Democrats on the bottom of the ticket in Washington state all the way to the very top are caught in a pickle. Stand against religious bigotry or give back some $60,000 in state campaign cash contributed by world-famous spiritual channeler JZ Knight after videos showing Knight preaching hatred of Catholics became public.
In a story that may become a national news story as soon as tomorrow morning, Knight is seen and heard on video to let loose a profanity-strewn rant against Catholics and has been a frequent and generous contributor to Democrats here in Washington and at the national level. Knight’s contributions to Democrat at all levels total more than $120,000 for the current election cycle.
As of Tuesday, Democrats are deciding to take Knight’s money and run, an equivocation that could produce significant controversy among swing voters just as many are marking their ballots to decide a very close election.
The video evidence of Knight’s tirades are difficult to watch.
“F— you, you Catholics!” Knight bellows over cheers from her audience.
“We will come on you in a terror,” Knight growls in another cut. “We will bring… St. Peter’s temple down and we will swallow it in the sea.” (“St. Peter’s temple” is a reference to the Catholic church itself.)
The entirety of hateful language used by Knight defied redaction to meet our standards for publication. For the full context, you will have to brace yourself and view the videos. We warn you use discretion when viewing these where the general public and especially small children may be present. It’s very rough stuff. [...]
According to Federal Election Commission records, Knight personally gave a total of $60,800 to the Democratic National Committee in the 2012 election cycle, gave $5,800 to the Obama Victory Fund and has maxed out on individual donations ($5,000) to Pres. Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.
The photo (above) of a meeting between Obama, Knight and her granddaughter was taken at a Sept. 25, 2011 event in Seattle.
State Public Disclosure Commission records also show that Knight also gave $66,300 to Democrats in Washington state. A total of $60,000 was received by State Democrats, $1,800 by 2nd legislative district state Senate candidate Bruce Lachney, $1,800 by Thurston County Commissioner Sandra Romero, $1,800 by State Supreme Court Justice Susan Owens, and $900 by the political action committee operated on behalf of Democrats in the state Senate.
Ramtha is a 35,000 year-old spirit-warrior who appeared in JZ Knight’s kitchen in Tacoma, Washington, in 1977. Knight claims that she is Ramtha’s channel. She also owns the copyright to Ramtha and conducts sessions in which she pretends to go into a trance and speaks Hollywood’s version of Elizabethan English in a guttural, husky voice. According to Wikipedia, the "Z" stands for Zebra, and Knight was born Judith Darlene Hampton on March 16, 1946, in Roswell, New Mexico.
She has thousands of followers and has made millions of dollars performing as Ramtha at seminars ($1,000 a crack) and at her Ramtha School of Enlightenment, and from the sales of tapes, books, and accessories (Clark and Gallo 1993). She must have hypnotic powers. Searching for self-fulfillment, otherwise normal people obey her command to spend hours blindfolded in a cold, muddy, doorless maze. In the dark, they seek what Ramtha calls the ‘void at the center.’