9th district has a little of everything

PULLMAN – Washington’s 9th Legislative District is a study of contrasts.

The district, which one veteran legislator describes as the size of a Connecticut and a half, reaches from south Spokane to the Oregon border and west toward the Tri-Cities. It has a little of everything: city, suburbia, tiny towns and vast swaths of range and farmland. The rural areas hold a fairly conservative voting base, but the district also contains the large, sometimes liberal education centers of Eastern Washington University and Washington State University, which are packed with thousands of state employees.

“It’s Republican country,” said WSU political science Professor Nicholas Lovrich. The district’s political survivors over the years tend to have an agriculture background, know all the county commissioners by first name, and relate to those smaller communities, he said. But “they have to know the politics of higher education as well as the politics of agriculture.”

While the district hasn’t seen a Democrat in state office since Hubert Donahue left the Senate in 1981, for the first time in a long while, there are Democratic candidates for all three of the open state offices this fall. After years of relative silence, Democratic campaign signs are sprouting in rural yards and on roadsides.

Both parties have noticed an increase in student participation, with more volunteers coming forward to register voters and work on campaigns. It’s much higher than in recent years, said Wes Taylor, chairman of the Whitman County Republican Central Committee. “They’re doing a great job this year at getting the issues out there.”

Residents say the ideal candidate can balance the demands of the varied constituents. He or she also can bridge the divide between Eastern and Western Washington to explain the Eastern Washington perspective: for instance, that while consolidating school districts might work in Seattle, it could wipe out a community on the Palouse.

Encompassing Whitman, Adams, Asotin and Garfield counties and including parts of Spokane and Franklin counties, the district is a territory of volunteer fire departments, tiny towns struggling to hang on to businesses and money-strapped rural school districts.

As they campaign, the candidates find themselves in far-flung places like remote Anatone in the easternmost corner of the state, west to Othello, and up on Spokane’s West Plains at Medical Lake. They’re popping up at Clarkston’s summer celebrations, the Pullman Lentil Festival and the Ritzville Blues Festival, often exhausted by the size of the district.

Those who stop in Pomeroy have learned that it’s the only town in Garfield County and that it holds the only school for 400 Garfield County children. In a state that deems districts with fewer than 2,000 students as small, it’s easy to get lost, said Pomeroy’s school Superintendent James Kowalkowski. “Sometimes the small districts have to stand up and say, ‘Don’t forget about us.’ “

For many such towns, the survival of the community and the schools are inextricably linked.

Bonita Lawhead, an EWU student who has lived in Tekoa for more than 30 years, sees growing poverty as an issue in the district. Her church is collecting more food to meet increasing demands at the food bank.

The town is in the middle of everything, but close to nothing, she said. Residents have to drive nearly 50 miles to Spokane or Colfax to see a doctor or get a pair of shoes. “And when the agriculture economy isn’t good, it’s really hard on Tekoa,” she said.

Lawhead describes herself politically as “independent and cantankerous.” She said she doesn’t pay attention to party lines, but votes for the candidate she likes best.

Whether Democrat or Republican, the big concerns here are access to health care, education and transportation, said Gene Siple, chairman of the Democratic Party for the 9th District. And even though many of the voters are public servants who live in the larger communities, they’re concerned about the welfare of the agricultural base.

“The people here are very tied to their communities and they’re interested in their survival,” he said.