cheap jack bully who will continue to run amok until someone, anyone, finally bitch slaps him.
We can only hope it is soon.
Forgive me, I need to go spit.
4-2-13
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