299 Days: The Preparation Part 8

We won. Now what do we do?

Things were also going great at work. WAB was getting famous for fighting the power. It felt fabulous.

It was an election year. That meant that the pathetic Republicans would come to WAB groveling for money and promising to fight for small businesses. Yawn. Grant and the other WAB guys had heard this before.

A new face appeared. He was Rick Menlow; a young and slightly nerdy guy in his late thirties. He was a Republican county commissioner from Snohomish County, which was part of the Seattle suburbs. His district was gerrymandered to include the rural areas of that county so the Republicans could have at least one seat. That was "fairness" in the one-party state of Was.h.i.+ngton. The Ds would throw the Rs a bone now and again.

Menlow was running for State Auditor. Was.h.i.+ngton had a very strong auditor's office. The auditor could basically investigate anything that involved state or local government spending of public funds. That was a huge part of the Was.h.i.+ngton state economy, unfortunately.

The current auditor was a Democrat hack. She used her office to cover things up. "The State Auditor did not find any wrongdoing," is what the government would say when someone found something out like when Sellarman, the Real Estate Board guy, was doing something corrupt. That was exactly what happened in the Ed Oleo case; the State Auditor found no wrongdoing. Move along, nothing to see. Only crazy people thought there was anything wrong with government.

WAB interviewed candidates to decide whether to endorse them. A WAB endors.e.m.e.nt was sought after by Republicans. It meant lots of votes from small businesses and quite a bit of money. WAB's PAC was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with money thanks to all the court victories they were having. It seemed like WAB was the only counterweight to the government in the state. That would end up being dangerous for the WAB staff and their families.

The WAB interview was conducted by Tom Foster, Ben Trenton, Brian Jenkins, and Grant. Candidate interviews were one of Grant's least favorite things. The politicians coming before them were such lying s.h.i.+tbags. And pathetic. Why would any Republican run in Was.h.i.+ngton State? There must be something wrong with them to go through that.

When it was Grant's turn to ask the candidate a question he asked Menlow, "What would you do differently than the inc.u.mbent if you were to be the State Auditor?"

"My job," Menlow said flatly.

Good answer.

"How so?" Ben asked.

Menlow smiled like he'd been waiting to tell someone his plan. "I would fire most of the people there and use the resulting money to hire outside auditors to actually audit state and local governments. You guys know all the stuff I'd find. I would tell the Legislature that if they try to defund my investigations, then they're trying to prevent me from uncovering what they're doing."

OK, this Menlow guy was saying all the right things. But he was a Republican running statewide. There hadn't been a statewide Republican officeholder in almost three decades.

WAB decided to endorse Menlow, put the endors.e.m.e.nt in their magazine, which went out to about 20,000 small businesses in the state, and donate the maximum contribution of $2,000. Menlow would lose, but WAB would do what they could. They never really thought about it much more.

A few weeks later, Eric came running into Grant's office very excited.

"Did you hear the news about the State Auditor?"

"No. Is it good?" Grant asked.

"Oh yeah. Wait till you see this." Eric was practically running to Tom's office where there was a TV.

A small crowd had gathered around the TV. The local news was playing a grainy video of a police dash camera. It showed a drunken woman in a business suit doing a sobriety test. Then she shoves the cop, jumps in her car, and takes off - only to hit a little kid in a cross walk! Then the camera catches her screaming, "Do you know who I am! Don't f.u.c.k with me, pig!" Finally, the police tackled her and then tried to give first aid to the kid, who was a little girl.

The room of WAB staff was silent. Stunned. No one could believe it.

"She's done," Tom finally said. "Call Menlow. We've got a campaign to run." There was blood in the water. The WAB staff was charged up and running on adrenaline.

The Democrat State Auditor tried to resign the next day. This would give the Governor time to appoint another friendly person to make sure things kept getting covered up at the State Auditor's Office. But it was right before the election so the Auditor's name was already on the ballot. There was only one other name on the ballot: Rick Menlow.

In the next few days, WAB raised a ton of money for Menlow. It wasn't too hard. WAB was the 900 pound gorilla of the "right wing" in Was.h.i.+ngton State. The media constantly replaying the drunken State Auditor screaming "Do you know who I am!" didn't exactly hurt Menlow's campaign. WAB polling showed Menlow would win so there wasn't much drama for election night. It would be a rare celebration instead.

The WAB staff, including Grant, went to the Republican election night "victory party." Grant had gone to one a few years earlier but quit going. They were like funerals. There never were any "victories" on election night.

The first returns came in a little after 8:00 p.m. Menlow was winning but it was surprisingly close, though, 52% to 48%. A drunken lunatic running over a child still got almost enough votes to win with a "D" after her name. Grant hoped that those voters simply didn't know what had happened. But, with the constant repeating of the video of her on TV, most of the people in the state must have seen her running over that little girl. That meant a sizable portion were still voting for the State Auditor because she had that all-important "D" after her name on the ballot.

WAB staff were invited to Menlow's hotel room at the party. At this joyous moment, they were all silent. They still couldn't believe that a Republican-and one who promised reforms, no less- might actually win an election in ultra-leftist Was.h.i.+ngton State.

Then Menlow's cell phone rang. Everyone knew what that meant. The concession call from the other side.

Menlow was very polite and respectful. When he hung up he wasn't smiling. He looked scared.

"Well, that was the concession call." Menlow said, still very disturbed. "Oh c.r.a.p. We won. Now what do we do?"

Menlow's campaign manager, an attractive and savvy-looking young woman named Jeanie Thompson, blurted out, "Dunno. Maybe a transition team?" Everyone in the room laughed. No one had any plan whatsoever for actually winning. This was the first time it had actually crossed their minds.

Menlow pointed at Tom and said, "We need to talk." It was pretty obvious that the people in the hotel room would be the transition team. It was an electric feeling. Finally! The good guys had won. We can do some good things, Grant thought. Finally. It was their turn to fix things.

Not surprisingly, WAB essentially ran the transition. There was no one in the Was.h.i.+ngton State Republican Party who remembered how to do one since they hadn't won any statewide elections in over thirty years.

So WAB just made it up as they went along. Grant, Ben, and Brian were the main WAB people working the transition team. They were Olympia insiders and knew all the things necessary to come into a state agency and transform it.

The ring leader of the old State Auditor's bureaucrats was Nancy Ringman. She was the Chief of Staff. She was a hateful little troll.

Like most of the other people running Was.h.i.+ngton State (and the rest of the country at that point), she was a baby boomer. Similar to so many others of her generation, she grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, was raised by "squares," rebelled against all that was official American squaredom in the late 1960s and early 1970s, went to college and learned about how great socialism was, got various jobs, and excelled in her career. She had to prove "woman power" to everyone and do it all: career and kids, although the career was more important. She had to be tougher than any man because the "old boys" would try to trip her up.

The problem with that mantra was that there were fewer and fewer "old boys." Most of the work force at the management level, especially in government, were either female baby boomers like Nancy Ringman or feminized male baby boomers who felt guilty about being male and didn't want to look "macho."

Nancy Ringman revered government. It could solve all problems. In her mind, the only bad thing in the world was people who got in the government's way. Why did those people oppose all the great things government could do? They were greedy, that's why. Greedy people wanted to keep their ill-gotten gains.

Nancy was the typical Olympia bureaucrat, and she lived in the Cedars, along with Grant. She knew that Grant worked at WAB, which meant that he was one of those evil people.

Grant didn't really recognize Nancy at first. He didn't recognize most of the people who lived in his neighborhood. One day, when Grant was over at the State Auditor's Office meeting with the new Auditor-elect, Nancy saw him. To say that she hated Grant was an understatement. But her job was on the line so she thought she'd try the pleasantries that had gotten her this far.

"Oh, hi, Grant," she said. "I'm Nancy Ringman. Your adorable children come over to trick or treat. I'm on Whitman Street. I understand you're helping Auditor-elect Menlow on, " she couldn't bear to say "transition." "Helping him on some matters," she finally said. Nancy was trying to smile, but it was coming off as gritting her teeth.

Grant didn't hate Nancy, although he would be ent.i.tled to. He just thought of her as typical of everything that's wrong. She and the rest of the government-wors.h.i.+pping baby boomers needed to make room for a new generation of people. The new generation who had borne the brunt of all this wonderful government and knew what was wrong with the utopia the baby boomers had created- and who weren't so corrupted by the system that they could actually fix things. All Grant could think when he was talking to her was, "Get out of the way." But he didn't say it out loud.

Obviously the old Chief of Staff would need to go. That was a top-level change that Menlow himself needed to do. Grant, Ben, and Brian would do all the rest of the firings. At first, Grant felt bad about firing people, although most were c.r.a.ppy at their jobs and many of them were lazy. They all, to one degree or another, had covered up bad things. But it was still hard to fire someone.

They all had jobs waiting for them in some other state agency. The government knew how to take care of its own. The State Auditor's Office hacks would come out of this unscathed. They didn't see it that way, though. Even though they had guaranteed jobs- most were actually making more at their new agencies run by fellow Democrats -they still felt ent.i.tled to do the job they wanted to do. They actually felt it was entirely their choice which job they had. And, in the past, they had always got what they wanted. The old Auditor's staff viewed the voters as idiots who were meddling in their careers.

The question was how deep the firings would go. Of course, WAB thought they should go very deep. Clean house.

Menlow, however, was a nice guy. He didn't want to fire everyone. He was a politician; why make enemies he didn't need to?

"If we fire everyone, who will run the agency?" Menlow asked them in one of their meetings. "Now that I'm the Auditor, if this place screws up it's my fault." In hindsight, this should have been a clue to Grant that Menlow wasn't a reformer but rather just a new bureaucrat.

Ben could see what was happening. He dealt with politicians all the time. "Yeah, but you ran for this office to change things. To start doing good things. Remember when we asked what you'd do different and you said, *my job.' Well, your job is to fire these corrupt s.h.i.+tbags."

Menlow frowned at the "s" word; he didn't like swearing. He regained his composure and said, "Yeah, I guess you guys are right. But let's leave the rank and file workers. They didn't do anything wrong."

"Yes, they did," Grant said. He retold the story of rank and file State Auditor's employees not doing anything about Sellarman at the Real Estate Board. Grant gave other examples of State Auditor's employees who hadn't lifted a finger even when irrefutable evidence of corruption was presented to them.

"Besides," Grant said to Menlow, "even if the rank and file didn't personally do bad things, they have loyalties to the people who made the decisions."

"And," Brian added, "Because so many illegal things have happened in the State Auditor's Office, the rank and file have a motive to help cover it up since they were involved, too." Good point. All the rank and file employees were accessories to the misconduct and would act like accessories by trying to thwart the investigations.

Menlow was silent, thinking about what he should do. The silence continued. Tom could see that Menlow was reluctant to fire people and that WAB couldn't force Menlow to grow a pair of b.a.l.l.s.

Finally, to let Menlow save face, Tom said, "The people elected you, Mr. Auditor, not us. It's your office. It's your choice on the rank and file."

After some more discussion, Menlow said he wouldn't fire the rank and file. "Or some of the mid-level managers," Menlow added. So Menlow had gone from wondering if he should fire the rank and file to now thinking he should keep some of the mid-level managers, who were definitely guilty in all the corruption of the State Auditor's Office.

Menlow said, "One more thing, guys. I need someone to go after agencies on behalf of citizens. Grant, you want a job here?" What? Working for the government?

"Yes," Grant blurted out. It surprised even Grant that he said that. "What, exactly, would I do?"

"Take in citizen complaints about state and local government and then use the full power of the State Auditor's Office to investigate the complaints." Menlow was smiling, knowing that Grant wanted to do this. Menlow was also smiling because he knew he could leverage WAB's credibility with the right wing and never have to worry about being thought of as too soft on state and local agencies when he had hired a WAB pit bull like Grant.

"Special a.s.sistant to the State Auditor?" Menlow said. "How does that sound?" Menlow knew what Grant would say.

"The full power of the State Auditor's Office?" Grant asked. After Menlow had just gone soft and decide to keep most of the old employees, Grant was wondering if Menlow would really do any reforming.

"I get free reign to go after people who broke the law?" Grant asked. He needed this authority to do his job.

"Yes. Full authority," Menlow said. This was the political compromise Menlow was making; keep the old employees, but hire a pit bull to go after corruption. It seemed like it would work, at least everyone in that room hoped it would.

"Done," Grant said and extended his hand for a handshake. "So, boss, when do I start?"

That was it. Government-fighter Grant Matson had just become a government employee. For a good cause, of course.

Chapter 19.

A Hillbilly with a Law License Why in the world would Grant want to be a government employee? Grant loved WAB, but he realized that he could do more of what he was meant to do- fight government corruption - at the Auditor's Office. Work the problem from the inside. Tom, Ben, and Brian understood. They were happy for him. They knew that they would still see him all the time.

Work at the State Auditor's Office was great. Grant actually got paid to help people who were getting screwed by the government. And he didn't have to send them a bill. And Grant had the authority of the State Auditor's Office behind him so he could do great things for people from the inside. Grant was now a white-collar sheepdog fighting back against bullies. It was pure heaven.

The first few months of work at the Auditor's Office were the "honeymoon period" when everything was wonderful. One of the people Grant got to help was Joe Tantori.

Joe ran a firearms training facility for military and law enforcement. It was a compound; secure as h.e.l.l. It looked like a mini Blackwater facility. The military didn't want onlookers seeing how they trained.

Joe's facility was about two hours north of Olympia on the Puget Sound. There were numerous Navy bases in the Puget Sound and they did not have training facilities for firearms, which seemed weird. One of those bases was the Naval Magazine Indian Island where they stored munitions for the various naval installations in the Puget Sound. The second base was the Bangor nuclear submarine. Both bases needed a place to train. So did all the various local law enforcement agencies and even the federal law enforcement agencies on the Sound like the Border Patrol and Coast Guard at Port Angeles. Joe's range was it.

Joe constructed an extremely safe complex of shooting ranges and located it far from any neighbors so they wouldn't be bothered. He had a few hundred acres of buffer.

But that wasn't good enough. One of the distant neighbors was one of the three elected county commissioners. A few days a year, when the air temperature was just right and the winds were perfect, the commissioner could hear the faintest sound of gunfire. This was unacceptable. The commissioner started his quest to shut down Joe's facility.

The county, without a warrant, "inspected" Joe's facility. The Sheriff, who knew that the search was illegal, would not go along with it. So the county's land use enforcement officer, who was part of the county environmentalist clique that had elected the complaining county commissioner, conducted the search. The county land use department then ordered Joe to close it based on a repealed version of the land use ordinances. That's right; a repealed ordinance. Just like the Board of Real Estate tried with Ed Oleo. When the law won't allow what the government wanted, why not just use a repealed version of the law?

Joe brought it to their attention that the ordinance had been repealed and that the county had given him a building permit to build a shooting range exactly where he did and to the exact standards they specified. That wasn't good enough. Joe's lawfully permitted facility did not fit the land use department's "vision" for the area; a "vision" which did not include "violent" things like a shooting range and men in military uniforms. The hippies who dominated the county didn't like the "militarization" of Joe's land even if it was completely legal. Law and property rights needed to yield to the community's "vision."

This started five years of litigation, which cost Joe almost a million dollars. The land use department enforcement officer would periodically appear at Joe's range and inspect it, despite the fact that he had no warrant. This was completely unconst.i.tutional. But Joe's remedy was to go to court - expensive and time-consuming court. An elected judge, who knew the "community's vision," did not include Joe's lawful and harmless use of his own property, sided with the county over and over.

In all this litigation, Joe had sent the county a subpoena for all the communications between the county commissioner, land use department, and the hearing examiner deciding the administrative appeal of the building permit. The county said no such doc.u.ments existed. One morning a package appeared on at the main gate to Joe's facility. It contained several years of emails between the commissioner and the judge that said things like, "Do whatever it takes to shut down Tantori" and "I don't give a f.u.c.k about the law. Shut that a.s.shole down." One reply from the hearing examiner said, "Anything you say, boss." The smoking guns.

Except Joe was out of money. He had the smoking guns but no money to get them in front of a judge. If the county judge ignored them, he could probably get the court of appeals to care.

Joe called WAB, where Eric was able to help. He got Grant, who was now the "Special a.s.sistant to the State Auditor," involved, too. Grant demanded to see how much money the county was spending on that the lawsuit, which freaked out the county.

The real help for Joe came from Eric at WAB. He ended up getting Joe a new trial because of the obvious bias of the judge, and the trial was a success.

After the new trial, Joe could use his range again, and he was elated. Grant got to know Joe and Joe invited him and Eric out to the range one winter day. Eric couldn't make it.

Joe didn't know if an Olympia lawyer like Grant had ever shot a gun. He wondered if the fragile lawyer could handle the cold weather. They went out to the range with some steel targets in the shape of a human silhouette that fell down when they were hit. Joe handed Grant an AR-15 and said, "I bet you've never seen one of these." Grant thought he'd have some fun with Joe.

"Hey, I'm a lawyer," Grant said, "I don't know anything about guns. Is that a machine gun? Can I see it?" Joe gave him a safety briefing on how to run an AR. Grant listened patiently, pretending it was the first time he'd heard these things.

"You ready to shoot it?" Joe asked. "Don't be scared. It hardly kicks at all."

"OK. I'll give it a try," Grant said, like he was afraid. He took the AR, kept the muzzle pointed in a safe direction like a pro, looked down range, racked a round with an effortless pull of the charging handle, shouldered the rifle, smoothly clicked off the safety, got in a perfect shooting stance, and fired.

"Ping!" on the steel target. "Ping, ping, ping," on the other targets. Grant kept moving from the left to the right in between shots to make it harder for anyone shooting at him to hit him. He hit every steel silhouette. He clicked the safety back on and handed it to Joe. Joe was shocked. He didn't know what to say.

"I'm not your average lawyer," Grant said with a smile.

"What branch were you in? Marines?" Joe asked.

Grant laughed. "Nope. I'm UCG."

"UCG?" Joe asked. "What's that?"

"Untrained Civilian Goofball," Grant said. They laughed.

Grant winked and said, "Well, untrained when it comes to formal training. I bought one of these and shoot a little on the weekends." They shot together all day. Joe taught Grant some tips and tricks.

Ammunition was not a concern. Joe had cases of 5.56 ammunition. The Marines would bring ammo by the pallet and not shoot all of it, so he got the leftovers for personal use. Joe could not believe that a lawyer could run an AR like that. Grant could not believe that a guy he knew had cases of ammunition.

"So, you're a lawyer and you can shoot like this?" Joe asked at the end of the day. He still couldn't believe it.

"Yep," Grant said. "I'm their worst nightmare: a hillbilly with a law license."

They both knew who "they" were. People like the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who had tried to bankrupt Joe.

Joe felt like he could trust Grant. So he told Grant something very sensitive that he had been thinking for a long time but didn't want to tell anyone. Joe had a security clearance and had to stay in the good graces of his military and law enforcement clients. He couldn't be a "revolutionary."

"Have you heard of an organization called *Oath Keepers'?" Joe asked.