Freeholder Candidates Frustrated at Legal Cloud Surrounding Election

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How do you run for office if you’re not sure the election will count? Lewis County’s freeholder candidates have no idea.

“We’re just as confused as everybody else in the county,” said Napavine resident Jen Slemp, a former city councilor who has filed to run for freeholder.

Her opponent, Bob Bozarth, a former county commission candidate, had no better answer.

“I have no idea,” he said. “All of a sudden at the last stroke of midnight they come up with this.”

Bozarth was referencing One Lewis County’s legal challenge to the home rule charter process, which has cast the election into legal limbo in the days before ballots are sent out. Last week, Thurston County Superior Court Judge Carol Murphy ruled that questions surrounding the election’s validity could not be settled before ballots are mailed, meaning residents may be casting votes in an election that is later deemed unconstitutional.

“I filed to run for this office, and my name will appear on the ballot,” said Centralia freeholder candidate Bob Berg, the city’s former police chief. “It’s up to me to campaign as if that’s the way it’s going to be.”

How it’s going to be, though, is very much in question. In March, One Lewis County — a political action committee founded by the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce — collected enough signatures to put the home rule charter on the November ballot. That measure will ask voters if they want the county’s system of government to be re-drafted. Fifteen freeholders, who will also be elected in November, will draft a new county charter if the issue passes.

Lewis County commissioners floated a plan in March to divide the county’s three commission districts into five freeholder sub-districts each, officially approving the plan in April. On Sept. 12, One Lewis County filed suit, challenging the constitutionality of the sub-district plan. The state Constitution specifies that legislative or commission districts should be used for the selection of freeholders, without specifying if those boundaries may be further narrowed.

The next hearing on the election’s validity will be held Nov. 1, two weeks after ballots are mailed to voters. Meanwhile, the 38 candidates who have filed to run for freeholder are heading into the last weeks of their campaigns without certainty of whether the election results will stand.

In interviews and a freeholder email chain obtained by The Chronicle, candidates are voicing frustration at the late challenge to the process, calling into question the motives of One Lewis County. The vast majority of the 16 candidates who gave interviews or responded to the email thread said the group’s challenge was ill-timed, many of whom believed it was motivated by a desire to “stack the deck” with its own candidates.

“It appears the One Lewis County thinks local representation makes their baby defective, so they are attempting a late-term abortion on the process,” said Winlock candidate Lindsey Pollock.

Lewis County has said the sub-districting plan was a way to ensure small communities like Winlock have a voice, saying that voting only by commission district could result in candidates from more populous cities like Centralia and Chehalis claiming all five seats in a district. Many of the candidates believe One Lewis County was was seeking to put forward candidates who are allies of the Twin Cities-based Chamber of Commerce, only to find their ability to control the process limited by the sub-districts.

“I remain puzzled why you hired attorneys to try to produce this finding,” Centralia candidate Jami Lund wrote in an email to Chamber executive director Alicia Bull. “It is almost as if your organization wants multiple freeholders elected from one specific region. I would also like to relate that I have noticed some candidates resent One Lewis County's insinuation that under-qualified candidates have resulted from the subdistrict system. It may be important for your organization to take steps to assure that you don't actually believe that only some regions produce qualified candidates for the governance of the whole county.”

In an interview, Bull responded to those accusations in strong terms.

“That's absolutely not true, and at no point did we ever reach out to anybody and stack a deck. That's a rumor mill, and that's not true,” she said. “That actually feels libelous. … This really comes back down to one thing. Is this constitutional or not? That’s where we’re at.”

Even candidates who stopped short of accusing One Lewis County of attempting to manipulate the process had criticism for the late timing of the lawsuit.

I think it’s sad that it’s costing Lewis County a bunch of money to argue an issue like that,” said candidate Linda Williams. “They should have probably went back in April and talked about it then.”

One Lewis County says it understands the frustration of freeholder candidates, who have invested time into the election process. However, it maintains that it couldn’t mount the legal challenge until September because it needed time to file public records requests with Lewis County over the sub-district creation, research precedent on the issue and pull together the funding for legal representation. It blames the county for “drag(ging) its feet” on the records request and failing adhere to a demand letter that the election be changed.



“We completely understand that freeholder candidates and citizens alike are frustrated with the situation,” Bull wrote in a response letter. “One Lewis County is just as frustrated. … We should all be willing to slow things down and make sure the correct and Constitutional process is employed rather than proceeding with a process in question that can be invalidated after the election if it was not properly done.”

Bull said the group was planning to hold a private meeting with freeholders to address concerns “in the near future,” but did not offer more specifics.

Lewis County, meanwhile, believes that its creation of sub-districts will hold up under legal scrutiny. However, commissioner Edna Fund admitted that there is plenty of confusion looming over the election.

“There’s all these question marks up there,” she said. “What I would say to folks, vote. You just never know what’s going to happen.”

Despite that urging, many of the candidates who spoke to The Chronicle said they felt the home rule charter was unlikely to pass. Some felt a lack of public outreach had hindered voters’ understanding of the issue.

“When people don't know what they're voting for, they don't tend to vote for it,” said candidate Ron Averill, a former county commissioner. “I give this measure slim to none in passing.”

Others believed that the legal cloud over the election will doom the measure.

“I just don't know how it's going to pass with all this going on,” Slemp said.

Added candidate Marty Hayes: “I have no clue whether it will pass or fail. I do believe that if it fails, One Lewis County will be partly responsible for that failure.”

Hayes drafted a letter to the Lewis County prosecutor’s office supporting the subdistrict plan, which he said was co-signed by 14 freeholder candidates. Other candidates said they were surprised by the sub-districting.

“I thought it was novel,” Averill said, following the statement with a long chuckle.

Most freeholder candidates said they would have run regardless of how the freeholder boundaries were drawn, with Pollock being an exception.

I probably would not have run in the overall district,” she said. “The fact that I would be able to represent a smaller region where I grew up and currently do business makes a difference for me.”

A few of the candidates have expressed support for One Lewis County’s challenge. Chehalis candidate Fred Rider is part of the group’s lawsuit. He said he’s running as if the current election will count, even though he’s hoping to overrule its results.

“I'm running on the belief that it will pass,” he said. “I'm pretty confident in where we stand (with the lawsuit) and where it's going ... I'm not going to withdraw my name or anything like that. You still need to move forward.”

Rider said he’d gotten “mixed reviews” in discussions with other candidates about the lawsuit. Chamber member Stan Bowman, also a candidate, said in an email to the other freeholders that he was not involved with One Lewis County, but had been convinced by Bull that the legal challenge was necessary.

“It seems counterintuitive that they would want to derail it now, as some have claimed,” he wrote. “Indeed, they do not. They want a process that is unquestionable in its legality and constitutionality.”