PORT ANGELES — Nestled in the gateway to the Olympic National Forest, a rural coastal county at the westernmost point of Washington has turned into a national political anomaly.
Clallam County is the last county in the country where voters have picked the winning president in every election since 1980.
Known for its dense rainforests, vast coastlines and down-to-earth population of 77,000 residents, the remote Washington county now has another signifier: the last bellwether.
A bellwether is the name for the leading male sheep in a flock that carries a jingling bell draped around its woolly neck so that shepherds may find the herd by sound if they can’t see it by eye.
In politics, a bellwether denotes a place with voters that people look to for predictions of who will win future elections. Think of it like a crystal ball.
The last time Clallam County voters picked a losing presidential candidate by popular vote was in 1976, when they chose incumbent Republican Gerald Ford who narrowly lost the election to Democrat Jimmy Carter. Since then, the county’s voters have picked the winners in every presidential race.
Up until the 2020 election, 18 other counties in the nation had held onto the bellwether status for as long as Clallam County. Seventeen of them were located in the Midwest and Northeast. All 18 of those counties that year voted for Trump, while Clallam went for Biden.
With hours left until polls close in the Nov. 5 election and the United States picks its next president, Clallam County residents and politics buffs across the country wonder if the coastal region will hold onto its title and remain the country’s longest-standing bellwether.
Former Clallam County Commissioner Ron Richards thinks one of the big reasons his home county has held onto its bellwether status so long is because of its economy and demographics.
“We don’t have one dominant industry anymore,” Richards said in an interview between bites of salad at the Applebee’s in Sequim. “Here we have a real mix. And outside of the working class, we have a real mix of retirees.”
Richards pointed to the decline in the county’s timber industry that has made way for a more diverse range of industries to take hold in the region as a driver for its middle-of-the-road politics.
“Clallam’s active local Democratic and Republican parties and many vocal special interest groups, plus the many politically unaffiliated groups that opine continually on all sorts of political issues, inundate the Clallam County electorate with a wide range of arguments — conservative, liberal and centrist,” Richards wrote in an op-ed published Sept. 17 in the Seattle Times. “Over the years, I think this has resulted in elective political judgment that is more representative of the country than any other individual county.”
If you head up to the second floor of the Port Angeles Senior and Community Center on a Thursday morning, you’ll find a group of locals in the midst of diplomatic conversations about one shared interest: politics.
A couple dozen folks gathered at 9:30 a.m. last Thursday for their weekly meeting. Seated around a long table, the group took turns, one by one, voicing concerns about the Nov. 5 election along with the politics of looming social and environmental crises in the county. Discussion topics included access to women’s reproductive health care pollution levels in the local waterways of Clallam County.
Ted Brown acted as the political discussion group’s moderator in the meeting. The Sequim resident, who’s been a part of the group for five months, said it was his first time moderating. He described the moderating experience as “interesting.”
“I had to keep my mouth shut,” Brown said with a laugh.
He was inspired to join the group by his longtime interest in politics.
“I think it’s important that everybody get a chance to say what they feel, because they don’t get that chance when people disagree with them,” Brown said. ” … The majority of the people here feel that way. We might not like what you have to say, and we might argue with it. But we’re going to listen.”
Sandra Lytle, of Port Angeles, is another regular participant in the political discussion group. She’s been attending the meetings since January, she said, and she loves it.
“We’re all American citizens being able to sit across from one another and with one another, regardless of political beliefs,” Lytle said. “Senior citizens’ lives matter. We could maybe spark this type of seniors group across the nation. No matter how this election goes, America will get through it.”
