3 more candidates file for same seat in Thurston County Commissioner race
The 2020 race for Thurston County Commissioner in District 1 just got a lot more crowded.
Three more candidates — a Democrat, an Independent, and a Republican — have filed to run in the district that includes downtown Olympia, bringing the total number of candidates in that race to five. The seat is now held by John Hutchings.
One of the new candidates is Bud Blake, an Independent who served a term as commissioner for District 3 before losing a 2018 re-election race to Tye Menser, a Democrat.
Blake told The Olympian Friday in a phone interview that he has relocated and is running in District 1, in part, because it’s at the center of the county’s mental health and homelessness challenges, two of his top issues. He’s currently serving as interim director for Great Rivers Behavioral Health Administrative Services Organization in Chehalis.
Blake says his other priorities include helping rural areas thrive through less restrictive regulations. He referenced the Mazama pocket gopher, which is federally listed as endangered; their protection can slow down the permitting process for development in Thurston County.
The commission’s handling of a new courthouse proposal and the financing for it also were factors that prompted Blake to run, he says. A property tax increase to pay for a new courthouse will be on an April special election ballot.
“This is about putting the right person in the right spot,” Blake said. “We’ll let the people decide who gets to do that.”
Hutchings, who is serving as chair of the board, told The Olympian Tuesday he wasn’t surprised to learn Blake had filed, and said he’d been hearing that rumor since Blake lost his last election.
He says it’ll change race dynamics “only because it gives voters greater opportunity to assess who they want to serve on the commission.”
“I’m all about giving voters a choice,” he said.
Asked how he might distinguish himself from another Independent on the ballot, Hutchings said he has a different “management style” and “leadership skills.” He’s more participatory, he says, and more responsive than reactive. Hutchings also said he’s been more budget-focused in recent years than Blake was — and more budget-focused than he himself was in the two years he served alongside Blake.
The Democratic side of the ticket also grew by one candidate, with Carolina Mejia filing Feb. 25.
Mejia told The Olympian in a phone interview that she and her parents moved to Tennessee from Honduras in 2001, then her parents moved to Thurston County in 2009, and she went back and forth to Memphis to finish college before officially moving out here.
As a mother of two young children, Mejia said protecting the environment is one of her priorities. She said she’s also an advocate for affordable housing, and that fiscal responsibility was “imprinted in her upbringing” as a first-generation immigrant.
Mejia said she’s involved in local nonprofits Family Education & Support Services, which offers parent education and support programs in the area, and CIELO, which provides services and resources to the local Spanish-speaking community. She’s also Treasurer for the Washington State Democratic Latino Caucus and a member of the Thurston County Democrats, and said she’s been thinking of running for last two years.
“The decision to run for County Commissioner was not made lightly. ... I came to the conclusion that the time for action is now, and that the time for transformation is now,” she told The Olympian.
The other Democrat running, Rory Summerson, told The Olympian, that in broad terms, it gets a little difficult when people of the same party run against each other because it can split the vote. But, he said he “has every intention of being a fair and amenable candidate.”
“I would call upon all the other candidates to run fair races that are focused on the issues and not lean on personal attacks, because it doesn’t benefit our local politics,” he said.
The sole Republican in the race is C Davis, who in 2018 ran as an Independent to serve as State Representative in District 22. He lost to Democrat Laurie Dolan, who claimed about 70% of votes in the general election.
Davis told The Olympian in a phone interview he’s been a “life-long Independent” and has gotten to know people in the Republican party in the last year.
“I felt it was a good place for me to be for the time being, since I had to be somewhere,” he said.
Like Blake, Davis mentioned the proposal for a new courthouse as a factor in his decision to run, emphasizing that Hutchings supported the idea of a new courthouse and voted to put the proposal on April ballots. Davis called that a “violation of public trust.”
Among his priorities, Davis names property owners’ rights, fiscal policy, and protecting the environment — partly by addressing homelessness. At a recent off-site commission meeting, Davis spoke about homeless people dumping raw sewage in sensitive wetlands and advocated a hard-line approach to people who live in the Jungle encampment and along Deschutes Parkway.
“80% of them have criminal warrants out for them,” Davis said. “So we actually have a place for them. It’s called jail.”
.jpg)