In response to an expanding surveillance state, a decentralized movement of citizen journalists has emerged. Armed with nothing more than cell phones, these "First Amendment auditors" walk into municipal buildings across the country. Their purpose is simple: to test the constitutional fortitude of public employees, to document unethical or illegal actions, and to correct the pervasive misunderstanding that cameras are somehow prohibited in public lobbies. The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly vindicated this right. In a public building, the public has no expectation of privacy, and citizens possess the absolute right to record their elected officials conducting public business.

On the afternoon of December 27, 2022, this national movement arrived in the quiet enclave of Sherman, Connecticut.

It might appear unusual to examine a video clip from four years ago. However, this footage was recently submitted to our news desk by concerned citizens following our ongoing coverage of the administration. As mounting evidence suggests that Don Lowe lacks the ethical and professional temperament required to represent Sherman’s reputation, residents have pointed to this unedited encounter as the starkest proof of his unsuitability for office.

Around 2:30 p.m., a gentleman operating under the YouTube handle @goodguyactivism, identifying himself as David Miranda from Good Guy Audits, walked into Mallory Town Hall. For a while, the visit was remarkably mundane. He engaged with various clerks and municipal employees who were cooperative, and he was exceedingly polite in return. The camera captured exactly what it was supposed to: a functional, public-facing government office.

Then, he encountered First Selectman Don Lowe. And the interaction immediately derailed.

Sherman is a town defined by deep roots. Many families have lived here all their lives, carrying forward generations of quintessential New England reserve and stoic civic pride. Don Lowe is not native to Sherman. He is a transplant who relocated here around 2000, bringing with him a background as a local open-mic night musician. Underneath his carefully curated, folksy exterior, the video reveals a chief executive completely unequipped for the basic friction of public life.

Regardless of the scenario, a born-and-raised Sherman native would never conduct themselves in such a crass and volatile fashion. Even if a deliberately annoying or provocative situation is playing out, there is absolutely no excuse for this behavior from an elected official. None. Instead of ignoring the camera or politely offering assistance, Lowe became instantly apprehensive, defensive, and belligerent.

The Eight-Minute Montage

The following video is an eight-minute montage cut from the auditor’s first-person perspective, capturing an exchange that is deeply insulting on both a personal and a constitutional level. For full transparency, the complete, unedited video of the encounter is also available for public review.

Almost immediately, Lowe abandoned any pretense of professionalism and resorted to the mentality of a schoolyard bully. He began parroting the visitor's words back to him. He insulted the citizen's physical appearance, specifically targeting his teeth.

When the auditor calmly continued to stand in the public space, Lowe’s behavior escalated from childish to alarming. Without a shred of evidence, the First Selectman began wildly jumping to conclusions about the visitor's state of mind and motivations. He asked the man if he was armed with a weapon. He asked if he was intoxicated or high. He told the citizen, "you look pretty kind of screwed up."

Perhaps the most abominable moment of the entire exchange arrived when Lowe, dripping with condescension, weaponized a learning disability as a casual slur, telling the man that he seemed "challenged."

During the confrontation, the auditor pointedly asked the First Selectman, "Do you take pride in acting like a child?" Rather than offering a measured response, Lowe's reaction provided a staggering answer: he simply mimicked the citizen, parroting the exact question right back to him with the petulant reflex of a five-year-old.

The Aftermath and the Victim Narrative

While hurling these baseless accusations, Lowe surreptitiously summoned law enforcement. A Connecticut State Trooper soon arrived to interrogate the man conducting public business, a profound waste of state resources triggered entirely by an elected official who felt uncomfortable being documented.

Following the event, rather than taking accountability for his embarrassing loss of composure, Mr. Lowe quickly sprinted to the local press to paint himself as the victim of a heinous attack. "These guys have no interest in the First Amendment, him and others like him," Lowe told reporters. "It's just such an abuse of the Constitution."

What Lowe fails to register is the profound irony of his own complaint. He seems completely oblivious to the fact that defensive, aggressive hostility, playing the victim and needlessly dispatching armed police over a camera, is the exact administrative rot these audits are explicitly designed to expose. By melting down on video, Lowe walked directly into the trap, doing exactly what a public servant should never do. The correct response was remarkably simple: act like a mature, elected politician representing the people and town of Sherman, offer polite assistance, and go about the town's business.

The truth is, what Don Lowe found so egregiously offensive was exactly the First Amendment itself and how it was fundamentally intended to be used. The Constitution was explicitly written to enforce rules upon the government, to demand transparency, and to bind the hands of men exactly like him. To hold a camera in a public building is not an abuse of the Constitution; it is the literal exercise of it. Unfortunately, residents have seen a growing number of examples where this particular executive demonstrates a willingness to subvert those constitutional principles the moment they threaten to capture him in a bad light. The true abuse occurred when the senior-most elected official in Sherman decided that his personal pride superseded the First Amendment, utilizing state police to intimidate a taxpayer who had broken no laws.

A politician should possess the civic maturity to know when to react, and more importantly, when not to react. On all counts, Don Lowe gets it wrong. Towards the end of the video, as the barrage of insults subsides, the auditor strikes a nerve. He questions Lowe's underlying motivations for holding public office, asking if he simply "took it so you get paid."

Faced with that unvarnished question, the First Selectman, a man who spent the previous eight minutes mocking, defaming, and insulting a constituent, finally goes completely, utterly quiet.

It is a silence that speaks volumes. For a 64-year-old man to behave in such a despicable, petulant manner over something as basic and well-understood as the First Amendment is profoundly unbecoming. This is not the impetuousness of youth; it is a fixed, reactive temperament that casts Sherman in an unbelievably bad light on a highly public stage. Every voter who watches this footage should be repulsed by the conduct on display.

It leaves residents with an unavoidable question: does a man possessing this level of emotional fragility have any right to serve as our town's chief executive? If you are a consummate Don Lowe supporter, you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask a difficult question: what are you willing to excuse, and what are you willing to do to our town, in order to maintain your pride?