Kendall County Republican, Democratic leaders react to U.S. Capitol riot

The leaders of the Kendall County Republican and Democratic parties offered their reactions Thursday, Jan. 7, after an angry mob stormed past police inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, in an effort to disrupt members of Congress as they were certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Since the 2020 election in November, many Republicans across the country, led by outgoing President Donald Trump, have contested the results of the presidential election which showed that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris had won.

Several posts made to the Kendall County Republicans Facebook page Jan. 6 and 7 criticized the media coverage of the events at the Capitol.

“To be perfectly clear Jan. 6th 2021 was a HISTORIC Day with 1.5 Million plus Patriot’s gathering in Peaceful Protest to the ‘#STEAL’ of the 2021 Presidency and support the legitimate President of the United States!,” a Jan. 7 post read.

“BUT the ‘#FakeNEWS’ wants to paint a different narrative, and Blame President TRUMP who EXPILICTLY (sic) only called for a PEACEFUL PROTEST, unlike BLM & ANITFA riots across the NATION this summer. According to news sources: ‘some’ of the people who breached the Capital were from the VIOLENT TERRORIST Group ANTIFA!!!,” the post continued.

When asked to comment further, Kendall County Republican Party Chairman James Marter described Wednesday’s events as historic.

“It was definitely a historic day. We had hundreds of congressmen and a few dozen senators reject the [vote] certification of a number of states. It took a while to get that done,” Marter said. He also highlighted President Trump’s rally that took place just before the incident at the Capitol, saying he had seen reports indicating 1.5 million or more people had been in attendance.

Marter, citing unnamed reports, said that participants in the rally and the incident at the Capitol “could have been Trump supporters, could have been Antifa, and some other people that were there to cause trouble.”

Antifa is a political movement that is an abbreviation of the term ‘Anti-Fascist’ that has been defined by the FBI as an “ideology.”

Marter also expressed his thoughts over the shooting death inside the Capitol of Ashli Babbitt, a United States Air Force veteran and an avid Trump supporter.

“It’s a shame that the young woman that was shot – and we don’t even know if that was by the Capitol police or if it was somebody in that little group that was with her. ... I don’t know if we’ll ever know,” he said.

Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund confirmed that Babbitt was shot by a Capitol Police officer as the people who had overrun the Capitol were forcing their way to an area of the building were members of Congress were sheltering.

“Whoever entered the Capitol was wrong. They clearly put themselves in harm’s way and they put others in harm’s way,” Marter said. “I’m always going to give the police the benefit of the doubt until the whole thing is done, but that’s very unfortunate.”

Marter also said that it was unfortunate that the events inside and around the Capitol were the topic of discussion, instead of the historic nature of the rally and the contesting of the election results.

Speaking for himself, Marter said that he supported the efforts to contest the election, adding that he was “fairly certain that the vast majority of our [Kendall County] Republican precinct committeemen, if not all of them” were also in support.

“As the president said this morning, he will make sure there’s a peaceful transition of power on the 20th, so at this point, we’re respecting that decision by the president to move forward that way. He’s going to continue to contest it,” Marter said.

“Here’s the thing, when you see videos of election authorities in Georgia shutting down on Election Night, telling reporters and Republicans to go home, pulling votes out from under a table that was hidden and counting for two hours, you know there’s something wrong.

“Our issue, is election integrity,” he continued. “Honest to God, I don’t know if President Trump won or not, but we do know that there was stealing of votes, and what we wanted was every legal vote counted.”

Marter said he also supports federal legislation to increase election security.

“I think the big issue out of this election and the steal from Nov. 3 is that we must have election integrity,” he said. “We need voter I.D. ... Anyone can walk in and vote without really proof of where they live or anything else. We really need that to lock this down.”

“An extremely shocking moment”

Kendall County Democratic Party Chairwoman Julie Gondar called Wednesday’s incident at the Capitol “an extremely shocking moment.”

“We had known for a long time that President Trump had been calling his supporters to come to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and he had stated that, ‘It would be a day unlike any other,’ ” Gondar said. “I think that we expected to see a lot of what we saw.”

Gondar mentioned “inflammatory” speeches given at the rally earlier Jan. 6, and highlighted a speech by freshman U.S. Representative Mary Miller a Republican from central Illinois, at a Jan. 5 rally, where she said, “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’”

The most shocking thing for Gondar, she said, was the “lack of protection” at the Capitol building.

“I fully expected protesters to arrive at the Capitol building. I did not expect the lack of protection that was provided to the building itself, which I see as a sacred space for our country, but also to the Congresspeople, the individuals who work in the Capitol building,” she continued, also mentioning “the fact that our Capitol police did not have some type of backup.”

There have been protests inside the halls of the Capitol in previous years, Gondar said, highlighting those that took place in the past few years over the nation’s health care.

In those protests, Gondar said, disability advocates were arrested, “dragged out of their wheelchairs, and taken out of the Capitol building.”

“I have friends who have participated in sit-ins where they were singing in the Capitol building and were arrested. So to see individuals storming through the building, breaking windows, with firearms, stealing things, busting into offices and looking through emails, it was sickening.

“It was really sickening.”

What started as a gathering and a protest, Gondar said, “quickly turned into an insurrection.”

“These were not protesters. They were domestic terrorists,” she said.

Gondar referenced a portion of a statement given Jan. 7 by President-elect Joe Biden regarding the events in the Capitol, where he said, in part, “Don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob – insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. It’s that basic.”

Gondar said that she agrees with the President-elect.

Looking forward, Gondar said that the country needs to look to Congress.

“What happened last night is that there were individuals who were willing to walk in yesterday morning and challenge the Electoral College, challenge our Constitution, who after the events of yesterday backed off and realized that this is an institution that has been going on for hundreds of years,” Gondar said.

“This was a procedural event, all of these elections have been certified. This has been taken to court, it has been discussed, it’s been proven that these accusations are false. This was a legitimate election. Joe Biden won, Kamala Harris won, and we need to move on.”

The fact that members of Congress stayed around, reconvened after the events of the day and stayed on through the night to certify the results of the election “really says everything we need to know about democracy,” Gondar said.

“We are in a very delicate and tenuous state right now,” she said. “The fact that our Congresspeople walked back in and sat down together and worked through this says a lot.”

Gondar said that she has finally begun hearing from Republicans who are now denouncing some of the “conspiracy theories” that have spread across the country.

“I really wish they would have said that four years ago,” she said. “This has been going on for so long. This has been bubbling under the surface.”

The effects can be seen locally, Gondar said, in individuals who are “taking advantage of their neighbors and creating a sense of discord and mistrust.”

This has made it difficult to move forward, Gondar added, calling it sad.

“I think it makes a lot of people angry, too, that the elected officials locally really need to be speaking out about this. They need to get louder,” she continued.

Conspiracy theories are causing deaths, she said, highlighting the death of Babbitt and calling it unfortunate.

“For whatever reason, she felt that this was true, and she felt that it was worth dying for, and that’s incredibly sad,” Gondar said of Babbitt. “I hope that we can get to a situation where cooler heads prevail and we can work together.

“This is our community, we live here, we’ve lived here for a long time. These are our neighbors. ... A tornado flies through a town, people just get in their cars and they go to help their neighbors. They want to take care of their neighbor, they don’t take the time to ask who they voted for. They just do it in the moment.”

That’s what Gondar wants the country to get back to.

“Until we get to that point, it’s going to be really difficult to move forward, so I’m hoping that local elected Republican officials will come out against what happened yesterday,” she said.

“There’s a place and a time for a protest, but we have to be measured and sane, and look at facts before we start inspiring our neighbors to go storm the Capitol building.

“That’s inexcusable.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.