4th District congressional candidate yanks Craigslist ad after being accused of sexism

A 4th District congressional candidate has taken down a controversial “Help Wanted” ad from Craigslist after being accused of sexism.

Jerrod Sessler’s ad asked women applying for the job on his campaign staff to give references to avoid “future false claims that could damage his reputation.”

“It was clumsily and stupidly written and I can easily understand why it was found offensive,” he said in an email to the Tri-City Herald. “I has been deleted and I apologized for it.”

Removing the ad, however, has not stopped some Tri-Cities critics from raising other concerns, including where Sessler lives, his support for a Florida congressman under investigation for sex trafficking and his attendance at the Washington, D.C., rally at the time of the U.S. Capitol riot Jan. 6.

Sessler, 51, a former NASCAR driver, business owner and candidate for the House of Representatives, announced this month that he plans to run as a Republican challenging Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside.

He joined state Rep. Brad Klippert, R-Kennewick, as the second challenger upset over the four-term congressman’s vote to impeach President Donald Trump.

Sessler is an outspoken Trump supporter and according to his Twitter posts he attended the Jan. 6 rally. It’s unclear if he was at the U.S. Capitol during the violence but his tweets blamed it on the left-wing anti-facist movement Antifa. The FBI director has said there is no evidence to back that claim.

Sessler’s LinkedIn profile says he has moved to Prosser, and his campaign materials promise he will hold regular meetings at his farm.

However, a search of online public records shows he does not own property in Benton County, though his campaign materials show he has an office in a storefront on Eighth Avenue.

Public records show he has been living south of Seattle in Burien, where the business he founded, HomeTask Inc., is based.

Federal law only requires people to live in the state before running for Congress. They are not required to live in the district they are running to represent.

The district covers much of central Washington to the Canadian border, including the Tri-Cities and Yakima.

The Herald asked Wednesday to interview Sessler by phone, but a campaign representative replied by email that Sessler was not immediately available. The person wrote that Sessler is leery of the news media and wants to form a relationship with the media before answering questions by phone.

Craigslist ad

When the Herald reached the Sessler campaign by email earlier this week about the Craigslist job posting, Sessler didn’t try to defend it in his short written statement.

The ad was posted on Sunday and by Monday was drawing criticism on Facebook.

The job offered $45,000 to $54,000 for someone to manage his schedule, planning and special needs, along with performing research, making arrangements with the media and “ensuring the candidate remains in a positive view publicly.”

“Sadly, due to our current woke-sheep culture, female candidates, although welcome, will need to demonstrate their commitment to the mission in writing and with references to protect the candidate from future false claims that could damage his reputation,” according to the ad.

Some readers took offense.

Former Richland councilwoman and activist Dori Luzzo Gilmour shared the ad on her Facebook page with the comment: “If you are afraid of hiring women (woke-sheep) because of how you intend to treat them ... how do you expect them to VOTE for you?”

Luzzo Gilmour, a Democrat, said it seemed a poor way to start a campaign.

“He’s just insinuating that women are the problem,” she later told the Herald. “It boggles my mind that he can just exclude half of the population.”

Sessler replied to Gilmour’s post, saying that they are learning a lot and will make mistakes.

He added that he intended the requirement as a way to protect himself because he is a family man and he was worried about being “falsely slandered.”

Luzzo Gilmour and other commenters felt he’d missed the point of why his comments troubled them.

“You seem to think having different hiring practices for folks that are female is acceptable because ‘women’ are the problem,” Luzzo Gilmour wrote. “What’s really an issue is that women are harassed, and you conclude it’s because they speak up.”

America First

Sessler has positioned himself as an America First Republican, who believes a small and radical faction with a leftist agenda that “seeks to control us, cancel us and belittle our traditional values,” he said as part of his campaign announcement.

He is also a vocal defender of former President Trump, according to his Twitter posts. That includes criticizing claims that the former president was responsible for the deaths caused by an inconsistent response to COVID.

And a campaign video posted on his website says they need to fight against the rapid uncontrolled erosion of Americans’ ” natural rights.”

And he says the nation is heading in the wrong direction on race relations, gender issues and gun control.

Some of his targets in the video include Bernie Sanders and people protesting for gun control and others concerned about the male-focused nature of laws and society.

The video includes a claim that kindergartners are being taught that their “gender is a choice,” that race relations are getting worse and drug dealers and human smugglers are breaching the border en mass.

“The equality that was once blocked by a glass ceiling that our mothers and grandmothers is being stripped away as our daughters are replaced by biological men,” he said on the video.

Since his campaign announcement he’s tweeted support for Georgia voting law restrictions and the issue of expanding the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, he defended Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz’s claims that accusations of sexual trafficking are made up.

“Stand your ground, Matt. You are not alone!” Sessler responded to one of Gaetz’s Tweets that said CNN made up stories about him.

Sessler’s campaign declined a request to talk with him on some of the questions raised by Herald readers about those issues.

This story was originally published April 15, 2021 at 12:56 PM.