Summary of San Juan County Democrats Meeting
June 30, Friday Harbor Grange
Hi SJC Democrats,
We had a crowd of more than 30 join us for our meeting yesterday. Many of us had earlier participated in the protest on the streets of Friday Harbor in conjunction with hundreds of other protests around the country to bring attention to the horrible policies of the current national administration as regards immigrants. We were glad for a chance to get out of the rain after the rally.
We have had a lot of our people involved in various activities around the state of late. Cindy Wolf, our vice chair, attended four meetings on the mainland as part of the state party platform committee, and this culminated in the passage of many outstanding resolutions at our state convention in Wenatchee two weeks ago. Six of us were present at the convention, including 18-year-old Julia Keane, our youngest delegate. Several of us attended an event in Burlington on May 2 to meet the candidates for Kris Lytton’s state rep position, then another group of us attended the endorsement meeting of the 40th Legislative District on June 2. At that meeting all four Democratic candidates presented a letter in which they asked that we not endorse any one of them, instead to endorse all of them and let them battle it out in their campaigns, which we agreed to.
Great preparations have been made for our participation in the Friday Harbor 4th of July parade. We have donkey costumes, banners, music, and an enthusiastic group of marchers. If you haven’t already committed to marching, join us Wednesday morning at the top of Spring Street (near the ballfield) at 10 AM. Thanks for all this to David Dehlendorf!
Bev Leyman has been doing some research on local campaign finance, looking at different systems for assuring that spending on local campaigns is fair and that money does not buy elections. She gave us a preliminary report on this and will continue next time.
Andi Rowley was confirmed as our new PCO for Friday Harbor North. Alison Longley filed to be PCO for San Juan Southeast, and Rick Millson filed for PCO for Friday Harbor South. They were the only ones to file for their respective precincts, so they will automatically become PCOs on Dec. 1. However, in order to get them active ASAP, I am hereby giving notice that I will be convening a meeting of our PCOs electronically at least 10 days from now so that we can vote on putting them into their positions early. So PCOs, please look for an email from me after July 11 setting this up. The reason I am not waiting until our next meeting is that it probably won’t take place until after the primary, and I am not allowed to appoint PCOs between the primary and the general election.
Thanks to PCO Stephen Shubert volunteering to chair our entry in the county fair this year, we will have a booth. Please contact me if you are willing to help with setting up our booth or if you would be willing to volunteer to “man” (or woman) our booth for a couple of hours. It is a fun way to meet locals and to tell them about their options for improving our political landscape. This year’s fair is Aug. 15-18. Thank you, Stephen!
Rita O’Clair, our postcard person, brought stamped postcards for us to fill out, one to Sen. Cantwell to get on board with introducing a Senate companion measure to the House bill calling for the overturning of Citizens United, another to Senators Murkowski and Collins, asking them to vote against any extremist SCOTUS nominees to protect women. Also, Rita has generously volunteered to be in charge of our new library of politically worthwhile books, and she will also be our person observing the ballot-counting process during the upcoming primary. Let’s hear it for Rita!
Representatives of each of the four state rep Democratic candidates spoke to us, and campaign literature was handed out. Sharon Abreu spoke for Tom Pasma, Michael Riordan spoke for Alex Ramel, Cindy spoke for Debra Lekanoff, and I spoke for Rud Browne. The speakers aren’t necessarily supporting the particular candidates, but we wanted to make sure each was represented, and we didn’t want to have to make the candidates travel to the islands for a five-minute presentation, especially since they will be coming out here in a week and a half for League of Women Voters forums; also, they had another candidate event yesterday in Burlington. Speaking of the LWV forums, I encourage you all to attend the one on your island, where you will be able to meet the candidates in person. Orcas is at the Eastsound Firehall on Wednesday, July 11, 5:30-7:00, San Juan is July 12 at the Grange, 4:00-6:00, and Lopez is Wed, July 18, 4:00-5:45, at the Lopez Grace Episcopal Church. The two races which will present candidates are this state house seat and Rick Larsen’s Congressional seat, the latter presenting Rick along with another Dem, a Green, a libertarian, a “moderate” GOP, and an independent. Should be interesting.
We also had two candidates for a state appellate court position appear before us. Cecily Hazelrigg-Hernandez is a public defender running for this position, and Rita Latsinova is an appellate attorney running for the same slot. There are also three other candidates.
One of the candidates for county prosecutor, Nick Power, happened to attend our meeting. He will be running against incumbent Randy Gaylord in both the primary and the general election. The primary vote does not really matter, as the vote in the general will determine the winner of this race. Because Nick was in attendance, I permitted him to introduce himself, but I did not let him go on as long as he may have wanted, as Randy was not there to represent himself. We will discuss this race more after the primary.
We have chosen not to endorse any candidates in the primary. Instead, we will be waiting for the primary results to come in first, then we will assemble our endorsement committee to prepare questions, get them answered by the candidates, make endorsement recommendations to our general meeting, and have a vote on each race (there will be many others by then) at a meeting in September or October.
During my chair’s report, I spoke briefly about my conclusion that we have two different Democratic Parties. We have our state and local parties, and ours in particular are very good. It is crucial for us to have state leadership in running candidates in every possible location, something our current chair has made a priority. You may be aware that during the Obama years at least 1,000 positions in legislatures around the country transferred from Democrats to Republicans, and Republican legislatures have been responsible for things such as refusing to opt into the Affordable Care Act, cutting the social safety net, etc. Therefore, it is crucial for us to have a strong Democratic Party presence in every state to prevent the Republicans from further ruining our quality of life.
The other Democratic Party is the national party, and the jury is still out here. The DNC has been undergoing a reform process that is now almost two years old, and this past week their Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to bar super delegates from voting on the first ballot, enabling all candidates to start from the same place. This is a huge step in making our presidential process much more democratic. But too many of our national leaders still oppose single payer health care (health sector campaign donations, e.g., Patty Murray received $1.7 million in 2017 alone) and other positions that the majority of the Democratic rank and file favor. And you have the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee coming in and telling locals who they should run for Congress, and these are always moderates with ties to big money. Yet in the face of this, last week you had Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a 28-year-old Democratic Socialist Latina, defeat a ten-term incumbent in a Congressional primary in NYC, even though the upstart candidate was outspent 10-1. While it is important to be aware of different needs and values in different locales, it is obvious that if the Democratic national establishment does not get their act together, addressing the needs of the people rather than their big donors, the national Democrats may be in big trouble, and we cannot let that happen for the sake of all of us.
As soon as we can reschedule our Celebration of Success with our three legislators, you will hear about it. Hopefully it will be sooner than later.
Our next meeting will most likely occur in early September. Look for a note about when that will be. Again, please join us in the parade and at the fair. Our country is in trouble, and we can make a difference in restoring the rule of law and justice.
Thanks,
David Turnoy
Chair, SJC Democrats
360-376-4165
davidgeri@centurylink.net