By Heather Christensen

Special to the Journal

In response to the article “Man claims unfair ejection from Republican Party” I would like to clarify a few things. Nathan Butler is not a good leader. When questioned about this he retaliated in a call for John Christensen to resign as state committeeman or he would call for a motion to vote him out. The article stated the vote was “nearly unanimous” which it was. What it did not state was that the vote was held with only four voting elected PCO’s in attendance. One voter was Butler who had a personal agenda to get rid of John from the start, saying at the reorganization meeting held 30 days prior that he didn’t think they could work together and made it clear that he was trying to run the organization like a dictator. He also called for the vote with less than 24 hours notice. In the entire county there are only six elected PCO’s and a few others which Butler personally assigned. He called for them to vote as well even though they do not have voting rights to vote for the position in the first place. I voted against the motion because there was no just cause. It was all about personal feelings that Butler had and the negative smear campaign in email form that he launched against John. Stating several times that he was “polite” all the while being very passive aggressive in his approach. Butler has said during meetings that he thinks no one really wants to be involved in politics. This is obvious in the way he is running his chairmanship and the others who voted John out basically wanted peace so Butler would continue to do a job no one else wanted to do.

I resigned as secretary two days before the vote because Butler’s expectations of the office were unreasonable.

I would urge you to consider whether or not you want to follow Butler who is not a leader, who cannot take criticism and is rigid. Before the reorganization meeting, he asked me if I could separate out personal from political. After the vote to remove John he boasted to me that he knew of a confidential church issue in which my husband was involved. Butler violated that confidentiality by talking about it outside of the church without any authority to do so. This showed to me that he did have a personal agenda against my husband which had nothing to do with politics. Looking back it is obvious that he is the one who was worried about being able to separate his personal agenda from the party.

Heather is married to John Christensen and they both live on San Juan Island.