Rural voters lost trust in county government

In the biggest upset of the 2014 election, incumbent Thurston County Commissioner Karen Valenzuela lost to a little-known challenger with no public office experience. With the support of the powerful local Democratic machine, Valenzuela should have cruised to victory.

But Bud Blake’s decisive win depended less on an organized partisan campaign, and more on a series of missteps by the sitting Board of Commissioners. The outcome was less of a statement of support for Blake than a loss of trust in Valenzuela, and perhaps in county government.

Conservatives and south county residents have been trying to unseat one of the three strongly Democratic commissioners for years. They saw three commissioners who live in Thurston County’s largest cities, and no one representing its rural areas.

This time, Valenzuela was the target, and she had been out in front in the commission’s decision-making on several key issues.

Led by Valenzuela, the commission took “arbitrary and capricious” actions to block development of a gravel mine in Maytown, and got slapped with a $13 million verdict in Lewis County Superior Court.

In a somewhat similar case, Valenzuela was outspoken about her desire to shut down Lakeside Industries’ asphalt plant in Nisqually by denying them an environmental review for adding a recycling component to the operation for eight straight years.

And the negative issues kept piling up. The commission hasn’t opened the new jail they built -- a scaled-down version of a project that voters soundly rejected – due to a fight over cuts to the Sheriff’s Office budget. And there have been conflicts with other independently elected county officials besides the Sheriff.

Newcomer Blake will provide a voice on the commission for those who feel underrepresented. But he has a lot of work to do to become an effective commissioner.

During the campaign, Blake exhibited an alarming lack of knowledge about county issues. It became absurd when he revealed at a Lacey Chamber forum that he thought the 12-shift schedule for corrections deputies meant the jail inmates would be left alone for the other half of the day.

Blake owes it to Thurston County residents to spend extra effort getting up to speed on what he doesn’t know. We hope Commissioners Cathy Wolfe and Sandra Romero will have a willing and diligent student.

Blake’s victory may help promote the efforts of Better Thurston to reorganize the county as a five-member part-time commission with an independently elected county executive. There’s a strong and growing momentum for broader representation, and a new county structure could be the right answer.

Despite recent shortcomings, Valenzuela has been a hard-working and dedicated public servant in Tumwater and at Thurston County. But recent conflicts and the momentum for change were too much for her to overcome.

Valenzuela’s zealous passion for protecting the environment produced some of her greatest contributions to Thurston County, and, in the extreme, led to her defeat.

This story was originally published November 7, 2014 at 12:00 AM.