By Don Nelson
It seems all but certain that the Okanogan County Board of Commissioners will have a distinctly different look in January 2017.
County residents appear to be indicating that they also expect some different policy directions and different ways of doing things from the reconstituted board.
That became evident as early as the primaries. In District 2, which includes the Methow Valley, one-term incumbent Ray Campbell finished third behind challengers Andy Hover and Ashley Thrasher, who advanced to the general election.
In District 1, one-term incumbent Sheilah Kennedy barely made it out of the primaries, drawing less than a third of the votes in her own district. She faced challenger Chris Branch in the Nov. 8 general election.
Now it looks like one-and-done for both incumbents. As of Monday (Nov. 21), Hover and Branch had comfortable leads in their respective races. (It should be noted that in the general election, all county voters cast ballots for each of the two commissioner races.)
In District 2, it was a tough choice between two promising candidates. Hover, whose father Bud Hover was a two-term county commissioner who was defeated by Campbell in 2012 — had name recognition in his favor. Thrasher ran a strong, competent campaign and drew an impressive number of votes for someone who was hardly known beyond the valley before she announced her candidacy. I hope we hear more from her in the future.
Hover identifies himself as Republican but describes himself as conservative. It remains to be seen what that means at the county political level, but Hover seems to be much more practical than ideological in his understanding of challenges the county faces.
District 2 was a pretty tame race between two quality choices. District 1 was a more prickly contest, it seems, as Branch — who identifies as an Independent — was in a position to critique Kennedy’s performance as a commissioner.
The lone holdover on the board will be Jim DeTro. For the past four years, Kennedy, Campbell and DeTro were pretty much in lockstep when it came to decision-making and priority setting. Rarely was there a dissenting vote among them.
So how, in a predominantly “red” county, did two staunchly Republican incumbents go down to defeat?
The answer is that the current board managed to rankle a broad spectrum of voters. They have taken positions that, in the view of many observers, range from puzzling to incomprehensible to ludicrous on a number of issues.
Lawsuits have piled up. Pointless distractions such as the county’s wolf vendetta and the commissioners’ dangerous affiliation with the American Lands Council drained time and resources. A protracted and unnecessary flirtation with moving the county’s juvenile facilities to someplace far away got peoples’ unhappy attention. What should have been a relatively simple, constituency-friendly decision to deny a request to close Three Devils Road turned into a still-festering controversy when the commissioners defied logic, fairness and their own hearing examiner. Citizen observers have complained that transparency was lacking in the commissioners’ proceedings.
On Election Day, it seems like party affiliation had less to do with the outcome than a desire for county leadership that is more attuned to residents’ needs. And the needs are considerable. One of the current board’s failings was its inability or unwillingness to develop a meaningful economic development policy for a county that is badly in need of more employment opportunities that don’t have anything to do with resource extraction.
As the lone holdout, DeTro may find himself on the losing side more often than not. But I’d rather see the board make unanimous decisions for the right choices and policies.
With less than two months to go, the current board can choose to limit itself to the county’s day-to-day operations, or take lame duck actions that will only complicate things for the incoming commissioners. I haven’t always agreed with Campbell and Kennedy, but I found them likeable, honorable people and I applaud their public service. In Okanogan County, as opposed to the national level, I suspect the transfer of power will be orderly and respectful.
