Gop Adds Spice To Race For Governor

Are you a Republican? If you ever had the urge to run with the elephants this would be the year in Washington.

The reason: the state GOP has all the exciting political stuff.

Specifically, Washington’s Republican governor’s primary captures well the profoundly different readings on where exactly the nation’s political pulse can be found.

At the head of the GOP pack with two weeks to go is the grandmotherly Ellen Craswell.

She wears her hair in a tidy gray bun and speaks in a quiet, well-articulated voice. She says not only would she put a new heart in to the Republican Party, she would take the opportunity to cut away at the limbs of government while doing surgery in God’s name.

“Government doesn’t make a very good parent, so we’ve got to quit trying to be a parent through government,” said the former state senator from Kitsap County who has organized hundreds of prayer groups around the state to support her politics.

Her ideas:

Cut welfare and have churches and community agencies take care of their own;

Pull Child Protective Services out of homes and send kids in trouble to live with relatives;

With less meddling by government agencies in families, cut taxes 30 percent;

God’s will, she would say.

Tacoma attorney Jim Waldo isn’t so sure.

“If Ellen’s reason for running is her religion, my reason is out of a strong sense of place,” he said a few days ago.

Waldo appears to be coming on the strongest, in terms of catching up with Craswell. The heart he wants to transplant into the Republicans might well have come from the chest of former Washington Gov. Dan Evans.

Though he hasn’t ever held public office, something he thinks gives him a refreshing perspective, Waldo says he would bring something to the table of government that no other candidate has: the ability to negotiate among widely different interests.

Indeed, he’s negotiated enough thorny issues in 20 years of behind-the-scenes public service (fishing rights, timber/wildlife agreements, dams and fish) to be a master gardener.

His ideas:

Restructure K-12 education with an emphasis on setting higher standards;

Build the economy through small and mid-sized business development;

Recruit and hire better leaders for state government agencies;

But is the governor’s job one for God’s servant or an outsider?

Norm Maleng doesn’t think so. The King County prosecutor is the candidate closest in the polls to catching Craswell and the candidate best known around the state.

The heart he would transplant into the state party would be well exercised through a life of evolving party politics. More than either of the other leading candidates, Maleng has continued to change and evolve.

After his daughter, Karen, was killed in a tragic snow tubing accident seven years ago, Maleng realized that some things, indeed, do change.

“You never get over the loss, but you do begin to understand the losses of others,” he explained.

Maleng says state government should change, too. “Washington state is stuck in the 1970s,” he said, perhaps in reference to the legacy of Dan Evans.

His ideas:

Re-emphasize higher education, since jobs of the future will require more than a high school diploma;

Increase prison efficiency by cutting frills and emphasizing work and education behind bars;

Privatize much of state government;

There are other candidates, but I think the race will come down to these three.

Never let it be said the 1996 Republicans set up a contest between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.

, DataTimes