Though the November general election is nearly 10 months away, Republicans across the state gathered Saturday to provide feedback on their county’s platform.
At Centralia High School, roughly 40 Republicans braved the cold as the county party prepares to adopt a platform next month. The event differed from the caucasus held throughout Iowa on Monday night, where registered voters gathered to award delegates to Republican presidential candidates.
The Washington state presidential primary will be held on March 12.
Saturday’s event included little group discussion on the ongoing Republican presidential primary, beyond one supporter who wore a sweatshirt supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president.
Instead, Saturday represented an opportunity for residents to voice feedback and offer suggestions for the Lewis County Republican platform, which will be formally adopted at the county convention on Feb. 17.
“This is an opportunity to talk to your neighbor about who you like for president, who you like for governor,” state GOP Chair Jim Walsh said from a caucus location in Aberdeen in a video posted on social media, adding the event was an opportunity to start the “grass roots” process in the state’s political process.
At Centralia High School, suggestions for the Lewis County platform included a preference for transitioning service members for apprenticeships on military base projects, additional prioritization for spouses of transitioning service members and a set fee schedule for apprenticeship programs at community colleges.
During the caucus, one attendee said the county’s platform should be as broadly appealing as possible to attract new support.
“I think as a party we should constantly be aware of planks that make us a bigger tent rather than a smaller tent,” he said. “The more planks we have only decreases the size of the tent. We want to go with education and economics and those types of things, most Americans agree with us. So let’s put things on our platform that most agree with, not divide us.”
Attendees elected delegates for the county convention on Saturday. The delegates will move on to the state convention in Spokane from April 18-20.
The caucus at Centralia High School also included an address from Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, who said it should be Republicans’ “mission” to attract support from Democrats while focusing on ideas with broad support.
“If you look at the policies we have, they’re very popular, and they’re popular across party lines,” Braun said. “We have a great, frankly historical example right now going on in the Legislature.”
On Thursday, legislators received notice from the secretary of state that the signatures had been verified for an initiative that seeks to repeal restrictions on police pursuit regulations, one of six initiatives to the Legislature before lawmakers this session.
“When I say that politics is about addition, we should be talking about ideas like this,” Braun said. “Ideas that bring us together.”
Before this session, the most initiatives that have come before the Legislature in a single year was three. Braun said he believes the most likely outcome will be for the Legislature to fail to take action, which would send the initiatives to the November ballot. Braun added this result would be “perfectly fine” with him.
“All of these ideas are Republican ideas, and all of these ideas have over 400,000 signatures each from Republicans, independents and Democrats,” Braun said.
While not steering away from social issues that “can be very contentious,” Braun said, “we should lead with the things that are going to bring folks over to our side, that are going to bring us together, that are going to make folks think about voting for Republicans next fall.”
“That’s what’s really going to make the difference in our state.”
