In the political shadow of Trump, a Kansas felon runs for Congress

Call it trickle-down politics.

On Monday, just hours before the filing deadline, a Topeka man with a violent criminal history submitted the paperwork necessary to run for Congress.

“The majority of Kansas is probably going to vote for a felon for president,” said the newly minted candidate, Michael Allen Ogle, as quoted by KSNT. “So I figured why not take my shot, and you can vote for two if you want.”

How neatly Ogle summed up a cynical — and dangerous — campaign strategy. What recently would have been beyond the pale is now embraced, after Donald Trump’s May 30 convictions in the New York hush money trial, as street cred for politicians. The bar just keeps getting lower in American politics. If it gets much lower, we’ll all be in the gravel pit with Cricket.

Ogle is among five GOP hopefuls vying to fill the 2nd District seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, who is not seeking reelection. The district represents most of eastern Kansas, with the exception of portions of the Kansas City metro area and Lawrence. There are also two Democrats running, including Nancy Boyda, who held the seat for one term, until 2009.

Ogle pleaded guilty to aggravated domestic battery for choking a family member and interference with a law enforcement officer after a drunken Christmas morning domestic dispute in 2019 at his Topeka home, according to court records. Police had been summoned by a family member who said Ogle was inside with children, had access to a handgun, and was making threats. Police subdued Ogle with rubber bullets and in the course of the arrest, according to reports, fatally shot one of his dogs because it was deemed a threat to officers.

An Army veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and a member of the Kansas Army National Guard who retired at the rank of major, Ogle is the service officer of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1650 in Topeka, according to the organization’s website. In the KSNT interview, he blamed the drunken Christmas morning domestic dispute on his inability to adjust to civilian life following his overseas deployment.

Ogle did not respond to requests to talk with me about the incident.

But on a recent social media post, he disputed KSNT’s reporting.

“Yesterday KSNT news reported that I had choked my wife,” Ogle said in a video posted to Facebook on June 5. “I did not say that. What I said was the physical evidence did not match up with me choking anybody on Christmas morning of 2019 given the fact that I am, or was, a United States Army combative instructor.”

Does that mean if he meant to choke someone, they’d be dead? Or at least signs of major trauma? In the video, he doesn’t elaborate, but that’s sure what it sounds like. And where’s the remorse? He says he pleaded guilty only in order to settle the criminal case and be allowed to see his children.

“That is a choice I had to make during COVID and the suspension of the Constitution of the United States and the suspension of the Constitution of the State of Kansas,” Ogle said in the video. “These are realities when we depart, people have to make horrible decisions when our government departs from the Constitution.”

In the post, Ogle asserted “the courts are not just corrupt in New York, the courts are corrupt everywhere.”

While he stopped short of declaring his own case was corrupt, he didn’t have to. The implication is clear. He pleaded guilty but, you know, he wasn’t really guilty, because he just couldn’t fight the system and he took the hit for his kids’ sake.

Court records indicate Ogle spent 55 days in jail and, after entering the guilty plea, was given a two-year suspended sentence. He was advised of the prohibition against carrying a firearm. He was discharged from probation a year early. He told KSNT he hopes for an expungement of his record.

Those convicted of state or federal felonies are barred from voting in Kansas, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, unless their civil rights have been restored upon completion of their sentence. Felons are not prohibited from running for federal office, however, because the U.S. Constitution makes no mention of a disqualification for criminal history. Article 1 says representatives must be at least 25 years old, have been a citizen for seven years and live in the state they seek to represent.

Ogle has run for office before. In 2013, he won 32% of the vote as a Libertarian candidate for Topeka mayor. Although Ogle lost, the Libertarian Party of Kansas considered his numbers a win.

“Mike, with the guidance of his campaign manager Bob Cooper, ran a highly professional, spirited and organized campaign,” state party chairman Al Terwelp said. “The Ogle campaign did the LPKS proud. Mike ran on a great platform of issues that expressed the positive solutions Libertarians can bring to local government.”

I’ll bet the Libertarians are glad Ogle switched parties.

There is no hint of professionalism or a platform built on issues in Ogle’s nascent GOP run. Instead, he has latched onto the politics of grievance and hitched his star to the fall of democracy.

There are some courts and judges that are, without a doubt, corrupt, even in Kansas. Bill W. Lyerla, a magistrate judge in Galena, pleaded guilty in 2016 to embezzlement. But to say American courts are corrupt everywhere defames the institution that, while flawed, represents the best hope for justice we’re likely to find while still walking the earth. Such an accusation, from a candidate for Congress, also panders to the Trump cult, is intellectually lazy, and flirts with the kind of political chaos that plagues much of the world.

Nobody likes losing. Whether it’s an election or a court case, losing has consequences that range from the irritating to the catastrophic. It can be a growth experience, if you let it. But if we don’t agree to a shared set of rules — if our candidates declare that courts and elections are rigged, that the only fair contest is one in which they win, then they are undermining democracy itself. Democracy is in the details — the shared rules that we agree to follow in order to be self-governing.

“Stay tuned,” Ogle tells us in another Facebook post. “The powers that be want me destroyed and are grasping at straws.”

Who does that sound like?

There is a good chance Ogle will be defeated in the Aug. 6 primary, perhaps by former Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Trump toady and the best-known of the GOP 2nd District candidates. But the damage has already been done because self-pitying felons have become emboldened to run for federal office, even in boring Kansas. And there is the terrifying possibility, however unlikely it seems now, that Ogle could win the primary and then the seat.

You could vote for two felons, if you want.

I should make a distinction here between violent felons, those like Ogle, and the many individuals who have been convicted of felony charges based on nonviolent crimes with no victim, such as possession of marijuana, in the Sunflower State. Bring that Rocky Mountain high back with you from Colorado and you’re likely to lose your voting rights, too, if convicted.

There is also the matter of historical figures who were imprisoned for nothing more than stating their beliefs, and there is no better (or I should say worse) example of this than Eugene V. Debs.

Debs was a Socialist, a pacifist, a labor activist and a co-founder of the Wobblies. He was also a candidate for president five times. On his third try, in 1908, he gave a speech in Girard, Kansas, that became one of his best-known.

“When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other’s throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other,” Deb said, “we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends.

Debs gave that speech in Girard because it was the home of the Appeal to Reason, a Socialist newspaper that had, in 1910, more than half a million subscribers. The Appeal’s writers included Debs, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Mother Jones and Helen Keller, among others. Its readership declined after the first world war, but it’s difficult to overestimate its influence on early 20th Century political thought in America.

He was also called a “traitor” by President Woodrow Wilson for his opposition to America’s involvement in World War I.

In 1916, Debs made a speech at Canton, Ohio, in which he urged resistance to the draft.

“They have always taught you that it is your patriotic duty to go to war and slaughter yourselves at their command,” Debs said. “You have never had a voice in the war. The working class who make the sacrifices, who shed the blood, have never yet had a voice in declaring war.”

Debs was charged with sedition and found guilty.

At his sentencing hearing, Debs delivered a moving plea.

“Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for no immunity,” he said. “I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time, they will come into their own.”

Years before, Debs said, he had recognized his kinship with all living things and realized he was no better than the meanest among us.

“While there is a lower class, I am in it,” he said, “and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison and disenfranchised from voting for life. He ran again for president, from his jail cell at the federal pen at Atlanta, and garnered about a million votes. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence to time served — and received Debs at the White House.

Debs died of heart failure in 1926, at the age of 70.

No matter what you think of Socialism — and in the early 1900s many Americans were talking Socialism, including here in Kansas — consider the power of his public statements while being prosecuted for speaking his conscience. He asks for no immunity, seeks no special favor and uses the opportunity only to plead his philosophy.

Contrast that with the whining, self-serving, grievance-filled utterances of Trump. The trial was rigged, the election was stolen. “I’m a very innocent man,” he sputters, as if there are degrees of innocence. His wailing is that of a political Grendel seeking to undo us with chaos, misdirected anger and vengeance. Horrible decisions must be made, the Trump chorus murmurs, ignoring the overwhelming evidence of his guilt. All is corrupt.

“Felons, Donald Trump should be an inspiration,” Ogle posted Thursday on Facebook. “Sometimes you have to stand tall and assert your self-worth no matter who would disparage.”

An inspiration?

Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from a Birmingham Jail is an inspiration. So are Aleksei Navalny’s final letters from a Russian prison. Nothing Trump has said or done comes close to being moving, profound, or exhibiting a hint of original thought. His Tweets are an embarrassment, his speeches incoherent, and his actions abhorrent.

We must free ourselves from the monsters that have come creeping from the political shadows. To drive them out, we must embrace the disinfecting sunlight of fact. The 2020 election was not stolen and Trump’s trial was not rigged. As for Ogle — well, I hope he finds some peace from whatever demons he brought back from his deployment. But nobody who has pleaded guilty to the felony of aggravated battery for choking his wife deserves a place in Congress.

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

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