Lee’s Summit school board candidate rallied for Trump in DC on Jan. 6. Do voters care? | Opinion

David Grady is a candidate for a seat on the Lee’s Summit School Board of Education. Grady was admittedly present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and it was documented in a screenshot of a photo of Grady and his wife Penny L. Shaw-Grady that was sent to us by concerned district residents. This week, a new search for the photo in question came up empty — but screenshots sometimes provide credible evidence that a cover-up is afoot.

Nothing indicates Grady did anything illegal. But it’s fair to question whether anyone who attended a rally to protest the outcome of a free and fair presidential election is fit to hold public office in Lee’s Summit or anywhere else.

This week, Grady addressed why he was in D.C. when rioters tried to overtake the U.S. Capitol.

“I am not a man that tries to hide things,” Grady wrote Wednesday on his campaign’s Facebook page. “My trip to DC has been public knowledge for two years.”

Grady’s post condemned the violence that erupted that day. But why were Grady and his wife there in the first place?

“We stayed with our group in the designated areas where police were peacefully observing,” Grady wrote. “I did not go into the Capitol buildings. I did not go into the Supreme Court. We stayed outside with the hundreds of other law abiding citizens around us.”

Being in Washington, D.C., for Donald Trump’s anti-democracy rally doesn’t disqualify Grady from running for local office. But it should give voters pause about whether he’s committed to the basic democratic norms of fair representation.

Grady has impressive qualifications for the school board. He is a former college teacher who graduated with an associate degree in engineering from Metropolitan Community College-Longview in Lee’s Summit, according to online biographical information. He completed a tool and die maker apprenticeship at Honeywell, too. But his résumé does not absolve Grady of his presence in Washington on that frightful day, one of the darkest in American history.

Is Grady a 2020 presidential election denier? Publicly, he won’t say. Attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful. We left him messages seeking clarity about being at the site of the attempted coup that directly led to the deaths of seven people, countless injuries and more than 700 arrests, according to a bipartisan Senate report.

We spoke with several area residents who asked Grady on Facebook about his trip to D.C. Some were either blocked or ignored, they told us.

“How is it that a David Grady, who was proudly at the January 6th insurrection, is a candidate for LSR7 BOE and no one is reporting this?!” Lee’s Summit resident Jessica Ruether wrote in a post on the Equity in Lee’s Summit schools private Facebook page. The post included a photo of Grady and his wife, Peggy Shaw-Grady, hugging and smiling near U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6. “We can’t let this type of lunacy infiltrate our school board.”

In an exchange with Tim Smith, campaign manager for former Lee’s Summit school board member Megan Marshall, Grady defended being in Washington on Jan. 6. He did the same in an exchange on Facebook with Lee’s Summit resident Meredith Nelson.

“You will not find photos of me being violent, engaging in domestic violence or destroying anything,” Grady wrote. “Trust me if I was involved in anything illegal or incriminating the FBI would have arrested me by now because clearly as you can tell I have nothing to hide.”

Why is Grady ducking us, blocking folks and deleting critical comments on Facebook?

“I have blocked one person that is not a Lee’s Summit R-7 constituent,” Grady wrote to Nelson. In recent days, Grady’s ignore-and-delete strategy has ramped up, they said.

To think Grady has no shot at being elected would be foolish. Nationwide in 2021,11 attendees of the Jan. 6 rally were elected to public office, according to Politico. The publication reviewed Department of Justice case reports, social media posts, news accounts and interviews and found protesters were elected to state legislatures, city councils and school boards across the country.

And the number of insurrectionists seeking public office rose to 57 last year, Politico’s review found. At least three 2022 candidates have been charged with crimes for their roles in the Jan. 6 riots.

In an interview with “Inside Edition,” Noah Bookbinder, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, chided anyone who participated in trying to overturn a free and fair election.

Election deniers “ought not to be in a position of authority in this country,” Bookbinder said.

During a panel Monday, Grady was among seven candidates vying for three seats on the Lee’s Summit school board making their plea to voters. None broached the topic of his insurrection trip. That was a mistake. The public has a right to know why a candidate for school board went to the nation’s capital with his wife to protest Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump.

Rally-goers who didn’t breach the Capitol still must account for why they were there. Until folks made a public fuss in recent days, Grady had avoided all accountability. On April 4, Lee’s Summit residents must consider his sense of judgment when casting their vote.