COMMENTARY: The intellectual dishonesty of David Grady’s trip to D.C.

Lee’s Summit Board of Education candidate David Grady believes he did nothing wrong by attending the Jan. 6, 2021 rally and subsequent insurrection during the counting of the Electoral College votes at our Capitol in Washington, D.C.

And while scholars and legal analysts may forever argue if simply being there was a crime, Grady, his wife and everyone else who attended the insurrection in the name of “election fraud” are guilty of this — being intellectually dishonest about their motives and explanations.

Of the tens of thousands who attended the rally at the Ellipse and subsequently marched to the Capitol to “stop the steal,” they tend to break out into two categories: those who completely own their actions and are proud of their role in that horrific day and those who went and later scrubbed their social media to ensure any mentions or photos would not later come back to haunt them.

Grady seems to fall into the latter category. And he doesn’t seem to be good with numbers, either. That, or he is prone to hyperbole, which would not be unique among those who don’t believe in election results and decided it would be a good idea to head on up to D.C. to continue to spread election lies in the name of being a great American.

Grady’s Jan. 6 role didn’t catch up with him until late February when photos of he and his wife began circulating on social media clearly showing them at the “stop the steal” rally. His wife posted, some 10 days after the event, a photo of the two, lamenting Vice President Mike Pence and gushing about the beautiful rally — the same rally that claimed multiple lives, injured 140 officers and, to date, has seen over 1,000 individuals charged with crimes and hundreds successfully prosecuted.

Now, David Grady can’t necessarily be bothered with such facts.

When he penned his Facebook mea culpa on March 1, Grady erroneously noted that he was one of “millions” of Americans to attend the rally at the Capitol. That’s a ludicrous number and is easily debunked. He goes on to claim that only “a few hundred broke the law and entered our nation’s Capitol.” Another misstatement on his part.

This is the same candidate, though, who claimed at a recent PTA political forum that families were “flocking” from the district while he was misstating the student enrollment.

From national offices all the way down to local boards of education, Grady certainly isn’t the first election denier to make that grand ask of voters — to cast a vote for them in an election they’re not fully capable of understanding or accepting themselves.

But here he is, making that ask. Fortunately, election deniers took a beating in the November national elections, with more than 100 losing statewide and national races. And when the races were competitive, election deniers did particularly poorly on the ballot.

Lee’s Summit’s political pendulum has swung wildly in the last few years, with voters selecting candidates who identified as far left, such as Megan Marshall, and far right, such as Jennifer Foley and Heather Eslick, to our school board. Lee’s Summit also twice has now elected Democrat Keri Ingle to state representative and selected another Democrat, Kemp Strickler, last fall for another state rep office.

In this shouldn’t-be-but-somehow-is highly partisan local election for school board, voters are being asked to choose from three candidates on the left and three on the right. By way of their campaign managers and their rhetoric on social media, they have placed themselves in the partisan boxes. And the voters are left to wonder why these local races stink so badly of national politics.

David Grady isn’t necessarily unelectable because he flew to Washington, D.C., having been duped by such grandiose stories of election fraud, dead voters and ballot stuffing. He is unelectable because anyone who believes such rubbish cannot be trusted with making decisions for our educators and our students.