PORT LUDLOW — Two men from the North Olympic Peninsula are teaming up to take on the problems they see in Olympia: too much spending and regulation.
Craig Durgan and Larry Carter, who are friends and neighbors in Port Ludlow, are running as a slate of candidates for different seats in the state Legislature.
Durgan, 53, is challenging Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim. He announced his candidacy in a statement sent late Monday evening.
Carter, 62, is running for the seat House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, is giving up this year when she retires from the Legislature. Carter announced his candidacy at an anti-tax protest in Sequim on April 15.
Both men, who are supporters of the Tea Party movement, are running as Republicans.
Kessler and Van De Wege represent the 24th Legislative District, which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties and a portion of Grays Harbor County.
Other candidates
Also running for Van De Wege’s seat is Port Angeles real estate broker Dan Gase. Gase is running as a Republican.
Other candidates running for Kessler’s seat are Port of Port Angeles commissioner Jim McEntire, a Republican, and Montesano chiropractor Jack Dwyer, a Democrat.
Clallam County Commissioner Steve Tharinger, a Democrat, has said he is interested in running for Kessler’s seat. He plans to announce Friday if he will run.
Assuming all file candidacy papers during the weeklong registration period next month, the top two vote-getters in the August primary election regardless of party affiliation or incumbency will move on to the November general election.
Tag-team approach
It was no coincidence that Carter and Durgan both chose to run for state office.
They plan to shake things up this election year by using a “tag-team” approach to campaigning.
The two men are together launching a grassroots campaign aimed at promoting their platform of fiscal responsibility and property rights mixed with populism.
The duo, who plan on carpooling to each campaign event, have launched a joint Web site: http://newwaycampaign.com.
The “new way” title is fitting, they said, because they don’t intend to follow in the path of most candidates who rely on financial contributions from individuals and special interest groups to get elected.
No campaign contributions
Neither intend to accept any campaign contributions.
They plan to fund their campaigns themselves and rely heavily on their supporters and use of the Internet to get their message to the public.
“Our main slogan is, ‘We don’t want your money. We want your vote,” said Durgan, owner of Evergreen Storage, and a retired marine engineer.
“When you take money from people you are kind of beholden to them. We just want to be beholden to the voters.”
The candidates will have campaign signs and bumper stickers, but they will either be purchased by themselves or their supporters, they said. The same goes for paid advertising.
“Do we stand a chance?” Carter, a retired Navy master chief petty officer, asked himself. “You know, hell, I don’t know.
“But when this campaign is over, we will feel very good about the way we did our campaigning.”
Initiative 960
Both men, who have not ran for political office before, said they were motivated to throw their hats in the ring by the state Legislature’s decision to suspend Initiative 960, which allowed it to raise taxes on cigarettes, bottled water, soda, candy, mass-produced beer and service businesses, such as real estate agents and attorneys.
Carter said he made the decision to run after meeting with Kessler on Feb. 9 in Olympia as president of the Jefferson County Citizens Alliance for Property Rights.
The topic was the state’s Shoreline Master Program, which has lead to further environmental setbacks in Jefferson County that him and Durgan, who is also a board member of the group, feel is an unnecessary intrusion on property rights.
Carter said he asked Kessler what was going to happen to I-960, and that’s when she told him that Democrats intended to suspend it.
“I walked away from there thinking somebody has got to run,” he said.
Durgan, feeling the same way, followed his lead.
Carter said he knew beating Kessler, who at that time had not decided to retire from the Legislature after this year, was a long shot.
Worried that he might spend his friends’ campaign contributions on a failed run at a seat in Olympia, he decided not to accept any donations.
That was the “genesis,” Carter said, for their grassroots-oriented campaign strategy.
Avoid raising taxes
Durgan and Carter said in separate interviews the Legislature should have been willing to cut more this year — even additional layoffs and across-the-board pay cuts for staff — to avoid raising taxes.
Van De Wege, Kessler, and the district’s other representative, Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, said during this year’s Legislative session that further cuts education and social programs would be too draconian and lead to higher costs in the long run.
They each voted for the new taxes, most of which will expire June 2013.
By the time the 2010 session began, the Legislature had made about $4 billion in cuts to the state’s biennial budget that runs from July 2009-July 2011.
It made roughly $750 million in additional cuts this year, and raised about $800 million in taxes to cover its deficit.
While Carter and Durgan are newcomers to political campaigns, anyone who has been to a land use hearing in Jefferson County over the last three years know that they don’t hesitate to speak their minds.
Critics of setbacks
They have both been ardent critics over the county’s new environmental setbacks on property, approved last December when the county updated its shoreline plan, which affect properties owned by them both.
“They just keep cranking up regulations and more taxes,” Durgan said. “And, in the meantime, people are out of work and the economy is going down.”
But their similarities go beyond their view that government isn’t working for them.
Both were life-long Democrats who kicked their party affiliation within the last year.
Each have their different reasons for withdrawing their support for the party (Carter said it’s overly focused on the environment on the local state level and Durgan feels it’s too unwilling to cut spending) but neither have thrown their support completely behind the Republicans.
“The thing is, you have to pick one,” Carter said.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
