Kitsap Caucus

A fifth Republican announced today he’ll run for Congress in the 6th District.

Bill Driscoll, a former Marine who has also been in the forest products business, issued a statement saying he put $500,000 of his own money to put him even with Democrat Derek Kilmer’s “$350,000 in special interest money.” (For more about Derek Kilmer’s money, read our story from Monday.)

Driscoll’s statement says career politicians have failed, that he would focus on jobs, a strong defense, making sure veterans get the benefits they’ve been promised and balancing the federal budget.

Filing week begins May 14. The entire Driscoll statement follows:

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Brynn writes:

Kitsap County Sheriff Steve Boyer sent out a release today saying he won’t run for the Congressional seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair.

Last month Boyer said he hadn’t ruled out the possibility of running for the 6th Congressional seat.

“It’s always in the back of my mind that you’re looking for the next way to serve,” Boyer said March 7.

Since then he’s decided not to join the race. Instead Boyer has endorsed state Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, who announced his intentions to run earlier this year.

Here’s the official release from Boyer:

Like so many throughout Kitsap County, I was surprised by Congressman Norm Dicks’ announcement that he would not be seeking reelection. Once the initial impact of the announcement passed, I took some time to consider whether the honor to participate as a United States Congressman and to help set a positive course for the future of America might be the best decision for my family, Kitsap County, and the citizens of the 6th Congressional District.

There were many factors to weigh while considering a decision of this magnitude and I would like to give my thanks for the confidence and encouragement extended by so many diverse groups and individuals for such a candidacy. The final analysis demanded determining where one can provide the most value for our citizens. This would be a capstone to my 40 years of public service in which success is measured by accomplishment and the respective trust which must exist with our citizens. I also have a high level of personal and professional satisfaction in ensuring public safety as the Kitsap County Sheriff.

Therefore, after due consideration, I am endorsing Derek Kilmer in the Sixth District Congressional race.  He has the right skill set built upon a foundation of strong character.  I trust that Derek will always defend American values and do what is important for our Nation.

Yours in safety,

Stephen A. Boyer

Stephan Brodhead becomes the latest Republican to announce his intention to run for Congress in the 6th District.

Brodhead’s press release announcing his run emphasizes his belief that the 6th District military bases need to remain strong. From his email announcement:

“In great measure, our representative must be strongly familiar with defense related technologies and its application to ‘Post-Cold War reality.’ The competence of our representation influences the quality of our future military. It influences our Northwest economy. We must get it right. We must continue to move forward. Hiring a representative with zero military experience or awareness of our DOD system makes absolutely no sense.”

Brodhead frames all of this from his own family’s military history, including his own. Brodhead, whose campaign site is here, also ran for Congress in Oregon’s 1st District in 2010, losing in the primary.

We’ll get more from all the candidates after they officially file in May. Brodhead joins Doug Cloud and Jesse Young in the Republican party. State Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, remains the only Democrat yet to declare and file with the Federal Elections Commission.

The rumor mill was right. Kitsap County Sheriff Steve Boyer is not ruling out the idea of running to fill the seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair.

According to someone who attended a meeting of real estate pros tonight Boyer stopped by the meeting briefly and after he left those still at the event began discussing whether Boyer might run.

“It’s always in the back of my mind that you’re looking for the next way to serve,” Boyer said by phone Wednesday night.

Boyer was elected Kitsap County Sheriff in 1998 as a Democrat and was a Washington State Trooper for 27 years before that. The sheriff said he was honored people called him to ask. “It’s nice people thought enough to call me from both sides of the aisle,” he said. “I gotta look at it.”

Three Republicans and one Democrat are on record so far saying they’re aiming to replace Dicks. Republicans Doug Cloud, Jesse Young and Bob Sauerwein (Based on a tip from one of the commenters I called Sauerwein and he said he withdrew three weeks ago. I have also removed him from the poll in the right column.) are lined up against Democrat Derek Kilmer, state senator from Gig Harbor.

Kilmer sent out a list of 37 leaders from the region, including 14 from Kitsap County, who have already lent an endorsement.

Boyer praised Kilmer, but said, “It’s better that we have a number of qualified candidates rather than the lesser of two evils.” He also said he thought he could do a good job in Washington, D.C.

State Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, also thought about running, but decided now was not the time. Several others, including state Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, and state Rep. Jan Angel, R-Port Orchard, may still considering whether to run.

State Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, offers a counterpoint to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s assertion that he’d like to make the federal government as inconsequential as possible.

“I’m struggling to figure out how a person can be the Chief Executive of a government he doesn’t understand the value of.”

I’ll leave it to you to discern why Kilmer is answering a national politician on a federal issue.

State Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor would serve as vice chairman of the capital budget in the Ways & Means Committee under a proposal made by Democratic leadership this week. The move means he would no longer chair the Higher Education & Workforce Development Committee, but would put him in a key role in the prime budget-writing committee in the state Senate.

State Sen. Phil Rockefeller, D-Bainbridge Island, would continue to chair the Environment, Water & Energy Committee.

The full body of Senate Democrats will vote on the proposal when legislators go to Olympia for meetings on Dec. 7 and 8.

The press release from the Senate Democrats follows.

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In 2006 voters in the 23rd Legislative District received mailers asking the question, “Beverly Woods went to Olympia and what did we get?” Woods, a Republican, was first elected to the seat in 2000, beat Democrat Sherry Appleton by 4 percentage points in 2002 and in 2004 she won handily over a candidate who did not campaign with much intensity.

In 2006, though, she faced off against Democrat Christine Rolfes, a former Bainbridge Island city councilwoman. Rolfes ended up winning by 9 percentage points. A blog post just weeks after the election at the conservative site Sound Politics had in its comment string a conversation blaming Woods’ loss on her vote for a gas tax. Many people have said to me the same thing, that Woods lost her base when she voted for that tax.

However she lost, the mailer is the issue here, because it was created by a firm that finds itself in hot water with the Washington State Attorney General, Rob McKenna. Moxie Media is being sued by McKenna for the company’s under-the-radar efforts to oust a conservative Democrat in the 38th District in 2010. It’s the under-the-radar part that could get them in trouble, because the company allegedly created political action committees to temporarily hide the liberal money (labor, trial lawyers, etc.) that was pitching a conservative Republican who was not running a strong race. The effort helped put the incumbent, state Sen. Jean Berkey, in third place, virtually guaranteeing victory in November for Democrat Nick Harper, who as of Tuesday had received nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Moxie is not the only organization to run afoul of Public Disclosure laws in recent history. The Olympian’s Brad Shannon wrote, “The action against Moxie comes in the same season that the Republican-oriented Building Industry Association of Washington settled charges of concealing funds it later used to promote Dino Rossi’s 2008 gubernatorial campaign.”

The Washington State Wire has an explanation of what went on with Moxie and Berkey, explaining the money gets hidden.

Moxie Media’s anti-Bev Woods piece is one of several the company highlights in a portfolio on its Web site.

Of the campaign the company writes, “After many failed attempts by other Democratic campaigns to define State Representative Beverly Woods as too conservative for her district, Moxie Media ultimately helped defeat the three-term incumbent. We developed a series of five mail pieces that positioned Woods as ineffective and out-of-touch, helping to elect our client, State Representative Christine Rolfes, who has held the seat since 2006.”

The work Moxie did for Rolfes was pretty straightforward. Sure, some of it in 2006 was negative advertising, but there do not appear to be any obvious efforts to hide who was behind the ads. A search of Public Disclosure Records show that over three campaigns Rolfes has spent $61,625 for Moxie Media’s help.

Rolfes said the recent news does have her considering who she will employ in the future. “I had never seen them do anything that wasn’t above board. I’m disappointed to see how that company worked in another race,” she said.

Moxie’s work has showed up in other local races. In 2006 the company promoted Kyle Taylor Lucas, who tried to best state Sen. Tim Sheldon for the Democratic nomination for senator in the 35th District. The company was paid more than $50,000 from three different PACs, all of which had “Have Had Enough” in the name.

In 2006 the Harry Truman Fund, which supports Democrats, spent about $17,000 for ads against Republican Ron Boehme, who ran against Larry Seaquist in the 26th District.

In late October Bremerton Republican Trent England wrote on the Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s Liberty Live blog, “I happen to know that Moxie works for my own State Senator Derek Kilmer, who pretends to be a Berkey-style moderate, but somehow still gets props from the far left (draw your own conclusions about who is the real Derek Kilmer: the one familiar to his Moxie pals, or the one he presents to voters in his swing district?).”

It is true that Moxie shows more than $200,000 in receipts for Kilmer’s campaign between 2004 and 2006. There were none, however, in 2010.

Kilmer said he worked with John Wyble, who co-founded Moxie, but left in 2008 and formed his own firm, WinPower Strategies.

Kilmer took issue of England’s use of the word “works.” “Once again Trent England hasn’t done his homework,” Kilmer said, adding that the ads he pays for do not mention his opponents. “The way I approach campaigns is like a job interview. “I’ve never gone into a job interview and said ‘This is why you shouldn’t hire the other guy,’” he said.

Democrats generally have condemned what is alleged to have been done in the 38th. Berkey, for her part, is asking that the Legislature not seat Harper, saying the election was tainted, according to a (Everett) Herald story.

Rolfes, who did work with Lisa MacLean, the Moxie founder named in the Attorney General’s suit, said she hopes the discovery of what happened with Moxie is evidence that the system worked. “The whole point of the Public Disclosure Commission is to allow a forum for catching these kind of indiscretions and unethical and possibly illegal acts,” she said.

This is a follow up to a post I made yesterday, giving more details on a candidate forum hosted Monday by the Leagues of Women Voters of Kitsap County. Yesterday, we heard from 35th District candidates. Today, we’ll hear more from contenders for 26th District seats.

Remember, the whole forum will be broadcast on BKAT at 8 p.m. Sept. 16, 10 a.m. Sept. 17, 8 p.m. Sept. 23 and 7 p.m. Oct. 3. You can see video coverage of candidates in most races speaking to the Kitsap Sun’s editorial board at the Kitsap Sun’s Election Guide Web page.

26th District Representative Position 2
Incumbent Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor, responded to a question about Gov. Christine Gregoire’s proposed across the board cuts by describing a meeting he’d had in Seattle with government and health care representatives. The purpose of the meeting, he said, was to form a network of “hospitals, schools, faith-based organizations” and other community groups to fill in the ranks as the state reduces funding for childrens’ health care. This is the kind of approach that will be needed, Seaquist said, because legislators need to “downsize state government 20 percent.”
Seaquist then blasted fellow legislators for leaving the budget cut question up to the governor to decide. “The legislature should have gone back to work,” Seaquist said. “The legislature should have been down there. Her hands were tied.”
Doug Richards of Olalla, his Republican challenger, was not happy with the proposed across the board cuts. He said the legislature needs to look at “the big picture” and analyze why the state is operating in a deficit. He criticized what he described as Olympia’s dependence on federal stimulus funds and said leadership was lacking in the legislature. “When they were in session, they were basically playing Vegas, hoping the money will come in. … Politics as usual is not working down there. One time money is not sustainable. This has to change.”
On education funding, Seaquist said the state should implement a procedure similar to the BRAC commission, which evaluates Navy bases on their output and makes closures accordingly. Yes, schools need to be amply funded, Seaquist said, “but we’ve got to see output.”
Richards advocates giving local schools more control of state education funds. He advocates increased deregulation of schools.

26th District Representative Position 1
Incumbent Rep. Jan Angel, R-Port Orchard, decried across the board cuts, saying, “I don’t believe that is the way you balance a budget.”
Angel said the legislature needs to define core services, and to demand more productivity and efficiency, starting with its own offices.
Angel referenced a study of state priorities done under former Gov. Gary Locke, but it’s “still sitting on a shelf in Olympia.”
“Some areas can’t take a massive hit,” said Angel, who is vocally opposed to unfunded mandates.
Sumner Schoenike, a Gig Harbor pediatrician and Democrat, also disagrees with the across-the-board approach, calling it an “abdication of duties.” “We are sent to Olympia to make difficult decisions, and that’s exactly what we must do,” he said. “We did not by chance end up in a budget deficit. This is a national issue, folks.”
Schoenike blamed much of the mess on “the profligate ways on Wall Street.”
He said legislators have to recognize they are dealing with an unprecedented situation and take a whole new approach.
The two candidates did not discuss health care at the forum, but on this topic, they are diametrically opposed. Schoenike is a strong supporter of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act. Angel said she is alarmed by the potential for unfunded mandates the act implies. Her quote, from a Kitsap Sun Editorial Board meeting, “Our citizens are totally irate about this. This is a system, which, when citizens say this was shoved down our throat, it is.”

26th District Senate
Incumbent Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, and challenger Marty McClendon didn’t find a lot to disagree about at the forum.
On the issue of collective bargaining for state employees, McClendon said that union leaders representing state employees need to recognize the increased burden for health care costs incurred by private sector employees. Union leaders should negotiate in good faith to bring state employee health care contributions more in line with the private sector, McClendon said.
Kilmer said he could see both sides of the issue.
“I do not think we should balance the budget on the backs of our state employees,” he said. “On the flip side, I don’t think our employees should be exempt from budget cuts. … I would rather see a 5 percent pay cut than a 100 percent pay cut.”
Both touted their qualifications for the job.
Kilmer stood on his record of fighting for higher education and ferry service, and keeping tolls down on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, reprising his frequently cited self-assessment in this regard as a “pitbull.” He said he would continue his advocacy on behalf of small business (he opposed a B&O tax increase and helped pass a law reducing regulatory paperwork, he said). “We should reduce the cost of doing business,” said Kilmer, who works with the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County.
McClendon is a real estate broker and small business owner with a background in health care. He was able to raise himself up by his bootstraps, but he doesn’t see similar opportunities for his own children, which is why he’s running for office. “I’m not a politician. … I’m a common sense kind of a guy,” he said.

Correction: Derek Kilmer works with the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County. The incorrect board was named in an earlier version of this post.

This evening, I’ll be covering a candidates’ forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Kitsap County from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Norm Dicks Government Center, featuring candidates for house and senate races in the 26th and 35th Legislative Districts.

Post questions you’d like to ask the candidates, and I’ll see what I can do.

Visits the Kitsap Sun’s Election Guide for video coverage of editorial board interviews with candidates in most of these races.

At today’s forum:
26th Legislative District:
Senate – Derek Kilmer & Marty McClendon
Rep. Pos. 1 – Jan Angel and Sumner Schoenike
Rep. Pos. 2 – Doug Richards and Larry Seaquist

35th Legislative District:
Senate – Tim Sheldon and Nancy Williams
Rep. Pos. 1 – Daniel Griffey and Kathy Haigh
Rep. Pos. 2 – Fred Finn and Linda Simpson

State Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, has a challenger in November. Marty McClendon, a Gig Harbor real estate broker, will run as a Republican.

His press release follows:

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