Experiencing the pulse-pounding thrill of watching local Republican precinct committee officers attempt procedural maneuvers through Robert’s Rules of Order doesn’t come cheap.
For a general admission ticket to Saturday’s local Republican convention, candidates were charged $50. Delegates were charged $50. Guests were charged $50.
Ah, but for journalists — that noble profession singled out for protection by the Founding Fathers in the very first amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America — the Spokane County Republican Party named a different price: $100.
It created a sneaking suspicion that, perhaps, this party did not love practitioners of the craft of journalism as deeply as I did. In prior years, journalists just walked in, flashed a press pass like an FBI badge, and started reporting, free of charge.
At the national level, this idea isn’t entirely new. In 2015, the Republican National Committee announced they’d charge journalists $150 a pop for press stand access at the upcoming national convention, sparking print media organizations to object that the "proposed fee smacks of forcing the press to pay for news gathering." But even then, journalists who didn’t need the press stand weren’t charged for simply walking through the doors.
It could, of course, have been worse: for the state GOP convention in Idaho, instead of being able to watch convention meetings at the Coeur d’Alene Resort, journalists were made to sit in a windowless corner and think about what they did.
Any plan to charge journalists, however, runs into a problem: you can’t nickel and dime people who don’t have nickels. We may be wise in the ways of Grocery Outlet coupons and the day-old pastry discounts, but we are not a people of means. These days, the most viable business strategy for funding journalism involves copper wiring and unguarded building sites.
Spokesman-Review reporter Emry Dinman tells me the Spokesman considered buying a general admission ticket, but couldn’t justify just handing money to a political party.
Even at a badass publication like RANGE, where journalists do cool and rebellious things like get tattoos and use contractions, we have ethical codes too: and one of them is, don’t donate to a political party we’re covering. Among other issues, we wouldn’t want to feed conspiracy theories that RANGE was entirely staffed by secret cryptoconservatives.
But even if we at RANGE wanted to shell out money to establish Republican bona fides, think of how much Republican-y merchandise we could have purchased with that $100. Nearly 600 miniature American flags from Temu. Two George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” Flight Suit Action Figures on eBay. Six t-shirts declaring the media the “Enemy of the People.” Almost three-quarters of a full tank of gas for a Ford F-150. One gold-foil embossed Donald J. Trump Presidential Edition copy of the God Bless the USA Holy Bible, before tax.
Either way, we couldn’t just skip covering it: Considering the Spokane County Republican Party had gone to war against one of its own candidates, the potential for juicy drama was, in sober journalistic terms, just too delicious.
Maybe I could duck in unnoticed, clad in the robes of a simple beggar. Maybe, inspired by President Trump, I could sneak in by stuffing myself inside a catering cart? Or maybe, through my overinflated sense of my own charm and animal magnetism, I could “rizz” my way in.
On the outside looking in
I walk into the lobby at the Mead Union Center convention site at about 8:45 am, sporting a Washington Post t-shirt — I’ve never written for the Post but hope the t-shirt just shows how serious I am about journalism — and my bright yellow RANGE press badge.
Secretary John Scherling asks if I have a ticket. I roll the dice, admit I’m a reporter, but fail the Charisma check. I wouldn’t be getting in without paying, he said.
Why were journalists being billed a higher price? I ask. Why charge the fourth estate as much as the second and third estates combined?
"Committee decided that," Scherling says. He doesn’t say which committee.
Why?
“I dunno,” Scherling elaborates.
Fortunately, the doors into the convention’s main room had one weakness: windows. I walk up to the doors and stare plaintively through the doors’ windows, like a shivering Victorian orphan waif standing in the snow, watching a happy family celebrate Christmas indoors.
But I had one thing that those freezing paupers didn’t: a 500mm Nikon telephoto zoom lens. I dig into my oversized backpack and hoist out my behemoth of a lens — the sort paparazzi use to get pictures of heartbroken Ben Affleck getting Dunkin door-dashed, but I use to get disturbingly close pictures of marmots — and point it through the glass to see what I could see.
There: I could see Spokane City Councilman Michael Cathcart looking intensely at his phone.
There: I could see 6th District state legislative candidate Jonathan Bingle standing in front of the convention audience, stripping off his red polo shirt before replacing it with a “Faith, Family, Freedom” shirt with a Christian cross set against an American flag. (Thankfully/tragically, depending on your political orientation, Bingle had an undershirt on.)
There: I could see, projected on the wall, a clip of the miniseries Sons of Liberty showing Sam Adams (Ben Barnes, The Punisher) waxing eloquent on the eve of American independence. Freedom isn’t free, but at $8.99 a month for Amazon Prime Video, you can stream Sons of Liberty for $91 less the GOP charges for press access.
Every so often, the door would open and I would catch a brief clip of sound. “...does the government work for us, or do we work for the government?...” or “...with businesses like mine…” or — of course, of course — “USA! USA! USA!”
Lobby lobbying
At one moment, the Spokane GOP staffers managing the front desk in the lobby try to get me kicked out of the building entirely.
“You're taking pictures of our event, and you're not even supposed to be in here,” they chide.
Someone in the party overrules them, striking a compromise. I would be allowed to stay in the lobby, so long as I didn’t cross the threshold into the main room. That meant I could hit up convention-goers for comment if they left the safety of their sanctuary.
Representative Rob Chase (R-Spokane Valley) doesn’t want to be interviewed. He’s upset about a “hit piece” he says I wrote, though he doesn’t remember exactly what it was about, or if it was me who wrote it. Either way, he doesn't want to speak with “‘Grange’ or whatever.”
But there are plenty of others who are happy to talk. Bingle walks out the door, flashes one of those sparkling politician smiles that practically comes with an audible *ding* and walks up to shake my hand. He says he was unfamiliar with the elevated price for press credentials.
"This is the first time I'm hearing of that," Bingle says. Shucks, if it was up to him, Bingle jokes, he would have charged me 10 times the normal price. He grins. *Ding.*
I catch former state committeeman Matt Hawkins on the way out, and he’s eager to discuss his thoughts on how the Washington legislature should elect its senators differently, to give rural areas a bigger advantage. Though he didn’t end up staying for the convention, as a guest of Rob Linebarger, the party chair, he said he wasn’t being charged anything to enter.
“They should let you in!” Hawkins says. “Just say, ‘it sounds like you’re willing to let Hawkins be a guest. Why can’t I be a guest?”
I find an unexpected ally: former Spokane GOP chair Cecily Wright. I haven’t gone easy on Wright in the past, but she trusts that I’m true to my word. And she’s certainly not a fan of how the party is being run now, arguing the party is "in pretty deep doo-doo."
She tips me off that she’d prop the door open to the event hall so I could hear, but I’ve got to be subtle. Somehow, standing directly outside the open door staring down the room through my giant telephoto lens, wasn’t quite stealthy enough.
The door is soon shut by Spokane GOP Sergeant at Arms Tracy O’Donnal, a man wearing a “Washington Molon Labe” polo shirt and a name tag identifying himself as an executive officer of the 63rd Battalion of the Washington Lightfoot militia.
I text extremism expert Devin Burghart, the director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, and he texts back that he considers this militia to be a “far-right” group. You may be relieved to know, however, that the militia website states that they do not promote “the overthrow of any government, whether local, state or national.” Still, I opt not to attempt to get into an intense argument with this gentleman about press access.
Yet any time a journalist is denied any kind of information, he wants nothing more than to find it out. What amazing or horrible things were unfolding, secreted behind these doors? Were they calling the question? Raising points of order? Seconding motions? The imagination boggles. Would I, for the rest of my life, be haunted by what I missed witnessing?
But then my phone buzzes with a link: Caleb Collier, a former Spokane Valley Councilman, had paid the $100 media fee and was streaming the whole thing on video on his “Church and State” podcast. So I sit on the sweltering concrete steps outside the Mead Union Center, crack open my laptop, and begin to take notes on the video stream of the event happening 10 feet to my left.
Meanwhile, Dinman, the Spokesman reporter, watches the same stream from the much more pragmatic, air-conditioned comfort of his own living room.
When I listen to the whole stream from the beginning, I hear Bingle deliver his keynote address.
"Is there any media in the room? Any media in the room?" Bingle asked during his keynote. "Okay, Church and State's in the room."
But Bingle knew very well, of course, there is another media, one just outside the wall, wanting in, but too stubborn to pay the price. But maybe that’s the real test: maybe a real journalist never wants to be in a room that wants him there.
