John Gibbs (photo, left; bio here), a Stanford-educated software engineer and former Trump administration official who won a primary for a Michigan House seat by defeating an incumbent who voted to impeach Trump, “has a history of making false, inflammatory, and conspiratorial remarks on his Twitter feed, including numerous tweets promoting fringe concepts and figures,” Wikipedia says here.
That behavior goes back a long way. While in college, Gibbs “argued against women being able to vote” (see story here).
A spokeswoman for his campaign dismissed that as “nothing more than a college kid being over the top” (see story here). But is it? Gibbs really does seem to believe in a patriarchal society.
He wrote that “the founding fathers, who understood liberty and democracy better than anyone,” didn’t give women the right to vote. The 19th amendment, which does, was ratified in 1920. Before then, women’s suffrage existed piecemeal or not at all.
And in college, Gibbs supported repealing that amendment. Sure, he sings a different tune now, because women do vote, and campaigning to take that right away from them isn’t exactly a winning political strategy. But if I were a Michigan 3rd congressional district voter, I wouldn’t bet this leopard has change his spots.
The next question to ask is whether Gibbs is a one-off. Repealing women’s suffrage isn’t known to be a GOP position. But Republicans are big fans of “originalism.” They like what the Constitution meant in 1786, and don’t like reinterpreting it for modern society. Supreme Court conservatives, in recent decisions, have made a big deal of “history.” And in that period of American history, women couldn’t vote — and Gibbs would’ve been a slave.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority just took away women’s right to control their bodies. Who’s to say conservative “originalists” won’t go after other rights, including voting rights, if they get the chance? If I were a Michigan woman voter, I wouldn’t gamble by giving this guy a seat in Congress. It’s pretty clear to me the GOP wants a male-dominated society.