eneath a wide-brimmed, black cowboy hat, Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer warned in a Facebook video earlier this year that state lawmakers planned to strip voters of the freedom to elect their own local leaders.
“They’ll decide who qualifies to run for sheriff,” Songer said of the Democrats running Washington’s state Legislature. “If the sheriff is not toeing the governor’s mandates … then they remove the sheriff.”
An American flag hung on the wall behind him as he recorded his “call to action” from his office in the rural county along the Columbia River in southern Washington state. He encouraged citizens to oppose the new legislation that would set minimum qualifications for county sheriffs, regulate department volunteers and allow for the removal of sheriffs who lose their peace officer certifications.
The legislation was a response, in part, to “constitutional sheriffs” like Songer who reject the state’s authority over them and say they get to decide what laws are unconstitutional. Songer cast it as an attack on Klickitat County’s residents. “They’re violating your rights,” he said.
Songer, 81, has drawn national attention as an outspoken figure of the constitutional sheriff movement, which civil rights watchdogs describe as a far-right, anti-government ideology that dangerously asserts elected local sheriffs can nullify state or federal law. He has championed the sovereign authority of sheriffs across the country, linking up with like-minded lawmen.
At home, he has rejected the state’s authority to tell him how to uphold the law in Klickitat County. He has defied gun control measures and COVID-19 public health mandates, recruited an armed posse of more than 100 volunteers and asked immigration agents to put him on “speed dial” — despite a state law prohibiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. His aggressive posturing has split his community into devout supporters against outraged critics.
With Songer retiring this year, many voters seem eager to turn the page. The candidate Songer supported as his successor, Detective Sgt. Tony Warren, a Republican, received just 27 percent of the vote in the all-party primary in August, far behind former deputy Dwayne Matulovich, who is running as an independent and received 57 percent. Matulovich and Warren must face off again next month in a two-person runoff.
In the campaign, Warren has echoed Songer’s claim that sheriffs have the authority to not enforce laws they think are unconstitutional. That claim is core to the constitutional sheriff’s movement, and is one Matulovich has distanced himself from.
But both men also sounded similar notes in interviews with Bolts and InvestigateWest, signaling that some of Songer’s legacy is bound to endure no matter who wins in November. Both candidates said they respected Songer’s dedication to constitutional freedoms, but want to keep their priorities anchored in the county’s local challenges and community safety. And both were broadly supportive of one of the more controversial aspects of Songer’s tenure — his use of volunteer posses that operate under his direction with few guidelines.
Across the country, other sheriffs who align with far-right organizations are also facing significant pushback this fall, often from immigrant communities that have been targeted by local law enforcement, though candidates challenging them often sound a cautious note.
Washington lawmakers in March ended up passing the legislation Songer warned about in his “call to action,” joining other states in adopting qualification standards for sheriffs and limiting the uses of volunteer posses. State Rep. Roger Goodman, a Democrat and chair of the House Community Safety Committee, said he backed these reforms in part due to concerns he heard directly from Klickitat County residents about potential abuses of authority.
“Constitutional sheriffs believe that they interpret the Constitution,” Goodman said. “They enforce the law as they interpret it. [But] in practice, it ends up being a failure to enforce the wildlife laws, women’s reproductive freedom, the laws to make sure our elections are truly nonpartisan and safe, the laws related to firearms safety.”
“We establish a duty of the sheriff to enforce the law,” he added, “which is kind of absurd to have to put into the law.”
Much of the modern constitutional sheriff movement has coalesced around the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association founded in 2011 by Richard Mack, a former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona. The Southern Poverty Law Center described the CSPOA as an “extremist group” with ideological roots in antigovernment and sovereign citizen movements. The Anti-Defamation League reports Mack has used the CSPOA to push conspiracy theories and far-right propaganda.
Songer is a CSPOA board member and he has talked at CSPOA conferences that have convened sheriffs from around the country.
Mirya Holman, a professor at the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston, said the association claims that elected sheriffs have unique authority granted by the voters to enforce laws at their discretion in order to protect constitutional rights. She explained they regularly recite false legal doctrines as justification.
“None of it is legally true,” she said. “There’s no legal grounding for that. That doesn’t exist.”
In researching her book “The Power of the Badge” with co-author Emily Farris, Holman said she found the movement had leveraged grievances on gun control, COVID-19, wildlife conflicts, immigration, federal overreach and election security to gain ground with voters — particularly in Western states and other rural areas, including Klickitat County.
But despite the accountability to the voters that constitutional sheriffs often cite as the ultimate safeguard, Holman said many sheriffs run term after term unopposed, or they can expect to run against someone who previously worked for them.
“It turns out that when you are the boss of all of your future political opponents … you could make sure that people that are potential political competitors don't receive leadership roles or don't receive the training that would help them,” she said. “You can engage in retaliation against people that you think are going to run against you.”
Both candidates hoping to succeed Songer have worked under him.
Warren, a current detective sergeant for the county, and Matulovich, a longtime law enforcement officer who left the sheriff’s office in 2023, both told Bolts and InvestigateWest they wanted to move the department away from national culture wars so they could focus on local outreach and day-to-day improvements to service.
“A lot of people would have rather had Songer’s attention here,” Matulovich said. “[The national constitutional sheriff movement] was his passion, so that’s fine, but I think it kind of took away from things here within the county. … To me, it felt like it divided the county a little bit.”
When asked about cooperating with immigration enforcement, both Warren and Matulovich said they would not task deputies to work with federal agencies.
“If they're going to come to these communities and they want to do enforcement, that's on them,” Warren said. “If it escalates or additional crimes are broken … we'll take enforcement action on the local end. But I'm not going to ask people to go out and work side by side with immigration enforcement.”
Another point of contention has been Flock Safety cameras and other automated license plate readers that have drawn public outrage over privacy concerns and police abuses. While Warren previously described the cameras as a valuable investigative tool, both candidates now say they oppose investing in the cameras over privacy, budget and public record considerations.
“It’s overly abused,” Matulovich said. “The public records [requests] would be a nightmare and we’re too small of a department to keep up with those, so I would not be in favor of Flock cameras in our county.”
Both candidates have tried to walk a fine line on their relationship to Songer.
Matulovich has said he disagrees with the view constitutional sheriffs espouse that their office has direct authority to enforce and interpret the Constitution. He told a July 21 candidate forum that he would leave legal interpretation up to the courts.
“The fight is [on] the judicial side,” he said. “On the executive branch, where discretion is allowed, I will use it wisely.”
But Matulovich also said he shares Songer’s commitment to protecting individual rights, mostly disagreeing on the sheriff’s implementation of those values: “It was almost like too much of a good thing became bad.”
Financial disclosures show Songer has donated to Warren’s campaign. But Warren rejects characterizations that he would serve as a “Bob [Songer] 2.0”and said he “can appreciate the concerns for [CSPOA] being an extremist group and the concerns that CSPOA members are putting themselves above the law.”
But he also warned state officials would “trample on your rights in a heartbeat,” and criticized some state bills as “ridiculous” during the July 21 forum.
“I have no issue not enforcing those things,” Warren told the crowd. “Whether it’s mask mandates, blatant firearm restrictions, we see this state pass bills that get overturned in other states and it’s just absurd.”
An enthusiastic applause filled the room.
When running for his first term as Klickitat County Sheriff in 2014, Songer promised to start up a volunteer posse to increase community involvement with the department. In the years since, he has dispatched dozens of volunteer posse members to front desk duty, event security, search-and-rescue efforts and other tasks. At times, Songer has also authorized certain armed posse members to engage in controversial cougar hunts or act as courtroom security.
Supporters of the posse have cast the volunteers as essential manpower for a budget-strapped county, but others argue posse members should not wear uniforms that resemble certified law enforcement or carry firearms. Gabrielle Gilbert, a Klickitat community advocate and longtime Songer critic, said the sheriff would seemingly wield the posse like a personal militia to scare off outside interference.
“If anybody came for anyone based on a law that he didn’t agree with, he would deputize a room full of people,” she said. “Those were the kind of threats that you were under.”
Goodman, the state lawmaker, said Washington previously lacked regulations around how sheriffs could deploy volunteers. As the state worked to reform police accountability standards in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Goodman said it seemed increasingly important to set standards for sheriff qualifications and what duties require peace officer certification — based in part on posse complaints from Klickitat County.
“We received from that area a lot of serious concern about untrained volunteers wielding weapons, going on people’s property, hunting cougars with dogs … and doing a lot of other things,” he said.
Goodman worked with Democratic state Sen. John Lovick, a former Snohomish County Sheriff and state trooper of 31 years, to pass Senate Bill 5974 during the 2026 legislative session. The bill sets minimum age, criminal history and experience criteria for sheriff candidates. It also outlined a process for removing sheriffs if a state commission revoked their peace officer certification.
Many Washington sheriffs joined Songer in attacking the bill. In a testimony perceived by many observers as threatening lawmakers, Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank said it would give “unelected bureaucracy the ability to decertify me and remove me from office because you don’t agree with my speech.” Swank faces a ballot measure this fall that’d remove him from office.
“To be clear, no one is decertified for being unpopular,” Lovick responded in a statement this spring. “It is an apolitical process guided by the clear and objective conduct standards followed by every other officer in our state.”
The League of Women Voters of Washington, Disability Rights Washington, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Projects and other organizations representing vulnerable communities voiced strong support for the law in public hearings.
“Other states already do this,” testified Kristin Ang of the Faith Action Network, citing legally established sheriff qualifications and removal standards in California, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts and Texas. “Serious misconduct is no less serious because the person who committed it is a sheriff.”
Four county sheriffs and the Washington State Sheriffs’ Association filed separate lawsuits challenging the new legislation. A Thurston County Superior Court judge on Oct. 2 struck down the new eligibility and removal standards, though The Washington State Standard, an online news outlet, reported that the ruling did not appear to block the other new laws on law enforcement volunteers. The state plans to appeal the ruling.
Matulovich and Warren both praised Songer’s efforts to develop volunteer support for the small sheriff’s office. Both acknowledged the posse program needed changes — whether forced by state law or not — but showed no intention of ending it. They planned to introduce new attire that does not look like a law enforcement uniform along with developing more distinction between trained reserve deputy duties and volunteer posse assignments.
“It’s great to have volunteers,” Matulovich said. “Volunteers are the backbone of small agencies … [but] the posse would be support for like a lot of the things they do for parades, for rodeos, for events. They would be there for support, but they're not going to be there for armed security.”
Warren said calling volunteers a “posse” may be part of the problem, but he wants to continue using volunteers for traffic control, evacuations, observations and administrative tasks. He hopes that public outreach, training and different uniforms can help clarify what volunteers can and should do.
He said remained open to a “select few” armed volunteers such as retired law enforcement or specially trained courtroom security.
“They need to be trained,” Warren said, “and they need to be capable.”
In response to Songer’s “call to action” video on Facebook, hundreds of people — including many from far outside Klickitat County — posted messages of support. They thanked Songer for standing strong and defending freedom. Some suggested he arrest state officials. Others alleged Democrats had rigged elections to ensure their majority power.
But there’s been plenty of opposition to Songer, too.
Songer won his last reelection race in 2022 by just 150 votes, beating a fellow Republican who said the incumbent was too “combative.”
Gilbert, the local advocate, said plenty of people still support Songer, but many residents want to move past the bluster, intimidation and distrust of his administration.
“People are tired,” she said. “They’re tired of the status quo. They’re tired of being in the press nationally … for all the wrong reasons.”
She added that she hopes the election will restore a culture of competency at the Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office. Public servants, she said, should be working for “solutions and not for a soundbite.”
