Sprawling 18th District yields crowded ballot for House seat

A crowd of candidates flocked to Southwest Washington’s open 18th District state House seat this year after Republican state Rep. Jaime Herrera announced that she would relinquish the position to run for the open 3rd Congressional District seat.

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The sprawling 18th District, a Republican stronghold for years, encompasses Felida, Salmon Creek, Ridgefield, Battle Ground, north Clark County, Camas, Washougal, and most of Cowlitz County. Herrera has represented the district since her appointment to the seat in 2007.

Four Republicans, one Democrat, one independent and a candidate who “prefers no party” remain in the race. Two other Republican candidates dropped out before filing week in June. That was a relief to Clark County GOP leaders, who worried that so many Republican candidates would splinter the top two primary vote and let Democrats capture both spots on the general election ballot if they fielded a second candidate.

That didn’t happen. But two candidates who are unaffiliated with either major party add suspense to the outcome of this still-crowded race.

Ann Rivers, a La Center consultant and longtime Republican activist, has left all other candidates behind when it comes to fundraising. With an influx of money from interest groups, she had raised nearly $56,000 as of Monday, more than twice as much as her nearest competitor, Democrat Dennis Kampe, the founder and longtime director of the Clark County Skills Center.

Jon Russell, a Washougal city councilor, and Brandon Vick, a landscape consultant, both tout conservative positions on a range of issues. Rich Carson, a semi-retired consultant, wants to bring his background in promoting government efficiency to Olympia. Nonaffiliated candidate Jon Haugen is running to block tolls on a new bridge over the Columbia River.

Anthony Bittner announced his candidacy last spring as a 17-year-old senior at Skyview High School. He has not taken part in candidate forums, did not show up for an interview with the Columbian editorial board or return calls from The Columbian, and submitted no information for the Clark County Voters Pamphlet.

On Aug. 17, voters will select two of the seven candidates to advance to the general election.

Following are thumbnail descriptions of the candidates and their campaigns.

Ann Rivers

Republican

o Age: 43.

o Residence: La Center.

o Occupation: Political consultant.

o Political background: Sought appointment to open 18th District seat in 2007.

o Campaign funds raised: $62,679

o Quote: “It’s not just about cost-saving measures in government; it’s about finding ways to allow the people to keep more money in their pockets.”

o Campaign website: electannrivers.com.

• Ann Rivers says she has a plan to bring “true transparency” to state government by putting the state checkbook register on the Internet and letting voters use a search engine to locate specific expenses or revenue streams and find out how much money was spent and who spent it.

“This will not only give the citizens of Washington access to a simple reporting system of the state’s spending habits, it will also force our government to take any ‘sacred’ or ‘private’ tags off our state’s budgeting and spending processes,” she says.

Rivers said she understands the economic pain residents of the district are facing. “The people have sacrificed enough, and now it’s time for the state to share in that sacrifice,” she said. A former schoolteacher, she said teachers must sacrifice along with everyone else.

Though she’s a longtime Republican activist, at a recent forum sponsored by the Washington Campaign for Liberty, Rivers downplayed the role of partisanship in the legislative process, saying, “There’s a lot more agreement than disagreement” between the political parties in Olympia.

Rivers opposes a new bridge over the Columbia River because she’s not convinced it would relieve congestion.

“The more I hear, the more concern I have,” she said at the forum. “I would love to see a new bridge, but as the project exists today, I can’t support that.”

She also opposes the health reform plan Congress passed in March.

“I don’t believe health care is a right,” she said. “I don’t see anything in the Constitution that says, ‘You will have health care.’”

A resident of the 18th for more than 18 years, Rivers says she’s ready to hit the ground running.

“I’ve worked on legislative staff, run a business, and taken principled stands in my everyday life,“ she said. As an example, she said, she has worked to oppose the proposed Cowlitz Tribe casino, which she believes would damage the nearby community of La Center.

Dennis Kampe

Democrat

o Age: 64.

o Residence: Brush Prairie.

o Occupation: Director, Clark County Skills Center.

o Political background: None.

o Campaign funds raised: $28,835.

o Quote: “Every morning, I have put my boots on and dedicated my life to the education and the success of thousands of young adults.”

o Campaign website: ElectKampe.com.

• Dennis Kampe, a self-described moderate Democrat, has deep roots in the 18th. His grandparents settled in the area in 1905, and he has lived his entire life there. A graduate of Ridgefield High and Clark College, he is also a journeyman machinist, and for the past 19 years has led the Clark County Skills Center, which offers vocational programs to high school students throughout Clark County.

Kampe, who began his campaign expecting to run against Herrera, said he’s making the race because of his commitment to education. He wants to make sure the state trains a highly skilled work force, restores lost jobs, and creates new family-wage jobs. He’s concerned about a decline in the number of career and technical schools in Washington.

He’s realistic about the chances that the state will fully fund education in the foreseeable future. The state needs to be “lean and mean” in its budgeting, he said, but teachers must be at the table.

Unlike the other candidates, Kampe is an unabashed supporter of organized labor, including teachers unions. “I totally believe teachers are underpaid,” he said at the recent candidate forum. “I will go to the mat for it. I am a product of labor. I will take money from labor and I will represent them.”

Jon Russell

Republican

o Age: 34

o Residence: Washougal.

o Occupation: Owner of a family health clinic.

o Political background: Washougal city councilor and mayor pro tem; former candidate for open 3rd Congressional District seat.

o Campaign funds raised: $15,937.

o Quote: “We need to find all the ways we have entanglements with the federal government and cut them.”

o Campaign website: electjonrussell.com.

• Jon Russell’s plan this year was to run for the open 3rd Congressional District seat. But last February, facing lackluster fundraising, he switched gears and announced that he would seek the 18th District seat. He’s loosely allied with the local Tea Party movement, We the People Vancouver, and has received support for his socially conservative views with an endorsement from the anti-abortion Human Life Political Action Committee.

Russell was elected to the Washougal City Council in 2005 and weathered a tumultuous year in 2009, marked by the sensational disappearance of Mayor Stacee Sellers amid charges of mismanagement, and the hiring and subsequent firing of Jeff Bivens as city finance director, a hire he now says he regrets.

Asked at a candidate forum where he would cut the state budget, Russell said the first place would be the Department of Social and Health Services, which administers the Medicaid program for low-income families. Russell said he believes giving people medical care for free breeds abuse of the system. Instead, he said, Medicaid recipients should be charged co-pays. He said his own clinic, staffed by his wife Sarah, a licensed nurse practitioner, turns no one away but asks people to pay what they can.

Russell favors adopting a standard funding formula across school districts and says school boards should take a hard look at school staffing, asking themselves whether individual schools “need a nurse or a second vice principal.”

Brandon Vick

Republican

o Age: 26.

o Residence: Vancouver.

o Occupation: Landscaping contractor.

o Political background: Chairman, 18th District Republican Central Committee; GOP precinct committeeman.

o Campaign funds raised: $7,633.

o Quote: “The people of this district are asking for less government, reduced spending, and to have their freedoms protected and restored.”

o Campaign website: electbrandonvick.com.

• Brandon Vick got involved in 18th District politics when he was 18, after graduating from Hudson’s Bay High. He founded the Clark College Republicans and later helped start the WSU Vancouver Republicans. He currently chairs the 18th Legislative District Republican Central Committee, and at age 26 has already managed two legislative campaigns for 49th District candidates.

Vick works as a landscape contractor in a business his grandfather started in 1961. He has a get-tough position on immigration; among other things, he favors immediately ending all social services and government payments to illegal aliens and revoking the business license of any employer who knowingly hires an undocumented worker.

As a way to cut state spending, he favors the privatization of state services “wherever and whenever we can,” even in the operation of state prisons.

Vick, who considers himself a constitutionalist, opposes the insurance mandate in the health reform bill passed by Congress. “Our rights are outlined in the Constitution,” he said at a candidate forum. “There is no way that one group has the right to come to us and take something we worked hard for and take it for themselves.”

Richard Carson

Independent

o Age: 62.

o Residence: Brush Prairie.

o Occupation: Performance audit consultant, former director of Clark County Department of Community Development.

o Political background: None.

o Campaign funds raised: $477.

o Quote: “Both parties are more concerned about the special interests who are lining their pockets than they are about what their constituents want.”

o Campaign website: VoteCarson.com.

• Richard Carson’s background is in land use and development. After his retirement as director of Clark County’s Department of Community Development at the end of 2007, he joined the national consulting firm Citygate Associates. In the past two and a half years he has conducted performance audits for several governments, including the cities of San Diego and Sacramento. He aspires to follow in the footsteps of the late U.S. Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin, who created the Golden Fleece Award to call attention to mismanagement of taxpayer dollars, by working for greater accountability and efficiency in state government.

Carson, a resident of Brush Prairie, is heavily involved in the ongoing campaign to stop the Bonneville Power Administration from building a 500-KV power line through the Hockinson hills.

He takes pride in his status as an independent, one of four running for the Legislature this year, and has vowed to take no special-interest money.

Jon Haugen

No Party

o Age: 51.

o Residence: Vancouver.

o Occupation: Airline pilot.

o Political background: Ran against Sen. Joe Zarelli as a Democrat in 2008.

o Campaign funds raised: None reported.

o Quote: “I am strongly against tolling and the Columbia River Crossing in the current form.”

o Campaign website: Haugen18.com.

• Jon Haugen has a single-minded reason for running for the Legislature this year. He opposes tolls on a new Columbia River Crossing, and he believes Washington lawmakers are “asleep at the wheel” in keeping tabs on the process as it unfolds.

Haugen, a Delta Airlines pilot who flies international routes to Africa, the Middle East and Europe, has long opposed the mega-bridge project. Instead, he favors building a four-lane supplemental bridge west of the existing spans, an option that was considered but rejected by federal, state and local transportation officials in a 2008 environmental impact statement.

He also opposes light rail on the bridge, and says the $100 million already spent on planning for the project is money wasted.

It’s not too late to change gears, Haugen insists.

“Are we digging dirt? No,” he says. “Has anyone dedicated money? No. It’s still in the nascent design stage. “

Regarding the state budget crisis, Haugen, like Russell, favors cutting the DSHS budget.

“DSHS has been allowed to run rampant,” he said. “I’d use a meat cleaver on it,” by making 10 percent across-the-board cuts, he said.

Anthony Bittner

Republican

o Age: 18.

o Residence: Vancouver.

o Occupation: Plans to attend college in fall.

o Political background: None.

o Campaign funds raised: $4,572.

o Quote: “As the son of a small-business owner, I have experienced firsthand the oppressiveness and unfair burden the government forces upon hard-working families.”

o Campaign website: anthonybittner.com.