PORT TOWNSEND — State Rep. Kevin Van De Wege said he is taking two Republican challengers seriously in the August primary election.
“We’re going to be very aggressive in both fund-raising and campaigning,” Democrat Van De Wege said Monday after reviewing the most recent legislative session before about 50 attending Monday’s Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
Van De Wege, 36, a longtime Sequim resident, father and firefighter-emergency medical technician, faces Craig Durgan, 53 of Port Ludlow, a Chimacum-area storage unit business owner, and Dan Gase, 56, a Port Angeles real estate broker.
Van De Wege in 2006 defeated Jim Buck, a six-term GOP incumbent from Joyce, and in 2008 he handily defeated Port Angeles Republican Thomas Thomas, a broadband communications businessman.
Filing for the Aug. 17 primary — from which the top two vote-getters will advance to the November general election regardless of party affiliation — ended Friday.
Monday’s talk in Port Townsend was Van De Wege’s first since filing closed.
He’s scheduled to speak this morning to the Port Angeles Business Association — of which Gase is listed on the PABA website as a member.
“It would probably be very unlikely that Democrats will lost control in the House and Senate,” he said Monday, adding that he sees Republican Dino Rossi’s challenge of longtime U.S. Sen. Patty Murray as a “mistake.”
He said much of the GOP’s campaign funding for state lawmakers will be funneled to Rossi’s campaign against Murray.
Van De Wege said he saw jobs creation as the best way out of a recession and will be his main campaign platform.
“Things will improve,” Van De Wege said, voicing optimism.
“And in Washington they will improve fairly dramatically.”
Joined by Port Townsend city leaders earlier Monday, Van De Wege toured projects under way before his speaking engagement.
He viewed the Upper Sims Way streetscape, roundabout and widening project and additional streetscape work downtown.
Biomass future
Because jobs are high on his priority list, Van De Wege said there is a future in biomass energy created by burning wood waste in a plant rather than out in a clearcut timber harvest.
The representative said he has worked hard to improve access to affordable health care, control property taxes, build strong schools, create living wage jobs, require performance based budgets and preserve the timber economy.
Van De Wege serves as vice chair of the Agriculture and Natural Resource Committee and is a member of the Technology, Energy, and Communication Committee as well as the Sub-Appropriation Committee on General Government and Audit Review.
He also serves on the Joint Committee on Military and Veteran Affairs and is an assistant majority whip.
Legislative district
The 24th Legislative District he represents along with departing Democratic Rep. Lynn Kessler and Sen. Jim Hargrove, both of Hoquiam, includes Clallam and Jefferson counties and one-third of Grays Harbor County.
He said this year’s 60-day legislative session followed by a 30-day special session led lawmakers like him to support state cuts and new taxes with some federal aid to raise $850 million in new revenue.
“We’re in a recession, we’re sluggish and the best way to get out of a recession, I feel, is new jobs,” he told the chamber audience at the Elks Lodge.
He voiced support for Referendum 52, known as the “Jobs Act” and passed in the last session.
It will appear on the November ballot.
The legislation established a $505 million bond sale distributed as competitive grants for energy-efficiency projects at public schools, colleges and universities.
The debt service on the bond is to be paid by a continuation on the sales tax on bottled water, which would otherwise expire in 2013.
Since the bond size would exceed the state’s current debt limit, a vote of the people is necessary to make it a reality.
Van De Wege said approval would create 30,000 jobs in the next two years.
“I think it’s going to put people to work right away,” he said.
Kessler, now 69 and ready to retire from her career in the state House as Democratic majority leader, will speak to the Jefferson Chamber of Commerce at next Monday’s noon luncheon.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
