When caught in hypocrisy, Mattare blames the people asking questions

At a recent public meeting (see video at the bottom of the page), Kootenai County Commissioner Bruce Mattare was confronted by a citizen about his personal use of a license plate cover to avoid detection from license plate readers (LPRs). The irony? Mattare himself has voted to approve the budget for these same surveillance tools in Kootenai County.

His response to the citizen offers a textbook case of political manipulation, hypocrisy, and victim-playing. Below, we break down the transcript line by line to reveal the tactics he used to dodge accountability.

1. Admitting to the Hypocrisy

Mattare openly acknowledges:

“It is true that I have something on my license plate… To me, that is my way of protesting [surveillance]. If I get a ticket for it, then I get a ticket for it.”

Here, he tries to frame his duplicity as a “personal protest” ignoring the fact that as a commissioner, he not only funds the very surveillance he claims to oppose but actively works to expand it. He sets up a false equivalence: the citizen risks tickets for protest, but Mattare risks nothing while voting to impose surveillance on everyone else.

2. Playing the Victim

Mattare pivots quickly:

“You never asked me that. You’ve come to many other meetings. You’ve never actually proposed that question… People get whipped up into a frenzy and they don’t get all the facts.”

Instead of addressing the core hypocrisy, he reframes himself as a victim of unfair criticism. This tactic shifts attention away from his choices and casts the concerned citizen as misinformed, emotional, or unreasonable.

3. The Guilt-Trip and Shame Play

He continues:

“I take a little bit of offense just picking on a particular commissioner… without actually taking the time to speak to that commissioner and understand where they’re coming from.”

This is a classic shame tactic. Instead of accountability, Mattare attempts to guilt the citizen into believing they were rude for raising a legitimate public concern in a public forum. The subtext: “If you cared about the truth, you would have come to me privately instead of exposing me publicly.”

4. False Balance and Deflection

Mattare then attempts to legitimize surveillance:

“There’s another side to it… the potential for safety, for solving crime, for stopping crime in progress.”

This is a false balance argument. By suggesting the issue is simply “privacy vs. safety,” he sidesteps the real charge: his own duplicity in simultaneously opposing surveillance in private while expanding it in public office.

5. False Balance & Appeal to “Both Sides”

He says:

“Now, I will say that there’s another side to it… the potential for safety, solving crime, stopping crime…”

By invoking unproven “safety benefits,” he introduces a false equivalence, ignoring that no statistical data supports these claims. Mattare also uses manipulative tactics by presenting anecdotal claims as legitimate “balance.”

6. Shifting Responsibility

Finally, he tells the citizen:

“Don’t make this your last stop. You need to go to city council meetings, you need to go down to Boise… My door is always open.”

This is a deflection strategy. By pushing the citizen elsewhere, he avoids direct accountability while trying to appear open and cooperative. It’s a subtle form of political gaslighting: making the citizen feel as though they haven’t done enough while he avoids answering the contradiction at hand.

Conclusion: A Pattern of Duplicity

Bruce Mattare’s response is not just defensive, it’s manipulative.

• He admits to hypocrisy while excusing it as “protest.”

• He plays the victim to delegitimize criticism.

• He shames the citizen for speaking up publicly.

• He deflects responsibility by sending critics elsewhere.

As both Sheriff Bob Norris’s former campaign manager and now his PR director while sitting as a commissioner, Mattare’s political role is clear: protect the sheriff, control the narrative, and shame dissenters. His behavior demonstrates exactly why citizens are right to question the expanding surveillance state in Kootenai County.