Thurston County Commission candidate C Davis facing voter registration challenge
A former candidate for local office filed a challenge Friday alleging C Davis, Republican candidate for Thurston County Commission, doesn’t live where he’s registered to vote. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
Andrew Saturn, who identifies as a Socialist and ran for Thurston County Public Utility District commissioner in 2018, alleges in his challenge that Davis doesn’t live at an address on the 1200 block of Fourth Avenue East in Olympia, where he’s registered.
At the address, Saturn found an office building with 10 offices, two conference rooms, a kitchen, and two bathrooms, he wrote in an email to the Thurston County Auditor’s Office — but no residential units.
“Current occupants are entirely business-related and there is nobody acknowledging that they are collecting mail for ‘C Davis,’” Saturn wrote.
When contacted by The Olympian, Davis didn’t want to comment on the challenge, but said he’s “not really worried” about the allegations, which are the latest development in a race already roiling with tension.
The challenge against C Davis
Davis came in second in the seven-candidate primary earlier this month, garnering just over 18 percent of the vote. Democrat Carolina Mejia came in first with over 32 percent. On his campaign website, Davis pledges to do his part “to return Thurston County to the way it used to be,” painting a picture of a county that’s degraded.
On his “issues” page, he lists the county courthouse, which he says does not need to be replaced, an “inefficient building permit process,” and the “menacing” Mazama pocket gopher — the threatened status of which is known for causing permitting headaches for local would-be developers.
The Davis campaign’s tweets often feature inflammatory rhetoric, including references to “anarcho Marxist terrorists” and a tweet calling Democrats “part of the KKK, Jim Crow and lynchings.” On social distancing, the campaign tweeted that “It’s not social distancing, it’s Civic isolation. It is about isolating people from each other, which will help to minimize the possibilities of rebellion. If people can no longer communicate with each other, they will never be able to unite to overthrow the tyranny.”
In a phone call with The Olympian, Saturn said he met Davis in 2018, when Davis was running as an independent against Rep. Laurie Dolan for the state House of Representatives in District 22. They came across each other during that election cycle, he said — at candidate forums, for example.
This year, when the Puget Sound Socialist Party was looking for a race where they could run a candidate, Saturn said he noticed Davis’s name and it led him down a rabbit hole. He wasn’t trying to dig up dirt, he said, but what he found felt “fishy.”
As a Socialist, Saturn wrote in an email to The Olympian, he believes “everyone deserves the right to vote and access to the ballot, regardless of their identity or political affiliation.”
“I’m not a Democrat, I don’t have some vendetta against this guy,” Saturn said in a phone interview. “I just think it’s super weird.”
Thurston County Auditor Mary Hall will preside over the hearing on the challenge at 3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27. The public can attend the hearing via Zoom, Hall told The Olympian. Documents related to the challenge and a link for the meeting should be posted on the Auditor’s website soon.
Both Saturn and Davis will have opportunities to present their cases, Hall said. There could be a decision made that day, after she goes over the evidence with her attorney, she said, but that’s not certain.
If Davis doesn’t live in Thurston County, he would have to register where he lives, Hall said. The Auditor doesn’t have the authority to take a candidate off the ballot, she said. Someone would need to challenge the validity of his candidacy in court.
On the other side of the ticket: A court filing
Meanwhile, Jon Pettit is doing just that: challenging someone’s candidacy in court. Earlier this week, he mounted accusations that Mejia is not a U.S. citizen, based on information from an investigation he told The Olympian he commissioned from Lacey-based Cicero Intel.
Arthur Mills, owner and senior intelligence analyst at Cicero Intel, has since told The Olympian Pettit did not hire him and he doesn’t know who Pettit is. However, Mills also said he does not discuss his clients, so would not confirm who commissioned an investigation, a portion of which Pettit included in a letter to the local Canvassing Board, nor whether the company investigated Mejia at all.
In response to this, Pettit told The Olympian he went through a person who regularly works with Cicero Intel to commission the investigation on his behalf, but that he’s the one who paid for it. It cost him $100, he said.
He did not reveal who the third party was, but he said it was not Bud Blake, a District 1 candidate he’s openly supported who came in third in the primary election and who has denied any involvement. In response to Olympian questions, he also said it was not property rights activist Glen Morgan nor C Davis, who he said he also supports.
Pettit officially filed an affidavit in Thurston County Superior Court Friday challenging Mejia’s right to appear on the general election ballot, court records show. In the affidavit, he asks the court to subpoena Mejia’s certificate of naturalization to review during a hearing, writing that he’s requested it from Mejia “numerous times” to avoid the court process but she hasn’t responded.
Thurston County Auditor Hall has told The Olympian Mejia provided documentation showing that she is a naturalized citizen and holds a U.S. passport.
In the affidavit, Pettit also requests that the court change the venue to another county’s superior court, since Mejia works in Thurston County as a judicial assistant.
When asked for comment on the allegations against Mejia, Davis told The Olympian he heard about them Thursday and doesn’t “really know anything about the topic.” Later, in an email, he wrote “I believe that a person is innocent until proven guilty” and “I do not approve of witch hunts, there must be due process of law.”
Thurston County Republican Chairman John O’Callahan told The Olympian the party didn’t bring the allegations and didn’t have any comment. When asked about a message Mejia received that referenced speaking with Republicans and included her full social security number, O’Callahan said “Whoever put that out did not put that out with any sanction of the Thurston County Republican Party.”
And a unique endorsement
Another development in the tumultuous race came Friday when incumbent Commissioner John Hutchings, an independent candidate who came in fourth in the primary race, told The Olympian he is endorsing Mejia. He said he doesn’t remember ever endorsing a partisan candidate before, but that this was “a no-brainer.”
“I think I owe it to Thurston County,” Hutchings said. “If they’re going to replace me, which is fine, then replace me with someone who’s intelligent, compassionate, and has a vision. Not someone coming in with political fanfare and rhetoric that’s used to incite a base but doesn’t proffer any good policy. Specifically around homelessness.”
He called what Pettit did “absolutely the lowest-life, despicable thing you can think of doing and completely racist, in my opinion.”
Seeing one of his primary competitors, Blake, brought into the story — in the context of Pettit being a vocal supporter of Blake’s — and for Blake claim to have no idea about the allegations against Mejia but not condemn them outright, “speaks loudly,” Hutchings said.
“That didn’t decide it for me,” he said. “That was icing on the cake.”
.jpg)