PORT ANGELES — The Republican challenger to a 16-term congressman called Norm Dicks’ policies tantamount to “slavery” at a 2¬½-hour candidate forum in Port Angeles City Hall on Thursday.
Doug Cloud, a unabashedly conservative Gig Harbor attorney, attacked Congress — where Dicks has represented the 6th District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula, for 32 years — as “disgusting” as well as “extreme, corrupt and out of touch.”
“We have to confront this broken system,” he added. “We need to elect new people.”
In contrast to Cloud and Dicks, state Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, and her GOP challenger, Randy Dutton, who are vying for Position 2 in the 24th District, were models of congeniality who sat together after they finished debating.
State Rep. Kevin Van De Wege and GOP hopeful Thomas Thomas, who are running for Position 1 in the 24th District, rounded out the three-bout card that brought more than 70 people into the City Council chambers.
The 24th District includes Clallam, Jefferson and a portion of Grays Harbor counties.
After Thursday’s afternoon session in Port Angeles, the candidates also debated in Port Townsend on Thursday night.
Cloud charged that the $700 billion appropriated to save financial institutions “will find its way back to the incumbent Democratic members of Congress.”
Cloud also said the answer to the country’s financial woes is to eliminate what he called government manipulation.
He said the health care crisis started in 1965, when government interfered with the medical market by adopting Medicare.
Being forced to pay for your neighbor’s medical bills, he said, is “a form of slavery.”
The part played by salmon in Northwest culture “was far overstated,” he said, but conservation programs were useful to attract tourists.
‘I feel better with my .357’
Cloud said he had encountered bear and cougar in Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest.
“I can tell you that I feel better when I have my .357 with me,” he said in answer to a question about a proposal to allow national park visitors to carry concealed weapons.
As for the U.S. Border Patrol — against whom about a half-dozen protestors displayed signs outside City Hall prior to the forum — Cloud said the Coast Guard and local law enforcement could fulfill the mission just as well.
Dicks challenged Cloud’s complaints of corruption, asking why he hadn’t registered his campaign with the Federal Elections Commission. Cloud said he had done so by mail earlier this week.
“If you want to be a member of the United States House of Representatives,” Dicks told Cloud, “you’ve got to learn to follow the law here before you can go to Washington.”
Dicks also restated his support for a woman’s right to choose whether or not to terminate her pregnancy and for universal health care coverage.
Such a system, he said, would make U.S. firms like Boeing competitive with companies that are not burdened with insuring their employees.
In addition, the congressman renewed his pledges to support public projects to repair infrastructure, to mandate public campaign financing, and to require pay parity for female employees.
Cloud, though, got the most audience reaction when, on the equal pay issue, he said, “Women are different from men. … Men are useless if they do not have a paycheck. Women are not.”
Voice for district
Kessler, seeking her ninth two-year term, said she first ran during the economic downturn that followed the spotted owl’s designation as an endangered species.
Her mission, she said, was to make sure rural districts like hers — which encompasses the North Olympic Peninsula — were heard in Olympia.
“No longer do we bow down to the I-5 corridor,” she said.
Now, as house majority leader, “I am inside the room where the decisions are made.
“I will be there to watch out for all of us in Washington state,” she said.
“I want to help and be there for you in the bad times.”
Dutton, a retired Navy Supply Corps commander who now owns and works a tree farm near Montesano, said his business experience started when he was 12.
He said he applied business practices in the Navy to save taxpayers $70 million.
“We’ve got a problem in his country,” he told the audience: “We have economic disaster again.”
Dutton prescribed practicing fiscal responsibility, investing in energy independence and supporting schools as his priorities.
To solve the nation’s energy needs, Dutton said he favors drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve — which he said would produce 13,000 jobs in Washington — and eliminate the mandate for ethanol in gasoline.
Furthermore, “there’s too many expectations for government,” he said.
“We need to live within our means, and neither the state nor the federal government have done that for a long time.”
The forum concluded ¬– with about half its audience remaining — with remarks from Van De Wege, D-Sequim, and Thomas, a Republican from Joyce.
Homestead Exemption
Van De Wege, assistant house majority whip, touted his support of a Homestead Exemption that would exempt the first $50,000 of a house’s value from the state portion of property taxes that accounts for about 20 percent of the bill.
He also supported strengthening the timber industry, noting that he had helped seat a labor representative on the state Forest Practices Board.
“Their voice there will create family-wage jobs,” he said.
Responding to a question, Van De Wege said he opposed designating hydroelectric power as “green” under the terms of an initiative that voters passed in 2006.
“If we put hydroelectric in that language, it would completely go against what the people wanted in Initiative 937,” he said.
“We need to work to expand renewable energy.”
Invents wind turbine
Renewable energy, Thomas said, could include the small wind turbine he has designed to be compatible with erratic coastal winds.
As for the Homestead Exemption, Thomas said he doesn’t support it but advocates capping real estate re-evaluations at 1 percent per year until a house is sold or extensively remodeled.
“People are at the point where they can’t pay any more,” he said.
Like Van De Wege, Thomas said he doesn’t support a state income tax, preferring taxes on uses, such as sales and gas taxes.
“It’s a much fairer system,” he said.
In concluding remarks, Thomas said he wanted to create private-sector jobs, not government positions.
“I want to put this district first with jobs in the Yellow Pages, not the blue,” he said, adding that he would strengthen rural representation.
“I want to take Highway 101 to Olympia, not I-5.”
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Reporter Jim Casey can be reached at 360-417-3538 or at jim.casey@peninsuladailynews.com.
