Stomping Grounds: Sex Education Rules, Online Anonymity, Bribery Laws, and Flawed Candidates

New Jerseyans aren’t always civil, but it’s still possible for a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican to have a rational and pleasant conversation about politics in the state.  Dan Bryan is a former senior advisor to Gov. Phil Murphy and is now the owner of his own public affairs firm, and Alex Wilkes is an attorney and former executive director of America Rising PAC who advises Republican candidates in New Jersey and across the nation.  Dan and Alex are both experienced strategists who are currently in the room where high-level decisions are made.  They will get together weekly with New Jersey Globe editor David Wildstein to discuss politics and issues.

New Jersey Globe: The New Jersey State Board of Education’s approval of a new rule to segregate sex education classes based on gender identity and remove numerous instances of gendered language appears to have erupted into a major battle, with some significant Democrats distancing themselves from the vote.  Are Republicans winning this fight?

Dan Bryan: Let’s take a step back and look at the issue: there is a very small percentage of children that identify as a gender that differs from their biological sex. As brave as these children are to say that out loud and live life as their true self, they’re also extremely vulnerable to bullying and exclusion. They’re trying their best to navigate their world as their true selves without being harassed and abused, and if they’re lucky, they’ll live in a welcoming community that accepts them for who they are.

Now let’s look at what the Republican party is doing. They are preying on young children attempting to live their life, pursue their happiness, in a society that hasn’t yet widely accepted them. A core message for the national Republican party right now is to single out these children, demonize them, and harass anyone that stands up for them. Even by the standards of the modern Republican party, it has all been markedly ghoulish. Persecuting young, vulnerable children for a cheap political score is certainly not a Christian value, as far as I know.

So no, the Republican party isn’t “winning” this fight. They’re digging deeper and deeper into the gutter to find culture war issues with which they can scare their base and demonize “others” regardless of who it hurts, or even the lives it costs. The Republican brand is in the toilet because of stunts like this and the lack of any actual cohesive substantive platform. Being on the side of oppressing the most vulnerable amongst us is usually a guarantee that you’re on the wrong side of history – with this, the Republican party is alienating themselves even further from young voters and future generations.

Alex Wilkes: ​​Yes, we are winning this fight because the logic of Governor Murphy, Democrats in the legislature, and the Board of Education here defies common sense and offends common decency. They unleashed this insanity with the curriculum changes that were passed under the cover of COVID, and they now own all of its poisonous fruit.  A few notes, though:

First, I think there is a very good chance that these sentiments may not be accurately captured in conventional polling. I’ve seen this issue so badly whitewashed in questions calling it just “sex ed,” that respondents might not have a full grasp of the issue when asked.

Second, much to the Democrats’ dismay, we are no longer dealing in hypotheticals. Last spring, when concerned parents gave Senator Holly Schepisi an advanced look at the proposed curriculum, hypocrites like co-sponsor Senator Vin Gopal spoke about some vague concerns they had, but the Democrats that were willing to go on record largely characterized the sample curriculum as an outlier and not really representative of what would go on in the classroom.

Now parents know the truth. It came home right in their kids’ backpacks. If they didn’t like it, too bad; Murphy threatened to come after their districts’ funding. I personally drafted the opt-out language for moms who came to me in tears. What I really felt like writing was: it’s none of your damn business.

The latest vote puts these issues in even starker terms. This fall, I think you will be hard-pressed to find a parent that wants their middle school-aged daughter sitting next to a biological male during a health class presentation about how to insert a tampon.

I’ll measure our success come November, but for now, I’ll count the number of Democrats 1) unwilling to come out in support of these specific measures, or better yet, 2) who privately tell me how screwed up this all is.

NJ Globe: A lawsuit filed by Raymond Lesniak caused Patch to reveal the IP address and identity of the person who anonymously defamed him on the Internet.  Should people who make disparaging and untrue statements online have a better understanding that they’re just one subpoena away from being outed?

Alex: I guess some people have become so desensitized by the constant online vitriol that they may not realize that a ceiling for that type of behavior has existed all along.

Defamation comes from the common law, but it’s hard to find a high-profile case today in the sewer of online replies and comments mostly because Congress decided through Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that we wouldn’t treat social media companies like Facebook and Twitter like a publisher for purposes of deciding who is liable for the content third parties post on their sites. Dan can call me a murderer on Twitter, and while I may have a case against him, I wouldn’t have one against the social media giant.

Patch might be online, but it’s still a publisher. Essentially, they’re doing the “picking” and the “choosing” for their content, meaning that they chose to feature this salacious story as news and then became responsible for its defamatory content (along with the atrocious grammar). If “Kendra McIntire” had posited this wild theory in Patch’s comment section (assuming they have only generic content moderation for spam or obscenity), Patch might have avoided this whole mess.

But it’s not even close here. If Patch had not put this content up as its own, Senator Lesniak – and other victims of online abuse – may have otherwise had to go through a costly and lengthy “John Doe” lawsuit to find out the identity of the IP address holder. Here, Patch had no leverage to fight the subpoena, and they did the sensible (and decent) thing in agreeing to settle the case by revealing the author’s true identity.

Dan: Don’t put anything in writing that you don’t want landing on the front page of the Star Ledger. Early in my career, I had an innocuous email exchange with Governor Christie’s office that went that exact route – page one of the Star Ledger a few weeks later, something that was fairly shocking to a 25 year old Mayor’s assistant. But it taught me a good lesson – be careful what you put in writing!

That said, this person clearly went far, far over the line, and I’m glad they’re being held accountable. What they posted was ridiculous and harmful to Senator Lesniak. We all have freedom of speech, but we don’t have an inherent freedom to talk anonymous, slanderous shots in a public square.

NJ Globe: The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled this week that candidates can be charged with bribery even if they don’t win an election.  Did the Court get this right, or are they legislating?

Dan: This is a no-brainer. The courts (finally) got this right – you can engage in bribery even if you later lose your election. The previous decision was so bad, so mind-numbingly stupid, it made me genuinely concerned for our judicial system. So I’m glad to see this decision overturned and for common sense to prevail.

So for candidates out there thinking about taking a bribe: remember that you’ll now be held accountable again in New Jersey, even if you suck at politics!

Alex: Of all the 31 flavors you might find in a Baskin Robbins bag, a $10,000 cash bribe shouldn’t be one of them. I do think legislators should have come to that conclusion rather than the courts. The legislature could have explicitly treated elected and non-elected officials the same in this legislation. They do for purposes of campaign finance requirements and personal financial disclosures, for example. But they didn’t here.

And they should! The federal interpretations set a floor – not a ceiling – for the states. Let’s have the body closest to the people debate exactly what these standards should be and then hold perpetrators accountable.

NJ Globe: There’s a write-in candidate for school board in Park Ridge who faced a bunch of lawsuits for not paying her bills — I use that as an example of how flawed candidates stay under the radar screen in an era when local news coverage of campaigns has become virtually non-existent.  What’s the solution? 

Alex: More local muckrakers like Dan!

Dan: That’s a great question, one that I don’t have the answer to. I’d love for more communities to have what I have in the Village Green – a vibrant, professional hyper-local news source that covers all of the issues that are important to my community. I hope regional and hyperlocal media finds a business model that works and is sustainable – New Jersey desperately needs it.