Republican Ted Howze loses local, state, national endorsements over social media posts
Several local officials have withdrawn their endorsements of Republican Ted Howze in his race to replace U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, in the November election after the latest news of more inflammatory posts on his social media accounts denigrating Latino immigrants, Muslims and others.
Those officials include Stanislaus County Supervisor Terry Withrow, Hughson Mayor Jeramy Young and Patterson Mayor Deborah Novelli.
This comes as first the National Republican Congressional Committee pulled its endorsement of Howze and then the California Republican Party withdrew its support. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, has rebuked Howze and said he would take immediate action if Howze is responsible for the posts. But McCarthy had not rescinded his endorsement as of Friday morning.
Modesto Mayor Ted Brandvold, former Modesto Councilwoman Janice Keating — who is running again to serve on the City Council in the November election — and Modesto City Schools board member John Walker said they continue to support Howze.
“I don’t plan on pulling my endorsement,” Brandvold said. “Fortunately for Ted, I’m a real loyal guy. That’s just me. I do think maybe it will cost me politically, but I think Ted would be a person who would really fight for us in D.C. I just see him as a fighter for us.”
Brandvold, who is running for re-election in November, said he does not condone the social media posts but said he is taking Howze at his word that Howze was not responsible for them.
“It’s not the Ted Howze I know,” said Brandvold, who said he has known Howze for about a year and is among the local mayors who have worked with Howze on his Operation Compassion, which has distributed free food to seniors and provided other help during the pandemic.
The website Politico broke the story Wednesday about the latest posts. It reported reviewing at least a dozen on Howze’s Facebook account over two years. Politico said they were interspersed “throughout frequent life updates that included pictures of Howze and his family celebrating holidays and attending sporting events.”
Criticizes Black Lives Matter
Politico said the posts it reviewed included ones from 2016 in which Howze compared the so-called Dreamers, the immigrants who came here as young children, to pedophiles and claimed Muslims could not be good American citizens.
Politico said Howze wrote this about the Black Lives Matter movement: “As a culture 95% percent of you vote in lock step for the same political party who held you as physical slaves and now wish to keep you as political slaves unable to effect any real change for the better.”
Politico reported Howze’s campaign declined to comment after it was provided screenshots of the posts but issued a statement that said: “It’s the policy of the campaign to not comment on fake news or redundant stories by the same insider online blog.”
Howze’s campaign declined to answer questions from The Bee or a request to speak with him but issued this statement: “It’s the policy of the Ted Howze for Congress campaign to not feed the Modesto Bee who publish unbalanced stories, editorialize their reporting, and have a clear liberal bias toward Josh Harder.”
But in a Facebook post, Howze wrote: “The maliciously false attacks on our campaign based on old social media posts being attributed to me are Fake News. They do not resemble anything close to my personal words or actions exhibited during my decades-long record of service in the Central Valley.
“The Congressional Primary of 2018 was a extremely competitive race, and no mention of any such derogatory posts we ever made. We are under attack by national Democrats and their left-wing media because our campaign is a real threat to beat Josh Harder.”
Howze, 53, came in a third in the 2018 primary for the California Congressional District 10 seat behind Harder and longtime U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock. Harder then went on to beat Denham in the November election that year. Howze is a former Turlock councilman and large-animal veterinarian. The district encompasses Stanislaus and southern San Joaquin counties.
Others were responsible for ugly posts
This is the second time this month Howze has faced criticism regarding his social media.
Politico reported May 6 about a series of ugly Facebook posts, tweets and retweets on Howze’s social media from January 2017 to March 2018. They include: The founder of Islam was a rapist and pedophile. The parents of the Dreamers are criminals and should be sent back to Mexico. One retweet mocks a survivor of the Parkland High School shooting, in which 17 people were killed.
Howze, in a statement, disavowed the comments, called them disgusting and said he did not write them. His campaign manager said then that people with access to Howze’s social media were responsible for the comments but declined to name them.
A Democratic operative has said he took the screenshots of Howze’s social media when Howze started his run for Congress in March 2018. The operative said that within a few hours the Twitter account had been deleted, and the Facebook posts had been deleted or removed from public view.
Withrow — a longtime and respected Stanislaus County supervisor — said he took Howze at his word the first time that he was not responsible for the comments but it was harder to do that the second time, especially after national Republican leaders had rebuked Howze.
“The party that Ted represents ... I totally support the party,” said Withrow, who spoke with The Bee before the California Republican Party rescinded its endorsement. “I just cannot support these statements whether they are true or not (whether or not Howze is responsible for them). It’s just something I don’t want to get involved in.
“I don’t want to believe that he did this. But now I see that the Republican Party is starting to pull back. I support my party. ... I assume the party has done a little more homework on this.”
Former Rep. David Valadao, a Republican challenging Rep. TJ Cox, D-Fresno, for his old seat, is asking Howze to give away the money he provided to Howze’s campaign. Valadao’s leadership political action committee, called Vitoria PAC, donated $2,500 to Howze’s campaign on March 30.
“Like everyone, David was disappointed to read about Ted Howze’s social media posts,” Andrew Renteria, Valadao’s campaign manager, said in a statement to McClatchy. “As a result, he asked that the $2,500 Vitoria PAC donated to the Howze campaign be sent to a local food bank instead of seeking a refund.”
Hate that can pull a community apart
Novelli — who is in her fourth year as Patterson’s mayor after serving on the City Council for six years — said it definitely caught her attention when McCarthy and the National Republican Congressional Committee weighed in on this. (She also spoke with The Bee before the California Republican Party pulled its endorsement.)
She said she has communicated with Howze since the first story and said that he called the matter fake news and it involved Photoshop, a software program that can be used to manipulate images.
“He said he was working to prove it was not him,” she said. But Novelli said he has not provided details on that and wonders what progress Howze has made and whether he has asked Facebook, Twitter or the authorities for help.
“I’ve given him the opportunity to prove it was false,” she said. “It hasn’t happened yet. I hope he can. There are ways to prove this. But this type of rhetoric and talk is unforgivable. ... This type of hate and comments pull a community apart.”
Hughson Mayor Jeramy Young said he endorsed Howze because they are both conservatives and believe in lower taxes, less regulation and smaller government. Young said he has known Howze since 2018 and said he has never seen him act in a way that made him think Howze was not “pure of heart.”
Young said he stood by Howze after the first article but decided to pull his endorsement when the second one came out because it had more detail and family type posts were mixed in with the derogatory ones. “That was the point where I decided I needed to take action. This was the first time I had to pull an endorsement. It was not comforting.”
Eight of Stanislaus County’s nine mayors endorsed Howze. (Riverbank’s Richard O’Brien was the exception.) The other mayors who endorsed Howze did not respond to texts or emails sent Thursday seeking comment. (Withrow was the only Stanislaus supervisor to endorse Howze, according to Howze’s campaign website.)
Howze releases endorsements to stop ‘bullying’
Howze then issued a tweet about 8 p.m. Thursday saying that the livelihoods of the officials who had endorsed him were being threatened by the Democratic National Committee and The Modesto Bee. “I’m immediately releasing all local officials from their endorsements to stop these bullying attacks on them,” Howze tweeted.
Keating served on the Modesto City Council from 2002 to 2009 and said that’s when she got to know and work with Howze, who served on the Turlock City Council from 2006 to 2010.
She said the Ted Howze she knows is a hard worker and a good guy and cares about the issues that matter to local residents: affordable, quality health care and jobs that can support families.
Keating, who is running in the November election to fill the seat being vacated by outgoing Councilwoman Kristi Ah You, said the posts are deplorable but are a tiny percentage of Howze’s social media. And whether or not he is responsible for them, no one should be judged based on the sum total of their social media. The exception, she said, would be if all or nearly all of the posts were ugly and hateful.
“The Ted Howze I know is not in any way indicative of the person being portrayed in the reported social media posts,” she said.
Walker, the Modesto school board member, said he stands by Howze and believes it when he says these were not his social media posts.
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 2:45 PM.
