State lawmaker and Camas Republican Liz Pike is flattered people want to see her serve as Clark County council chair, but she’s not sure it’s a position she wants.
Sound familiar?
In 2015, Pike was part of a write-in campaign bankrolled by former County Councilor David Madore with the goal of beating Marc Boldt, the independent candidate.
Pike decided not to campaign for the position, despite hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to help her win the seat, and Boldt was overwhelmingly elected.
Once again, Pike is considering her options.
“Here’s the deal: A lot of people have asked me to consider running for the Clark County chair position next year, and I didn’t want to even consider it unless I knew there was even an option to win,” Pike said.
So, Pike said, she hired a polling firm who started calling Clark County residents to see if she had a shot at the seat.
The results, the legislator said, were too close to call.
“We started out with a money question. When it comes to money issues, are you generally more conservative or more liberal? And I’m not going to go into all the details of the polling, but far and away, the conservative money issue was the biggest response we got. And people were way more conservative on money issues,” said Pike, who is staunchly opposed to tax increases.
Pike said it was a survey, not a push poll, as some have characterized it.
“I specifically didn’t want it to be a push poll. I wanted it to test the waters to respond to people who are encouraging me to do this. A push poll generally exposes an unfavorable voting record of a candidate and an office holder,” Pike said, adding her survey didn’t do that.
Fran Hammond, a Clark County resident who received the call, said she felt like the questions only allowed her to show support for Pike at the end.
“One option was how I wanted to work on Liz Pike’s campaign, and there was no option to say I didn’t want to,” Hammond said.
Hammond said she’s supporting Boldt for county chair. Boldt confirmed he will seek re-election.
Pike has filed the required new candidate registration form showing she will seek re-election as a lawmaker, but not for the county chair position. She said she plans to pay for the poll using campaign surplus funds, she said.
Kim Bradford, a spokeswoman with Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission, said without seeing a script of the exact questions used in the survey, it’s difficult to determine the exact nature of the survey and what, if any, campaign rules it would trigger.
“On the use of surplus funds to pay for a survey, if a person called us and said, ‘I’m thinking of using surplus funds for a campaign for the office I currently hold to explore the run for another office’ we would advise that person it doesn’t appear to be a permissible use of surplus funds,” Bradford said.
Pike said she’s not sold on the idea of running for county councilor.
“It’s flattering people have faith in you and are encouraging you to run for things. But quite frankly, I think it would be a step down to go from a state legislator to a county councilor because I’m dealing with really broad issues and the policy issues are hugely important.”
Pike pointed to her efforts such as “building new corridors between Southwest Washington and Portland” and “reforming the Washington Growth Act.”
“I’ve invested five years in my life trying to reform state government. … Those are big priorities for me and my work is not done there yet,” she said.
