GOP House Candidate Denies Inflammatory Social Media Posts; Says Democrats’ Fingerprints All Over Accusations

Dr. Ted Howze, candidate for United States Representative in California’s 10th Congressional District, card-carrying official member of the Choctaw Indian Tribe, and a large animal veterinarian from the Central Valley, says he’s the victim of a nasty campaign smear perpetrated by Democrat operatives, and exacerbated by untruthful media accounts.

May 6, POLITICO ran with a story about old racist social media posts recently uncovered, claiming that Ted Howze, the Republican running against Rep. Josh Harder in CA-10th Congressional District posted these.

“The posts appeared over the course of several years and on Facebook and Twitter,” POLITICO reported. “Howze signed one of them and tagged family members in others. Some posts refer to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad as a rapist and a pedophile. Others accused prominent Democrats of murder and mocked a survivor of the Parkland school shooting.”

POLITICO acknowledged that Howze repeatedly denied that he wrote the dozens of social media posts in question, “instead claiming that unnamed individuals gained access to his Facebook and Twitter accounts.”

Howze said his campaign was contacted by a POLITICO reporter 30 minutes before she was going to publish the first story. She said she had “screen shots” she had received from Tom Steyer and Hillary Clinton operative Ryan Williams, and asked for Howze’s statement. Howze, who said he and his team had no idea what POLITICO was talking about, asked to see the screen shots of the social media posts, but were told that they would not be allowed to see them. “POLITICO contacted us and wanted us to reply in the blind,” Howze said. He noted that POLITICO said they didn’t include the social media posts in the first article because they did not believe them. But a second follow up article ran the social media posts screen shots. “Clearly they were photoshopped,” Howze said. “They tried to plant a plastic forest with a few plastic seeds. This was a campaign smear with doctored material.”

Nothing coming even close to these social media posts were ever found by the National Republican Congressional Committee oppositional researchers, or by Howze’s own campaign oppositional researchers. Oppositional research is the practice of collecting information on a political opponent to use to discredit them.

Ted Howze ran for CD-10 against then-Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) and Democrat Josh Harder in 2018. Harder won in the General Election. With each political campaign comes mountains of oppositional research. Social media posts were never brought up in his 2018 primary challenge against Denham and Harder, yet suddenly in 2020 screenshots of these alleged posts were given to Politico by the Steyer/Clinton operative.

Nothing but these screenshots exists.

Despite that, the press was off to the races, reporting as fact that these were his posts and Ted Howze was a racist and bigot. Yet that is all they have. When the first POLITICO story didn’t achieve the desired outcome, according to Howze and his campaign team, they ran the same story two weeks later, with no new facts. The second time around story did not pass the smell test either.

The Smell Test for the Dairy Vet

“The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, myth making, and self-interest,” the Harvard Business Review wrote back in 1995 in a review of News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works, by Paul H. Weaver, a former Harvard political scientist, journalist at Fortune magazine, and Ford Motor Company corporate communications executive. “Journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The two institutions have become so ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that the news media are unable to tell the public what is true and the government is unable to govern effectively.”

Howze says this story has Democrats’ fingerprints all over it, but could not have been accomplished without compliant media.

Ted Howze made it through the March 3, 2020 Primary Election ahead of two other Republicans, and will face Rep. Josh Harder in the November General Election, which would give rise to a motive: Republican voters cast 73,750 total votes to Harder’s 62,899 Democrat votes, showing that this could be a very close race.

Shortly after the second POLITICO article ran, the CAGOP pulled its endorsement, as did House GOP leaders and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

California Globe was told that Ted Howze was not the GOP’s first choice Republican candidate for the CA-10th congressional district to run against Josh Harder. Yet Howze has maintained a good relationship with former Rep. Jeff Denham, who has maxed-out his contribution to Howze’s campaign. And obviously, Ted Howze resonated with voters in the March Primary.

After the POLITICO articles ran, Howze’s campaign team found out the Modesto Bee ran the POLITICO article, rather than interviewing Howze separately.

Howze’s campaign team provided character witnesses from the Sikh, Muslim, and Latino communities to POLITICO and other members of the press, but none of the character witnesses was contacted. When media chooses not to do the follow up or run a story, it is akin to lying. The truth may not grab headlines the media so desperately needs.

The only publication that bothered to contact a character witness was ironically one out of the United Arab Emirates, which ran a lengthy article:

Mr Howze told The National that these are abhorrent posts and denied that he had written them, claiming someone else had obtained his password years ago.

“These are disgusting and I absolutely disagree with the negative and ugly ideas,” he said.

“I learnt the very hard lesson to never allow anyone access to accounts or passwords.

“I made the mistake of allowing others access to my accounts unknowingly. And I am angered, horrified and extremely offended.”

As for Ted Howze being some sort of a racist, he is an official member of the Choctaw Indian Tribe, yet no reporters have ever acknowledged this except the National AE. Howze said that he grew up a poor kid in Arizona on and off Indian reservations.

As a large animal veterinarian and decades-long resident of the Central Valley, Howze says he is most interested in improving the daily quality of life of valley residents. “In the Central Valley, it’s about community with the people, not party politics.”

Howze works with Future Farmers of America, and is also a high school football coach. He says he has coached thousands of kids through the years.

Howze’ wife suddenly passed away several years ago due to an undiagnosed heart condition that he says could have been treated. His three boys were 14, 15 and 17 years old. He recently remarried Laura, who is a math teacher and student activities director for a local high school.