More Tim Sheldon thoughts: “shouting down”

I don’t remember this happening:

One Democratic precinct officer spoke up on behalf of Sheldon on Monday.

“I was roundly shouted down, which I expected to be,” Barbara Crane, a retiree who moved to Lacey with her husband eight months ago from out of state, recalled Tuesday with a laugh. Crane said the Democratic Party should have a place for someone like Sheldon, describing him as well informed and someone who looks out for his constituents’ interests in the 35th District.

I remember her standing up and speaking in support of Sheldon, something I thought was admirable, but the room was pretty quiet in my memory, and she wasn’t shouted down. At least in the way I define shouting down:

Verb 1. shout down – silence or overwhelm by shouting

There were only a few people in the room that agreed with her, but the mood was solem and polite. Except for one exchange between Sheldon and (crap I can’t remember his name) about whether Sheldon was using his state-paid-for end of session reports for campaigning, no one raised their voice.

Also, I had some trouble figuring out how Sheldon could support George W. Bush, while his wife was an activie member of Women in Black, but then I came across this:

During her husband’s career in the House and Senate as an often-conservative Democrat, his wife has:

• Protested his vote for parental notification for minors seeking abortions by sitting for eight hours in the gallery directly above his seat dressed entirely in black.

  “I’ve been on him about that,” Sheldon said. “I had an abortion when I was 20. I think, with a 19-year-old daughter, he thinks he’s being ‘fatherly’ with this restriction.”

• Filled his suit coat pockets with rifle cartridges each time her husband, a member of the NRA, was fixing to vote with the gun lobby.

  “He’s so locked and loaded down there in the basement you’d think he was all set to fight the next world war!” she said. “We live out on the (Olympic) Peninsula on a tree farm and he claims the guns are so he can shoot cougars, but puh-leeze . . .”

• Sent a toilet paper holder and a roll of toilet paper inscribed with the “Contract on America” to Olympia with her husband so he could mount it on the caucus wall.

  “It was right after Newt (Gingrich) and his boys took over Congress and I was home-schooling (daughter) Alexandra. So we did a whole big lesson on the Salem witch hunts and mass hysteria and I had her make the paper roll as a project. Timmy was so pleased.

  “If you’ve got to live with this guy you might as well laugh about it,” Sheldon said.