#5- The loser conspiracy theorist who keeps running for Senate
On Monday I was flipping through my voter guide, comparison-shopping for Senators, when I saw this candidate statement:
None of the other candidates’ statements had that disclaimer above them. And I thought this looked ridiculous. Maybe like a promotional post on Instagram that has too many of hashtags on it. Or a spam website. It did not look like a coherent paragraph. So I did what any normal person would do- I visited all sixteen URLS written in the candidate statement. And when I was still confused, I called him. We talked for an hour.
Here’s what I learned.
Who is Don J. Grundmann?
I’m going to present a timeline of this man’s radicalization. Some of these events don’t have firm dates on them, and Grundmann is often the only source. That said, here’s what I’ve been able to figure out:
Don was raised in the Bay Area as a Democrat by union workers. And he was indoctrinated into thinking things like ‘abortion is a right’ ‘you have to pay taxes’ ‘vaccines are good for you’ ‘Robert F Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Sirhan,’ and so on. He sees through all those myths now.
Today, Grundmann is against abortion in all forms. He doesn’t believe there should be any exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother. Because he met a woman who was ruined by abortion, and that turned him against the practice. Here’s what he told me:
“I used to be so-called pro-choice many years ago because I was stupid and I heard the phrase ‘women's rights’ and I thought who want to take away their rights?! I didn't know what the hell I was doing. But then I ran into a lady who is smashed and shattered and annihilated by abortion. And that was divine intervention. The creator showed me what it really was, what it really means, then that's when I became pro-life.”
Based on the statement on his campaign website, Don met a woman who was in “a semi-quadriplegic semi-paralytic condition. She was unable to speak except in low moans and had no ability to move.” According to him, her doctors had no explanation for how she ended up this way. The condition had on set quickly, with no clear trigger. When Don investigated, he discovered she had just had an abortion. So that must have been it. From his campaign website:
I knew nothing of the true meaning of ‘women’s rights,’ ‘choice,’ etc. except for the propaganda which I had accepted from the indoctrination, via ‘The Matrix,’ around me. Now I was confronted with the reality of [this woman]. And I understood immediately, and had my eyes open to reality, what had happened to her.
After that, Don went further down the rabbit hole. He joined the pro-life movement. He found out that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist (which is unfortunately true). He came to believe that abortion was a “long range attack on humanity which is funded and driven by [atheist elites]” for the purposes of controlling their enemies (A.K.A. the non-white population).
For what it’s worth, Planned Parenthood has reckoned with their history and intentionally distanced themselves from their founder’s beliefs. In a 2021 statement, they wrote:
The difficult truth is that Margaret Sanger’s racist alliances and belief in eugenics have caused irreparable damage to the health and lives of Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, and many others. Her alignment with the eugenics movement, rooted in white supremacy, is in direct opposition to our mission and belief that all people should have the right to determine their own future and decide, without coercion or judgement, whether and when to have children.
We must acknowledge the harm done, examine how we have perpetuated this harm, and ensure that we do not repeat Sanger’s mistakes. We denounce the history and legacy of anti-Blackness in gynecology and the reproductive rights movement, and the mistreatment that continues to this day. We value the fundamental freedom of all people to control their own bodies, their lives, and their futures, and we will work every day until full health, dignity, and self-determination are a reality for everyone.
After joining the pro-life movement, Grundmann was audited by the IRS twice. He said it was a pain, but he didn’t think much of it. Then in 1990, he ran for State Senate as a Republican. Two weeks after he filed his candidacy, he was audited again, but this time it went sideways and the IRS drove him into bankruptcy. Soon after, he found the truth. His whole prior presumption that the IRS is legitimate, you have to pay taxes, was deeply incorrect. According to Don’s campaign website, there is “NO law which requires an American working in America to either file a tax return or pay an income tax.”
By the way, if you click on the link to see proof of this claim, it goes to a broken Wordpress site filled with french blog posts about gambling.
In our interview, Grundmann said he ran for State Senate in 1992 and 1994 as a Republican. He lost both times. Then, he left the GOP because “they wouldn't do anything about the corruption of the IRS or the federal reserve.” so he joined the American Independent Party (AIP), which was a branch of the far-right American Constitution Party (ACP). According to Don, he rose up the ranks until he was, “the last legally elected chairman of that party until they were attacked by the deep state.” In 2008, there was a leadership dispute and the party splintered- the AIP was split from the ACP. After that, Grundmann founded the California branch of the Constitution party.
In 2022, the National Constitution party kicked him out, but his California branch stayed loyal. They’re currently in the process of re-organizing as the Christian Nationalist Party.
Grundmann is deeply homophobic. He’s organized straight pride parades in Modesto in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. He says the straight pride coalition believes in “western civilization, Christianity, masculinity, femininity, the nuclear family, babies born and unborn, all the things which built humanity. It's a Christian organization with the idea that when you see a sodomite pride organization, that is a satanic religious celebration.”
He says he became convinced that queerness was inherently evil in the late 80s, when he saw the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) marching in the SF pride parade. Based on press clippings from 1988 and 1992, NAMBLA does appear to have marched in the pride parades in the past. That said, their inclusion was roundly criticized and it appears that they haven’t marched in a pride parade since 1992.
Grundmann thinks that there is a gay agenda, and that it is to spread queerness in order to “justify your poisoned existence.” He thinks the goal of things like a drag queen story hour is to “shatter a child” so that the child has a “soul wound” and, in response to that wound, becomes gay.
Grundmann thinks that all queerness (as well as other sins, like taking drugs) is in response to a “soul wound.” He said he had a soul wound too. So I asked him about it:
Well, for myself, it was my parents arguing a lot in my resentment against my father for not standing up to my mother, which I think that's a universal poison. It's one of many universal poisons. You can have a variety of poisons, which all have the same degree, but. the ultimate objective of the enemy of God who is Satan is to manipulate people to have hatreds and resentments and frustrations et cetera. And so parents attack each other. And then that leaks out on the children. And so I was affected by those, by those conflicts in my own parents' interactions.
He says he forgave his parents and that healed his wound.
I asked him if he could say one thing to a transgender communist bisexual, what would he say?
He said “Stop hating your parents. That'd be the key phrase I would say. Stop hating your parents and your created being.”
This man thinks queer people like me and my friends have been irrevocably infected by Satan. He told me that if you’re a parent, and your kid comes out as transgender, you have to be clinical, and shut your heart to them. They’re on the other side now, and your duty is to stop them from spreading evil.
I think most transgender communist bisexuals would tell him to go die in a hole. But what do I know.
Talking to Don, two major themes emerged.
He believes in good and evil, and that christian heterosexual patriarchy is good, and that deviation from that is bad. He thinks a war on good is being organized by a deep state of evil elites.
He believes that God will guide him and others to the right thing. I asked him what he would do if he was in charge of the Republican party for a day. He said that he would take “appropriate action.” I asked him what that action would be. He said that God would tell him in that moment. Whenever I asked him for specifics, especially when the intuitive answer could have been violence, he deferred to God.
I’m going to editorialize a bit and say this guy is crazy. Or at least grounded in a different reality than our own. But thankfully, he’s not important.
How Does Someone Get Like This?
Fundamentally, Don is just a guy. He appears to have 7+ Wordpress sites of varying functionality, no social media accounts, and no budget. When I asked, he said his campaign this year is going exist exclusively as his candidate statement and some radio ads (if he can find the money for them). When I asked him how much money he spends on WordPress every month, he said, “Well, I'm not a millionaire by any means. I'm actually the reverse of that. But actually, I haven't counted the bill. I'll let divine intervention take care of that.”
From what we can see, divine intervention doesn’t win elections. According to his Ballotpedia page, when he ran for Senate in 2018, he got 15,125 votes (28th place). In 2022, he got 10,181 votes (22nd place). The California Constitution party isn’t even big enough to qualify for the ballot, so Don runs as an independent.
In almost every photo of Grundmann, he’s standing alone. Maybe with a few people at most. This guy is not a political threat in any way shape or form. And he kind of knows that. His real goal, in a lot of ways, is to spread his beliefs.
That’s why his candidate statement is written that way. When I asked, he said that he was limited by what he could fit in 250 words, so he gave people “things to explore.” He basically wrote a list of google-able keywords that could lead someone to “the truth.” Because he trusts that someone, if exposed to the antidote/the red pill/the truth, will believe it.
Don’s trajectory is fairly normal for a conspiracy theorist. According to this FiveThirtyEight article published in June 2021, people who easily jump to conclusions are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories.
And according to research led by Karen Douglas from the University of Kent, people have three reasons why they believe conspiracy theories.
It explains a way the world works.
It gives them a sense of being safe and secure.
It makes them feel more important. Like they have access to information other people don’t have.
They also found that people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in others.
All this lines up with what we know about Don. He met a woman in a terrible condition, she had just had an abortion, he jumped to conclusions, and became pro-life. He saw pedophiles marching in a pride parade, and now believes all queer people are dangerous to children. That conspiratorial thinking has snowballed and expanded over time. Now he believes that the election was stolen and that 9/11 was fake and that vaccines are bad for you.
But it started with him being exposed to (what felt like) evidence. And so, with his 250 words in the voter guide, he’s trying to infect more people. Hopefully it doesn’t work.
I've reached out to the American Constitution Party and SF Pride for comment on this story. They've said they're looking into it and will get back to me. If/When they do, I will update the web archive version of this story.