Editor,

About a week before election day, Tracy Abuhl, vice chair of the Island County Republican Party (ICRP), was told she’d have to wear a mask when in the room with election workers, or she could view the workers from outside the room.

She said she didn’t want to spend the weekend in jail – and she also didn’t want to act out without an audience. So she left and returned with a friend, who video recorded Tracy being “escorted” out of the election’s office.

Jealous of her performance, ICRP chair Tim Hazelo intentionally entered the ballot sorting room without a mask and was cited by a sheriff’s deputy.

Their dark comedy continued. They “served” our county auditor (a Republican) with a bogus “cease and desist” order. Tim acknowledged this was meant to be a threat, and he’d given her two days to comply, or else.

Then Tim and Tracy went to court to get a judge to end the mask rule. Sadly, the judge did not agree with them.

The drama continues: Hazelo believes things are much worse than we ever imagined – within the Republican Party. He said: “We have a bunch of soft, squishy … been-around-for-ever-and-ever Republicans … that aren’t going to change anything. And we’ve been electing them … or pushing them up through the party system! [But] they’re still not winning, even though we’re pushing up the most electable candidates. How many of them are in office?”” (From an interview with Hazelo and Abuhl by former ICRP executive committee member Richard MacQuarrie.)

So, Republicans are electing “them” but the most electable candidates still aren’t getting elected? I really think we need Carrie Kennedy, Damian Greene, Steve Myers, Wanda Grone, and Gary Wray to help explain this!

Or … maybe we need to ask “them,” our soft, squishy elected Republicans, Muzzall, Johnson, Sheriff Felici, Assessor Mauck and Auditor Crider: what the heck are those darn ICRP leaders up to this time?

David Freed

Clinton