Here’s the scoop on someone of whom to beware, courtesy of Ashley Jardis, Brad’s wife:
Working With a Psychopath
For the last couple of months, I have endured the life experience of working with a psychopath. His name is Jeramie Samphere. My husband and I didn’t know he was a psychopath when we hired him (he was paid over $1200 total for his services) as campaign manager of the Sheriff’s race we were currently involved in. We just thought he was a little strange – not unlike the rest of us. We later found out that he was a former Jehovah’s Witness, so we figured he would be great at helping us with one of the most critical parts of campaigning – door knocking. He seemed to have some really good ideas, and sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He also put us in touch with some amazing people, whom I am forever grateful for their help and hard work.
About four weeks ago, while out door knocking with Jeramie, Brad noticed some aggressive and “pushy” behavior from him. He mentioned it to Jeramie and asked him to stop behaving that way. After a few more similar incidents with Brad, and then a few snide comments made towards me, Brad and I decided to distance ourselves from Jeramie and go our own way with working on the campaign. When we decided to do this, apparently Jeramie completely changed his course of action. We got a phone call from a woman in much distress. She claimed that Jeramie had visited her twice – once at home and again at work. Both times she said, she had to ask him to leave because he had made her feel uncomfortable. She alleged that he was “in her face” and continued conversation with her after she asked him to leave. She was also offended because he was speaking very negatively of her town manager – a well known and respected member of her community. Brad sincerely apologized and claimed responsibility for his severe misrepresentation.
After the conversation with this woman, Brad called the Lancaster town manager, Ed Sampson. Their conversation was majorly about how Jeramie came into Mr. Sampson’s office and approached him about using the town hall to host a ‘meet and greet’ with the citizens. Mr. Sampson explained to Jeramie that it was out of the question to use the facility for the purpose of one candidate. It would be displaying favoritism and therefore not allowed (a simple and logical concept to most people). Jeramie then got defensive, demanding a statute or law stating that this use of the town hall was prohibited. Mr. Sampson felt that there was no other way of explaining this to Jeramie, and felt it useless to waste anymore time on the matter, so he told Jeramie to take his things and “get the hell out of here”. Again, Brad apologized for the unacceptable behavior displayed by his campaign manager and informed Mr. Sampson that appropriate actions would be taken to correct the situation.
When Brad went to Jeramie with these complaints, Jeramie got defensive with Brad and twisted the story to portray himself as the victim. He tried several times to change the subject and wouldn’t allow Brad to sort out the problem.
Jeramie’s next phase in campaigning, was to send out a “letter bomb” to all registered voters in the county. He had Brad write a letter to the citizens, explaining who he was and why he thought he could be a better fit for the position. I personally read Brad’s draft of the letter and thought it was very positive and uplifting, and was clear and concise in what he wanted to do. Nothing more. After finishing the letter, Brad was instructed to send it to Jeramie for “tweaking”. After Jeramie’s alterations, the letter came back completely butchered; very negative, using extremist words and phrases like “fresh blood” and attacking people within government: Sheriff Marcou, Mr. Ed Sampson and other people. This was the last straw for Brad. He told Jeramie that he was not going to distribute this letter, as it was again misrepresenting him and painting his whole campaign in a negative light. Brad told Jeramie that the campaign was going to be run his way from now on, but he was still welcome to participate. Brad even went as far asking Jeramie to please continue helping, but telling him that we were moving forward with this, with or without him. Jeramie chose not to continue, so Brad relieved him of any and all responsibility and association with the campaign.
We regrouped with our two key volunteers, Sheila and Larry to continue campaigning without slinging mud on our opponents. We then found out that over the last few days (while Jeramie was still technically the campaign manager) Jeramie was talking very negatively about Brad and myself to them and other volunteers. He was blaming me for the distancing of us from him, saying that I was an anarchist and didn’t really want Brad to win this election, and that I was being unsupportive in the campaign. He was also remarking on our lack of presence, alleging to the volunteers that we were purposefully avoiding contact with them. Jeramie then became so bold as to drive himself, and two other people to our home to try and motivate us to get out there with them. However, we were out of town that day (and he knew that we would be) so he used that opportunity to again try to form a wedge between us and the volunteers saying that we had left because we knew they were coming. He later admitted to them that he knew that Brad had a doctors appointment that day but “just forgot” until after they came all the way out there.
A couple days after the fallout between Brad and Jeramie, Jeramie decided to take it upon himself to cause as much damage as possible to all that we all had worked so hard to achieve. He decided to implement his own “letter bomb” the day before the election (using supplies that we had provided him for the use of our campaign). In this letter, Jeramie alleged that Brad was “mentally unstable” and not capable of performing the task at hand as county sheriff. He attached a copy of Brad’s arrest report from the Customs and Border Protection that stated that he was on an anti-depressant and was clinically diagnosed with depression and anxiety. The major flaw in this attack of course, was that Brad had already given a copy of this report to local newspapers following the campaign. When this blow to Brad’s reputation failed, Jeramie decided that he would try to intimate myself, Brad, Sheila and Larry. The same day that Jeramie was distributing his hate mail, the four of us were out and about the county, meeting and talking to people, and waving signs to people driving by. Four separate times while we were out, (twice in Lancaster and twice in Berlin) Jeramie drove slowly past, making sure that we all saw him there. Now, I’m no expert on the law, but I would say that’s borderline stalking.
Finally, on election day, Jeramie was spotted driving around the polling places with a sign plastered to the side of his van reading, “Re-elect a SANE Sheriff!”. His efforts are admirable, and clearly effective, although I’m very disappointed that we didn’t see this much conviction and enthusiasm during our campaign that he was being paid for! We lost the campaign, and honestly can’t say it was because our neighbors disagreed with Brad’s politics. So we don’t even have an instrument to gauge the overall success rate of this attempt at pursuing liberty, thanks to some last minute sabotage from a disgruntled former employee.
It’s one thing to bend on your principles and flip-flop on your political beliefs last minute: it’s understandable, the pressure gets to everyone at some point. Some people just don’t like losing SO MUCH that they will side with the winner, even if he’s not the desired candidate, just to say that he was on the winning side in the end. I get that. But Jeramie’s taking this further. The election is over, the victor has been named and we have accepted defeat. Brad and I are moving on to our next ideas to further liberty – but not Jeramie. He is now reaching out to OUR PEOPLE within the liberty community, trying to smear Brad’s reputation to people that were never even involved in the campaign. He has clearly made this a personal issue for himself, and seems that he will stop at nothing.
We are calling for an all out ostracization of this man. He is stomping on our efforts in the name of liberty, and trying to smear both of our reputations in the process. He is NOT a friend of liberty, in fact I would go as far to say that he is an enemy to ANYONE working towards the cause. Every single person that we have come to know throughout the campaign, that has ever had anything to do with Jeramie has already ostracized him. He has exposed himself to be a poison flowing into the veins of the liberty movement, and he needs to be cut off before he can do real damage. Please look into this man and consider joining us in the ostracization of him and his efforts. We can not possibly hope to achieve liberty in our lifetime if we allow dangerous people like this in our movement. Thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy explanation of the situation, and please feel free to contact either Brad (603) 205-6003 or myself (603) 833-8683 if you have any questions regarding this matter.
I hope we can all act quickly to overcome this hurdle, and continue working towards our end goal, together.
For liberty,
Ashley Jardis
