12/18/2024
My last meeting
Last night, I arrived a few minutes late to a Lyon County School Board of Trustees meeting at Sutro Elementary. As I took an empty chair in the back row, I heard the outgoing president giving his farewells.
I doubt I will be allowed to any more school board meetings, or even on school grounds to pick up my kids or attend their graduation.
Why?
It’s a long story…
The lost battle
President Phil Cowee was the main target of an expensive smear campaign cooked up by a guy that looks like Willy Wonka in mom jeans. Greg Clausen started up a Facebook page last year he called “Save LyonCounty Schools” where he slammed on the school district to gain support of the White Christian Nationalists who dominate the local Republican party in our red county.
Prior to the launch of Clausen’s Facebook page, Pastors from Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley instructed their sheeple to get into their church vans to ride for an hour or more to pack the audience of school board meetings. Once there, they would pound on the board with evangelical ideology in public comments, while claiming to be concerned parents of Lyon County students. Meetings ran until midnight, as every anti-LGBTQ, anti-Español, anti-science crusader reading from their script was heard.
This engineered circus eventually led to the board voting to switch public comment times to once at the beginning for items listed on the agenda, and once more at the end of the meeting for items not listed. Clausen’s smear campaign went public immediately after, as he claimed Lyon County schools told parents to “shut up.” The banner image of his page was Uncle Sam with a cloth over his mouth.
Seeing the Facebook page floating around, I initially gave it a “hell yeah!” I was never a good student, nor was I a fan of public schools. I was willing to jump on board and shake stuff up. So I made it a point to attend my first school board meeting.
In my first meeting, I quickly realized who the “concerned parents” were in the audience. A sea of silver and white hairs atop the heads of recent California transplants who were far beyond their baby making years – the same people I once saw in County Commissioners chambers in 2018, who tried to shut down my workplace by getting a question on the ballot. Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley was showing up in force, commenting and applauding each other as they attacked the school. Every speech they read, sounded like it was written by the same person. Oddly, so did much of what Trustee Hendrix would say.
Seeing my crusty old pals from Calvary were the dogs being used in this fight, my interest was peaked. It was obvious Trustees Hendrix and Parsons were part of that program. Their only focus was anything that appealed to the zealots in the crowd. This encouraged me to drive out of town the following month to watch the next show!
That time I said a bad word
The next month’s meeting went much like the one I saw before it. The majority of the board, along with the superintendent and legal council all tried their best to conduct business while Calvary Chapel and their two pet trustees poured hate and ignorance into everything. Parsons was constantly lost and slowing down progress, while Hendrix read off his complaints from his apparent handlers. He was especially spicy this night, and it must have set off my resting bitch face, because he hopped up to come see me as soon as the meeting was adjourned. Throwing his mustache into my face, he asked, “Did you have something you wanted to say to me?”
“Fuck off,” I mumbled to his face.
Knowing this was not a mindful answer, I immediately turned around, walked to the parking lot, then drove home.
Old dude from the church crowd disrupts entire meeting with F-Bombs
The following month, while Calvary was again packing the meeting with angry public commenters, there was an unusually harsh outburst from a ol’ boy in their crowd. Right after Mrs. Davis of Calvary’s Community Impact Team read off her comments for the record, a cluster of F-bombs rained down upon the board. Cowee called recess as the F-bomber aimed his arsenal of F’s at the few crowd members who were willing to get up in his face and welcome him to leave. I think I actually startled him when he saw me creeping up from behind. I was ready to give him a big warm hug to calm him down if he swung on anyone. He left, spraying F’s all over the hallways and parking lot.
I’m disappointed that they muted Mr. Potty Mouth in the video. If you listen carefully after Deanne’s public comment, you can sorta hear an F or two as Cowee calls recess.
Hendrix tried to ban me from my kids at school!!
In the next meeting, which was now guarded by deputies, Trustee Tom Hendrix took time to complain about how the F-bomber was banned from school grounds, while someone else used the same language once to an elected official, and Tom couldn’t get approval to ban him [me].
A brief argument erupted again later while the superintendent was reminding the board not to file complaints with false information. It prompted Hendrix to again, bring up the bad word once said, then call me out in the crowd as the person who once uttered it in his presence. From this point on, I knew that if Hendrix and Parsons ever gained the board majority, I would be banned from school grounds.
So then I ran against his wife
It was becoming painfully obvious that the White Christian Nationalist movement had infected all of Lyon County leadership, so I took a jab at knocking one out of her seat. I ran in the Republican primary against the previously appointed Tammy Hendrix for County Commissioner. While I would end up losing this race, I’m still pretty proud to have gotten one-third of the Republican vote, considering the local party leaders absolutely hate me.
Greg Clausen spent tens of thousands of dollars on Tammy’s campaign. He would later spend even more on his candidates for school board.
Clausen’s 3-Pack shows up to run for school board
This last school board race was insane! Looking up the campaign expense reports, I saw Clausen’s name pop up next to some big donations for three candidates, who he also praised on his Save LyonCounty Schools Facebook page. Soon, all over Lyon County, three candidates were listed on the same campaign sign. These signs looked eerily similar to Commissioner Hendrix’s signs used against me in the primary.
The same people who went on the war path against opponents of Clausen’s 3-pack, also happened to be the group who publicly smeared me for being “out of control” for saying a bad word, and “immoral” for not being Christian. Now they were claiming Cowee was part of the liberal woke agenda, and shamed him for gaining support of a couple Democrats in this [nonpartisan] election.
Phil/Phil confusion
One thing that certainly didn’t help, as I realized late in the election, was there were many voting idiots who confused Trustee Phil Cowee for me, Phil Wooley. My tendency to speak my mind publicly seems to have hurt Cowee’s race in this way, and I’m sure the people at Calvary were happy to spread the confusion.
Once Clausen and the cult got their hands on my CE report during my run, they flipped out to find a small donation from Phil Cowee. From his Facebook page, Clausen called me “Cowee’s Tool,” to convince everyone I was some agent of chaos to help push a woke agenda. He even wrote a post calling us “two Phil’s in a pod.” I can’t help seeing the mental image of our two bald heads popping out of a legume.
Calvary Chapel’s version of Christian love
As mentioned before, I have a little history with CCDV. They tried twice, and succeeded once in kicking me out of the workforce, since I am such a public guy and don’t drink their KoolAid.
Once upon a time, CCDV pushed to shut down Dennis Hof’s legal brothels as he ran for Assembly in 2018. One of their members, then Commissioner, now Assemblyman Ken Gray played Hof pretty hard through that ordeal, pretending to be sympathetic to his struggle. He even attended one of Dennis Hof’s infamous birthday parties. As Dennis and I sat across the conference table with Ken, we had no idea he cooked up the whole scheme to put us out of work.
For the sake of not making this post any longer than it needs to be, I won’t list off every interaction I’ve had with the leadership of Calvary Chapel. There were several – a couple good, but mostly bad. Their secretary filing complaints against me to get me fired while I ran for office, can be the first in line to kiss my butt.
If you read my previous posts, I hope it’s obvious that I am not anti-Christian. Religions of all flavors have their place in society. We humans often need something to supplement our mindfulness and help us stay on a productive path. What I hate, is when anyone uses their religion as a weapon to attack their community the way this group constantly does. At any moment, if I hear their pastors start preaching love, instead of hate, I will respect them for it. Politics and religion need to be separate, or else they corrupt each other.
Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley was kind enough to host a candidate meet and greet, to which they invited the entire public – even me. Yes, I asked, and I was told I was welcome to attend. At that time, this was the only opportunity to hear all of the school board candidates speak. Immediately after walking in the door, I was singled out, surrounded by armed guards, then told to leave by a Lyon County deputy. Pastor Gil’s only reason given, was that I “showed hostility” toward the church. I guess that’s what they call any disagreement to their political or theological opinions.
Thankfully, another meet and greet was later scheduled in an actual public setting, where I was not trespassed for showing up. However, the Sheriff was there, and he did make some jokes about me behaving myself.
Win for Clausen
Fortunately for Greg Clausen and his 3-pack, most Lyon County voters don’t pay any attention to public schools. His money spent on signs and canvasing paid off. He and his cult friends twisted the narrative enough to make it interesting to the average churchgoers, who were already showing up in force for the US presidential election. You weren’t a true Christian or American if you didn’t vote for Whisler, Parsons, or Carson.
Sadly, Greg’s Save LyonCounty Schools Facebook page disappeared as soon as the election results came out, and so did James Whisler’s entire Facebook page. Like the phantom menace he is, Mr. Clausen has vanished into the darkness to take on other crusades.
CCDV seems to have switched their attention to libraries. Since their favorite candidates / fellow cult members won the school board, I haven’t seen them show up for any of the meetings they fought so hard to have a voice in.
I’ll get separated from my kids
The biggest irony of it all: a movement that alleged to be the voice of Lyon County parents, will now work to silence a Lyon County parent. Hendrix and Parsons now have their majority with three comrades swearing in next month. I doubt he’ll waste any time in getting me banned from school grounds. In doing so, he will block me from picking up sick kids from school, or even getting to watch them graduate.
This is how these people operate. Whenever they lose a debate, they abuse power to shut us up. Politics and religion are the same to them. Kids like mine, who are not part of their religion, will have to suffer the side effects of this evangelical majority on the board chasing imaginary “woke” phantoms. The quality of public schools will decline, as more money gets funneled into programs like Calvary Chapel’s Homeschool Discipleship and private Christian schools.
Luckily, I only have one more year of my kids in Lyon County schools.
