It’s candidate filing week for all state, county and local elections, so by the end of the day on Friday we’ll know who’s angling for public office this year in positions that we most care about in Okanogan County and beyond.
Some early-out-of-the gate candidates have already made their intentions known, through campaign signs, appearances and fundraising efforts, before filing week. Others will be catching up. All will be subject to the state’s campaign finance reporting rules and other requirements to run for office. We’ll be checking the campaign finance reports regularly as part of our coverage, as they can provide indicators as to how the office-seekers are doing. And sometimes we discover that they have been tardy or lax in their reporting.
Nearly all of the major county offices will be on the ballot: assessor, auditor, clerk, coroner, prosecuting attorney, sheriff, treasurer, one commissioner position, two District Court judge seats and one Superior Court position. These are all important roles that affect our lives in Okanogan County so we’re hopeful for a strong field of both incumbents and potential challengers.
Other races that county residents will have a say in are in U.S. Congressional District 4, where incumbent Dan Newhouse is seeking re-election and faces challengers from within his own party; and in Washington state Legislative District 7, which now includes Okanogan County and where the incumbents are Sen. Shelly Short and Reps. Jacquelin Maycumber and Joel Kretz. Becoming familiar with them, and anyone who chooses to run against them, will be an adjustment after we have become used to and appreciative of our soon-to-be-former 12th District representatives in Olympia.
As always, we are hoping that enough prospective candidates will take the plunge to make the races competitive and that we’ll have a robust ballot. It’s never healthy to have major elective positions go unchallenged, even if the challengers might be a little outside the usual mainstream or not particularly active campaigners. Choice is good, and no current officeholder should get a pass.
A long ballot means a lot of political ground to cover in a relatively short amount of time, so we will soon be ramping up our election coverage plans, once we have an idea what the fields look like. We’ll pay the most attention to the Okanogan County races, as well as the Congressional and state legislative contests. Typically that involves interviewing the candidates along with Q&As on major issues associated with the races. We anticipate that there will also be candidate forums hosted in the valley, and we will cover those as well.
It seems like a good time to revisit this newspaper’s policies regarding candidate appearances and how they are promoted.
We do not publish news items about individual candidate appearances at meet-and-greets, in local homes or just standing on the street soliciting votes. We regard those as campaigning and suggest that they can be promoted through advertising in the newspaper (by the way, we offer a 15% discount for political advertising). Nor do we cover those appearances as news items. We do use the news columns to promote candidate forums that are open to the general public and are hosted by a sponsoring, neutral organization.
Given our limited resources, it will be more challenging for us to cover candidates and issues beyond the most important local races, but we’ll do our best to provide whatever information we can, particularly for statewide offices.
We also welcome letters to editor in support of specific candidates (but not from the candidates themselves). We don’t accept My Turn columns from candidates because then we would have to offer the same opportunity to all of them, and because we plan to explore their positions and views in our news coverage.
One aspect of campaign coverage that can be tricky to finesse is that incumbents always have an advantage for a couple of reasons: because of their familiarity with the voters, and because they may be in the position of making or being part of news that we would cover as a normal part of our work. That’s inevitable if a public official is doing their job. Still, the same campaign coverage rules will apply to them when they are acting as candidates rather than in their official capacity.
It’s going to be busy, and interesting, through the first week of November (and after). Of course, none of the coverage any of the media do between now and then will matter unless you get out and vote — hopefully in an informed way. There will be many places to find trustworthy information, and the Methow Valley News plans to be one of them.
