Justin Spiehs: Right-wing extremist or phantom of the Left-wing mafia?
Article - 7 minute read
For many Lawrence residents, Dr. Justin Spiehs is a man well known. He is frequently seen on the corners of busy streets holding handmade protest and campaign signs with vulgar language. He tends to wear a veteran’s hat that covers long, dreaded hair sticking out in the back as an untrimmed beard covers his face. His boots are old, worn out, and untied. People who pass by sometimes yell criticisms and insults at the lone man. Some honk and yell words of praise. If you were to search his name online, you would see article after article on his different arrests—a misdemeanor and some felonies. Yet, few may really know the background of who this man, who is running as a Republican for Douglas County Commissioner District 1, is.
When asked about why he portrayed himself as he does—holding signs with words like “shit” and “fuck,” and having his outer appearance disheveled—he alluded to a philosophical challenge for viewers. Many judge others on appearance, often taking the words of well dressed, well-manicured people without question while considering those that present themselves less favorably as someone not to take seriously. It is this bias that Spiehs wishes to challenge to get people to ask themselves the question of why they take the words of some people seriously without question, while ignoring others they know nothing about all because of how they look.
Certain things people may not know about Spiehs include his awards for serving in the Navy. In 2006, while stationed in Connecticut, he received the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for his outstanding achievement while serving on board a submarine called the USS Springfield. Spiehs was later stationed in San Diego at a place called Deep Submergence Unit where he received a second Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for his time in the Navy when he got out in August 2009.
Knowing he would be getting out of the Navy, Spiehs started going to San Diego City College with the intention of pursuing a career as an addiction counselor. The day he got out of the Navy was also the day he received his associates degree. By this time, he had also moved to Lawrence, Kansas to transfer to Washburn University in Topeka. There, he earned his undergrad in Addiction Counseling with a minor in Psychology, later earning his license in addiction counseling.
With a goal to teach, he went to Kansas State University to receive a master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. It was during this time that he would commute from Lawrence to Manhattan almost every day of the week for years.
Spiehs worked as an addiction counselor for a little while before he started his master’s program. Later, Spiehs would work with children and their families in Lawrence that had been sexually abused at a place called GaDuGi Safe Center, which later changed its name to Sexual Trauma and Abuse (STA) Care Center. While working there, Spiehs got into a PhD program at K-State for Lifespan Human Development, where he had also been teaching human development classes since he earned his master's degree.
While working on his PhD, Spiehs then got hired on as an adjunct in the Human Services Department at Washburn. As faculty retired, Spiehs was hired on in 2016 as Assistant Professor in the Human Services Department. His last two to three years there were spent changing the department from ‘Human Services’ to ‘Family and Human Services.’
Spiehs’ department at Washburn introduced an article to professors on Critical Race Theory (CRT). Spiehs, being against CRT, claimed it to be racist and wrong, and was let go. His contract recently expired, and Spiehs no longer works there.
“It’s terrible because A, it’s wrong. It’s racist,” Spiehs said. “But it’s also terrible for us as faculty—we’re going to go out and what? Teach our students this kind of stuff? The Family and Human Services Department, what they teach is counseling. Addiction counseling. They have trauma courses there. So, I would teach individual counseling, group counseling, ethics, family issues, all the social change and advocacy at the time. All kinds of stuff. So, we were training the advocates of the future and the future addiction counselors, the future trauma counselors, the future master’s students, the future PhD students to go out into the country, go out into their community with a lens that hates one group of people, and I don’t care what group it is, that is not going to be good.”
This happened in May 2021, Spiehs’ fifth year—the year most teachers start going through the tenure process. He had completed all of Washburn’s standards to receive tenure, but the school let him go before that, offering a one-year terminal contract which ended at the end of this spring semester.
By July of 2021, he began protesting USD 497 school’s mask mandate on children and getting recognized by the public. He was put on paid administrative leave last fall, but Spiehs said that according to them, it had nothing directly to do with his protests, though he felt they wanted to get rid of him.
A video of Spiehs came out where people spun a narrative that Spiehs attacked a man, pushing him into the street with oncoming traffic. However, upon closer look at the evidence, it was found that Spiehs was peacefully sitting on a corner holding his signs when another man jumped out of his car, went up to Spiehs, ripping the signs out of his hands, trying to swing at him with the signs that ended up being flung out into the street. It was then that Spiehs tackled the man, forcing both men into the street. Spiehs then yelled at the man for taking his stuff and picked up his signs without any further physical altercations.
The video circulated, and that day a teacher at Lawrence Free State High School showed the video in class—the class Spiehs’ daughter was in.
“That caused a lot of damage between me and my daughter and between me and my wife,” Spiehs said.
Spiehs recorded a video on May 13 of this year interacting with Officer Risner of the Lawrence Police Department. The video was uploaded to Lawrence Accountability, a YouTube channel dedicated to exposing corruption at the Lawrence Police Department. In the video, Spiehs is talking to Officer Risner after a man pulled a gun on him. The officers that responded to the call let the gunman go without taking proper actions as admitted by Officer Risner. Officer Risner further admits in the video that he heard of Spiehs through newspapers. Newspapers in the area that have covered stories on Spiehs include Lawrence Journal World, The Kansas Reflector, and The Lawrence Times—all these papers have a strong left bias.
Spiehs is now running for Douglas County Commissioner District 1 as a Republican, which is currently held by Democrat Patrick Kelly. Spiehs would be in the minority party should he win the election as Commissioners Shannon Portillo and Shannon Reid are the other two commissioners—both Democrats.
“I believe that everything they’ve done has been wrong,” Spiehs said. “I do not trust their judgement. I do not trust their competence. I don’t trust their values. I don’t trust anything about them, and they all got my eyes open through their COVID policies and what transpired after that. So, I’ll resist them at every turn and if people are interested in seeing what that looks like then they should consider voting for me.”
If Spiehs wins, he plans on using his platform to expose any corruption he can find.
“I will go after people and expose them for what they’ve done. I don’t need to do anything beyond that. We don’t need to do anything beyond that. Exposure. Light. The truth. That will be enough to get people to come to their senses and get these people out of here. And start to ask themselves, ‘Why do we have these people? Who’s in charge and why are they in charge and what can be done about that?’”
Spiehs is not on social media, preferring to promote himself in person through holding signs on busy street corners in Lawrence and speaking at various local meetings including school board meetings and County Commissioner meetings. He welcomes people to come talk to him if ever you should see him standing with one of his signs.