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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Craswell Supporters Flock To Enlist In Ellen’s Army

Lynda V. Mapes Kelly Mcbride Contribu Staff writer

They wear Ellen Craswell buttons, watches, T-shirts, and hats. Craswell signs are in their yards, in the back window of their cars, in their shops.

Their car bumpers are emblazoned with the candidate’s stickers. Her car-top signs crown pickups, minivans and station wagons.

They call themselves Craswell’s Crusaders, or Ellen’s Army. State politics has never seen anything like it.

Across the state, an estimated 18,000 volunteers are working to make Craswell - a Republican, self-described radical and religious conservative - the next governor.

Many supporters find Craswell’s Christian faith and her promise to slash taxes and government spending an irresistible combination.

“We’re old-fashioned enough to think that character counts, that morals matter,” said John Beal, her 3rd District campaign director in Spokane.

“Ellen has this vision for governing that I very much believe in,” said Lisa Shinn, regional director for Craswell’s campaign in Eastern Washington.

“Government does not have the authority to do all things for all people and take our money to do it.”

Like Shinn and Beal, many of Craswell’s supporters believe government’s role is limited to duties spelled out in the U.S. Constitution.

From property rights champions to home schoolers, religious conservatives and people fed up with taxes and government red tape, conservatives of many stripes find Craswell a breath of fresh air.

“Her support is not just limited to the Christian community,” said Tony Canzler, campaign director for the 29th District near Tacoma.

“It’s this desire to turn back from bigger government, more taxes. I talk to lots of small-business owners who say they would love to hire another person but the regulations and taxes are so expensive and restrictive they can’t.”

More than 6,000 people have joined Craswell’s Foundation Club, whose members promise to send in $10 every month to her campaign.

They get a monthly campaign newsletter urging them to walk their precincts, work telephone banks, or join “wave teams” to smile and wave Craswell signs at passing cars.

They’re asked to set up booths at shopping malls to give out brochures. Or run a voter registration drive at church.

To some supporters, Craswell seems almost too good to be true, the candidate they’ve been waiting for.

Ken Tucker, owner of a used jeans store in Parkland, Wash., jumped to greet Canzler when he cold-called Tucker’s store.

Tucker wanted a Craswell sign for both doors, literature for customers and gave Canzler an earful. “I don’t like paying for social programs,” Tucker said. “I’m a conservative Republican die-hard.”

Some respond most to Craswell’s strong Christian faith. “God told me to work for this woman,” said Betty Cannon, Craswell’s prayer director in Spokane’s 6th District. “And she’s a godly woman.”

Cannon first heard Craswell speak when she gave a talk about being born-again one Sunday morning at Spokane’s Harvest Christian Church.

Since then Cannon has recruited 20 prayer captains, who in turn have organized a handful of others to meet weekly and pray for Craswell’s campaign.

Seated at her kitchen table in a pool of light, her hair swept back in a braid tied with a red-and-white-checked bow, Patty Johnson shook her head at the notion of separating religion and politics. “God is in all of life. I mean, come on.”

She wears an Ellen Craswell watch. There’s an Ellen Craswell sign in her living room. And a cross cut in stone by the driveway.

A retired schoolteacher, Johnson volunteers about 50 hours a week fielding prayer requests from her Tacoma home as Craswell’s state prayer coordinator.

Across the state at least 5,000 people receive her weekly Prayer Perspective. The campaign newsletter praises God and suggests what prayer team members should request from the Lord, from generous campaign contributions to high-energy volunteers.

Craswell’s schedule is also included in the newsletter, so supporters can pray for her at each event. Some also pray for good relations with reporters assigned to Craswell’s campaign.

Prayer is the heartbeat of the campaign, said Noel Sheldahl, the campaign’s prayer director in the 29th district in Tacoma.

A 52-year-old postal worker, Sheldahl is quick with a pun and even faster working the streets talking up Craswell to prospective voters.

In Parkland, Sheldahl and Canzler fanned out on opposite sides of the street on a recent weekday morning.

They worked their way down a hard-bitten little strip of shops, handing out literature to small-business owners eking out their living under a low, gray sky threatening rain.

Canzler is a 33-year-old father of two and part-owner of a family tree-service business. He paid someone else a chunk of his salary to work in his place for a week so he could devote himself full time to the campaign.

He borrowed a truck to canvass the district. It’s a hulking, venerable Suburban that Canzler jump-starts with help from Sheldahl when a screwdriver stabbed in the ignition fails to do the trick.

District directors like Canzler coordinate teams of 10 volunteers in every district assigned to take charge of telephone banks, doorbelling, sign making and distribution, fund raising and more. It’s working.

Craswell is keeping pace with her Democratic rival in fund raising. An estimated 1 million people have learned about her from volunteers knocking on their door, handing out literature and plugging the candidate.

Edwin Sauber of Federal Way, a retired Boeing telecommunications specialist, put together 1,000 signs for his district. He outfitted his own Chevrolet pickup with 4-by-8 foot Craswell signs on each side of the truck bed.

“I had to modify them special so they would fit. But I didn’t have to cut off any of the letters.”

Many volunteers do things for Craswell they won’t do for themselves.

Barbara Volin, a Puyallup, Wash., cosmetologist, directs a telephone bank for Craswell in the 25th District.

Volin once took a course where the instructor told her telemarketing would build up her own beauty supply distribution business. “I said. ‘Not this kid. That’s intrusive.”’

Yet there Volin was, working the telephones. “If it was just foolishness I wouldn’t do this. People need to know about her.”

Clay Ciolek, 38, a father of six, directs campaign volunteers in the Puyallup and Sumner, Wash., region. Slim and earnest, he keeps a pager, cellular telephone and daily planner close by to stay in touch with volunteers.

Ciolek spends most evenings working on the campaign, then rises at 4:45 a.m. to get to his carpentry job in Seattle.

No matter how the campaign turns out, Ciolek said he feels his efforts will have been worthwhile. “I’m a Christian. I take the aspect that the duty is mine, and the results are God’s. Pray to God, then hammer away.”

Vicki Oberle, a homemaker and mother of two, said Craswell’s Christian faith attracted her. “She supports Judeo-Christian values, going back to the basics of what the Bible means to us. As a Christian that’s very important to have people in government who back the Bible.”

Campaign Director Leslie McMillan of Olympia based the campaign’s grass-roots strategy on a verse in Exodus in which Moses is overtaxed by too much to do and learns to delegate.

McMillan, 40, is a former state legislative staffer and one of the campaign’s very few paid, experienced workers.

She sees the campaign as an unfolding work of God, in which the small efforts of many individuals multiply like the proverbial loaves and fishes.

“Someone reading this who doesn’t know the power of the Lord will think ‘Wow, that’s wacko.’ I know, because that’s what I used to think.”

McMillan described herself as a former “rank heathen” who dismissed religion as below her intellect. She said she ran cutthroat campaigns before she became a Christian.

But the first priority of the Craswell campaign is to honor God. Winning isn’t by any means the only thing.

“Whatever happens, we know it’s for His purposes,” McMillan said.

“At our human level we would love to see Him put her in office. But all of us, from Ellen to a doorbeller, we can each tell how this campaign is bigger than we are.” , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Lynda V. Mapes Staff writer Staff writer Kelly McBride contributed to this report.