Leading birther attorney Gary Kreep has clinched a race for county judge in San Diego, California, beating career prosecutor Garland Peed. With about 1,000 votes left to count, Kreep is ahead by 1,569. The Peed campaign told us last night that they’re unlikely to ask for a recount with a margin that big.
Since we started covering the race on our show, we’ve gotten letters from voters in San Diego who want to explain the Kreep phenomenon. Bob and Jenny say they voted early, by absentee, and got their information about the race from the candidates’ ballot statements. Kreep’s statement links to his website, but doesn’t mention the birther cause. Bob and Jenny write that they decided on Peed because Kreep seemed to them like the wrong brand of mainstream:
We saw that Kreep served on the Reagan delegation to the 1976 & 1980 nominating conventions and that was what convinced us to vote for Peed. It was only after our ballots were sent in that we got more information about the candidates.
Early coverage of the race in the local San Diego Union-Tribune describes this year’s judicial elections as “typically low-key” and makes no mention of Kreep’s birther activism. Kreep has starred in birther infomercials and served as a lawyer for groups questioning whether Barack Obama was born in the United States.
Jackie in San Diego say her family voted for Kreep because they had no idea:
When my husband and I vote, we sit down together and discuss the candidates and issues. Neither of us knew anything about this judicial race. I thought I remembered a judge in years past whose name was something like “Kreep” and someone had spoken positively about him. Therefore my husband and I both voted for Kreep. I would not have done that had I known that he has a history as an activist for weird issues like birtherism. Now Kreep tells the local paper that he’s hoping to be assigned a spot in family court, where presumably birth certificates like the one President Obama has released are sometimes part of the record. Kreep, who has also advocated against marriage equality, promises to rule on the law and not his personal views. Bonus: A local columnist in San Diego suggests Kreep is “catnip on a national left-wing cable show” like ours, and says his record is longer and more textured than just suspecting the president’s right to be president. It’s worth reading.
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