3rd District residents air health care reform views
To get acquainted with Southwest Washington’s natural resource-based economy, take a virtual walk across the 3rd Congressional District.
The 3rd stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the crest of the Cascades and from the Columbia River to the southern tip of Puget Sound. One of the 10 most heavily forested districts in the nation, it’s bounded by rivers, mountains and saltwater, with population centers at either end and small towns and rural areas in between.
If geography is destiny, the 3rd is destined to vote for a moderate this year, as it has for the past decade. That gives it another distinction: According to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, it’s one of a handful of true swing districts in the nation, making it a bellwether in the 2010 election.
A map of Washington’s nine congressional districts on the Cook report’s Web site colors the 3rd a bright green “toss-up” in a state colored solid red east of the mountains and mostly shades of blue to the west.
Democratic 3rd District Congressman Brian Baird’s decision to step down after 12 years has created an open seat that’s being targeted by both political parties and tracked closely by national pundits as a barometer of a possible Republican resurgence this year.
The Cook Report now predicts that the GOP has a chance to gain a net 40 seats and retake control of the House after the 2010 election.
But for the district’s small-town mayors, county commissioners and others on the front lines, the question of who should represent the 3rd revolves around nitty-gritty local issues that have little to do with partisan politics. Cities and counties in the 3rd need and expect federal help on a range of issues involving rivers, forests, beaches, highways and a certain interstate bridge.
“A lot of these issues, rather than Republican or Democrat, are more urban or rural,” said Pacific County Commissioner Jon Kaino. “You may find a rural Democrat more conservative than an urban Republican.”
The 3rd District’s status as a political swing district results in part from its geographic and economic diversity.
The state capital, Olympia, is a Democratic stronghold, heavily populated by unionized state workers. Business-oriented Clark County votes moderate-to-conservative. Blue-collar “lunch-bucket Democrats” dominate the industrial hub of Longview-Kelso with its mills and busy port. Faded logging towns search for something to replace the timber industry in conservative Lewis County.
Southwest Washington has taken a disproportionate hit in the Great Recession: every county in the 3rd except Thurston has double-digit unemployment.
Natural resource issues that need a federal fix — often from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — are front and center in the 3rd.
Chehalis in Lewis County is regularly inundated with winter floods.
Sediment from the eruption of Mount St. Helens 30 years ago still clogs the Toutle and Cowlitz rivers in Cowlitz County.
Sleepy river towns on the Lower Columbia survive on fishing and logging. Small fishing communities near the river’s mouth depend on dredging to keep their harbors navigable.
Federal money funneled to the 3rd District has allowed the Willapa Bay National Wildlife Refuge and communities on the Long Beach Peninsula to declare near-victory in their decades-long war against spartina, an invasive grass that once threatened to destroy a pristine estuary and a premier oyster fishery.
It has paid for a $190 million Columbia River channel-deepening project that is nearly complete and already is allowing deeper-draft vessels to reach Lower Columbia ports.
Next up: a $280 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to reinforce the deteriorating jetties at the mouth of the Columbia against major storms and assure that the river’s mouth will remain open to navigation.
The 3rd District also has two major tourist destinations under federal management, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Both draw visitors to Southwest Washington; both stir conflicts that pit development against preservation, and both are starved for funding.
Clark County and the city of Vancouver are counting on federal largesse to help redevelop the Columbia River waterfront, improve rail and road access to the Port of Vancouver, transform the Vancouver Historic Reserve — and build a new Interstate 5 bridge across the Columbia River.
“We’ve been looking at how we improve our local infrastructure in ways that are beyond our local ability,” said Vancouver City Manager Pat McDonnell. For that, he said, “we need to turn to the federal government.”
Redistricting ahead
The 3rd District was redrawn and downsized after the 2000 Census because of its population growth, concentrated in Clark County. It lost the north end of Pacific and Thurston counties and all of Klickitat County.
It will be redrawn again as a result of the 2010 Census, and is likely to lose more land to the north, said David Ammons, communications director for Secretary of State Sam Reed.
“We expect there to be some significant changes in the 3rd,” said Ammons, former longtime Olympia-based chief political reporter for the Associated Press and a self-described “student of the 3rd.” He expects Olympia, with its heavily Democratic voting enclave, will be peeled off and become part of a congressional district to the north, reinforcing the 3rd’s swing-district status.
“It has behaved like one for the last decade, with a mixed legislative delegation and voters going for George W. Bush twice,” Ammons said. He noted that in November’s vote on a sweeping revenue-cutting initiative, the 3rd “went for Tim Eyman when the rest of the state was against him.”
And in 2008, the 3rd voted for both Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi.
“It’s a fascinating district,” Ammons said. “You have to juggle the needs of the urban centers with their more liberal voters” and the conservative rural areas with their dependence on natural resources.
A defining issue
Baird loves the diversity of the 3rd — and not only because it requires him to visit many of the scenic spots of Southwest Washington on his frequent trips home.
“Many members represent districts where the issues are well-defined,” he said. “In some cases, the politics are so well-known that once someone secures the seat, they can pretty much have it for life.”
Not so in the 3rd.
“You have the opportunity to hear from many different sides. You may have many different sides mad at you at the same time for different reasons. I like that. I don’t think the world is a simple place.”
After his 1998 election, Baird, then a psychology professor from Olympia, traveled around the district. “I wanted to reach out to sectors I didn’t know very much about,” he said.
He quickly realized that water was a defining issue for a district bounded by the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, dotted with dams and levees and laced with pristine salmon streams.
“I sought the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee of Transportation and I have served on it from day one,” he said. He also established a close working relationship with the Corps of Engineers.
“The district is full of Corps of Engineers projects: flood control, the dams and jetties, diking districts,” Baird said. “Harbor maintenance is life-or-death for some communities. The Cowlitz had concerns over maintenance of the Toutle River levee. It’s not a glamorous issue, but on a day-to-day basis it impacts the lives of our constituents.”
That constituent work is the essence of representing the 3rd, Baird said.
“People often think the primary part of a congressman’s job is to vote, but it’s really working with local agencies to get things done.”
Whoever wins the 3rd District seat will inherit a heavy workload and a busy travel schedule. Trying to squeeze in visits to Long Beach and Morton on weekend trips home “is a challenge logistically,” Baird said. “I try to do it as often as I can, especially if I need to see something with my own eyes.”
Rural counties appreciate the effort.
“The most important thing for us is a congressperson who will communicate with us on a regular basis,” said Kaino, the commissioner from Pacific County. “Baird has been excellent. He visits the county as much as he can.”
Those human contacts are what the job is all about, Baird said.
“I think people in the Northwest put personality above politics. Once people get to know you, they look at, ‘How do you approach issues? Can we work with this person?’ If someone of either party runs in this district and says, ‘This is the position of my political party, and you should vote for me because I stand for that position,’ I don’t think they will be very successful.”
Kathie Durbin: 360-735-4523; kathie.durbin@columbian.com.
COUNTY CAPSULES:
Flooding, soil erosion and the decline of timber dominate rural counties’ agendas
Wahkiakum: Life after timber
Tiny Wahkiakum County, which stretches for just 35 miles along the Lower Columbia, has struggled with the decline of the timber industry as well as some of its environmental impacts.
“We are a natural resource-based community, a small-business community,” said County Commissioner Blair Brady. “We are basically a welfare county. We have existed on timber and fishing from the beginning and we need support in protecting our fishing, both commercial and sport.”
Siltation at the mouth of the heavily logged Grays River watershed has flooded upstream farmland in the county. Beach erosion on Puget Island in the Columbia River threatened some shoreline homes until dredge spoils from the channel-deepening project were brought in to rebuild the shore.
The county was forced by high unemployment and a tight budget to lay off 100 employees this year, nearly 30 percent of its work force. “We had to lay some deputies off,” Brady said. “No department was left unscathed.”
Cowlitz: Mount St. Helen’s aftermath
In Cowlitz County, Longview-Kelso continues to deal with the sediment from the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens that surged down the North Fork of the Toutle River to its confluence with the Cowlitz.
“The sediment in the Toutle and Cowlitz River and the potential for flooding of the Cowlitz Basin is probably the No. 1 issue for Cowlitz County,” said Cowlitz County Commissioner Axel Swanson. Some of that sediment backed up into the Coweeman River last summer, forcing last winter’s evacuation of Kelso.
“Another one I hope doesn’t get lost in the transition is the future of Mount St. Helens,” Swanson said. “Should it be a national park? Should it stay with the Forest Service? I really want whoever our next 3rd District congressperson is to pick this up.”
Morton Mayor James Gerwig says his east Lewis County town desperately needs new manufacturing or assembly plants to replace timber jobs that have gone for good. “We need new industries, not necessarily one big one,” he said. “We have empty buildings on our main street.”
Retirees are drawn to Morton’s scenery, rural ambience and available health care, but young people are leaving, Gerwig said. Overall, Morton’s population has fallen by one-third from its heyday to 1,040 today. That means a smaller tax base and less money to support schools.
In western Lewis County, the Corps of Engineers has been working for 70 years to find solutions to chronic flooding in the Chehalis River Basin, which has seen five major floods and three federally declared disasters since 1998. After flooding closed Interstate 5 for four days in December 2007, Baird helped win another $1 million to help address the contentious issue of how to control flooding over the long term.
Long, skinny Pacific County depends heavily on its congressional representative to help solve issues that threaten its economy. County Commissioner Jon Kaino defends earmarks like those that funded the spartina (cordgrass) eradication program in the Willapa Bay National Wildlife Refuge and helped pay for dredging the Ilwaco harbor when it silted up, threatening commercial fishing.
“Without earmarks, Willapa Bay would no longer be the most pristine estuary in the Lower 48, and the Port of Ilwaco would not be navigable,” he said.
Infrastructure is an issue in the Pacific County cities of Raymond and South Bend. They’re counting on federal help to build a joint wastewater treatment plant to replace a failing system.
Skamania: Relying on the feds
Skamania County’s budget is heavily dependent on federal payments to rural counties. Those payments have helped ease the loss of revenue from logging the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which covers most of the county. But that program is being phased out and will end in 2012.
“We are doing what we can to transition the economy, and that includes working to get industrial properties ready for occupancy,” said Commissioner Paul Pearce. Federal and state grants have allowed the county to build the first phase of a business incubator building at North Bonneville.
A strip of south Skamania County is within the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. That limits development outside Stevenson, but attracts tourists and some economic development money.
“Obviously our connection to the federal government because of the port and the national forest is pretty significant,” Pearce said. “We would look for a congressional representative who really understands these rural issues.”
The federal government’s presence is less obvious in Thurston County, but County Commissioner Sandra Romero said Baird has helped the county win funding for 45 miles of pedestrian-bicycle paths, including a pedestrian bridge over Interstate 5. “It has been so difficult sometimes to get nonmotorized projects funded,” she said.
Federal money also has paid for adding lanes to I-5 and controlling stormwater runoff into Budd Inlet. The county’s biggest need, Romero said, is about $30 million in stimulus money to fund a new jail and courthouse.
Perched on Budd Inlet, Thurston County also is part of the massive state and federal effort to restore Puget Sound.
“Salmon-recovery issues are really big for us, like replacing the old culverts that prohibit salmon from spawning,” Romero said. The county is hoping for $1.5 million in federal help to open storm-damaged culverts in Olympia’s popular Ellis Cove.
