Conservative radio host Aaron Flint has announced that Derek Skees–the candidate in Whitefish who has been accused by a local group of associating with extremists and engaging in extremist behavior–will be on Flint’s show on October 11 to “respond to attacks by an anonymous blogger.” Presumably that’s me.

Skees’s problem is a very simple one:  Everything that has been said about him has been backed up with facts.  Even better, in an interview this week with Dan Testa of the Flathead Beacon, Skees admitted to having done the very three things that Steve Braun, head of the North Valley PAC, has accused him of: Displaying the Confederate Flag, using Guy Fawkes masks at political rallies, and attending a conference (sponsored by Skees’s own campaign treasurer) at which an anti-Semitic was on the program.

After the North Valley PAC went public with the allegations, I examined them and found that they seemed to be true. Initially, Skees  expressed outrage at “the politics of personal destruction” by “socialist kool-aid drinkers” who were causing his “wife and family to suffer.”  Unfortunately, after he was done with all the outrage, Skees was then forced to admit in the Beacon interview that 1) he did wear a confederate flag, 2) he did use Guy Fawkes Masks, and 3) he did go to the conference, and it was sponsored by his campaign treasurer. (Whom he ditched recently without explanation.)  In other words, he did everything that was alleged.

Cowgirl and others have raised some additional aspects of Skees, including the fact that Skees teaches a course on the scary “5000 Year Leap”; that he believes in Citizen Grand Juries (a favorite of the militia movement, especially the Freemen); that there were more wing-nuts at the Liberty Conference than just Red Beckman (list attached); that Skees believed in a 40% reduction in state education spending; that Skees claims that God has called on him to run for legislator (God created Glacier National Park, so I’d have to believe Will Hammerquist, who works for the Parks Association, is God’s pick in this contest);  and that a voter in Whitefish (who, I might add, is a pillar of the community, but doesn’t want any publicity in this matter) recently called the police because a canvasser from the Skees campaign knocked on her door carrying a gun.

So tune in to Aaron Flint, and let Derek know that, as one of our founding fathers once said, “Facts are stubborn things.”

UPDATE: You can listen to the show online here: http://tinyurl.com/3xv7j94 How do you think it went?