Outsiders voicing optimism
The Legislative 4th District has sent only Republicans to Olympia since 1994.
But the Democratic challengers this year say the district isn’t as conservative as some people think. They’re estimating that 40 percent of voters are Republicans, 40 percent are Democrats and the rest are swing voters. A drive through Spokane Valley, the district’s largest population center, might even give the impression that the Democrats have the edge. Their signs are staked in front of homes and businesses and are plastered on billboards.
Of course, one could argue that the Republican incumbents are so popular they don’t really need to campaign, even though they do. In the last two elections, Reps. Larry Crouse and Lynn Schindler were either unopposed or won by more than 20 percent.
Democrat Jim Peck, a retired U.S. Army master sergeant, is challenging Crouse for Position 1 in the Washington state House of Representatives. Substitute teacher Ed Foote is the Democratic candidate challenging Republican Schindler for Position 2.
The two Democrats have run a coordinated campaign this year. They meet with voters, organize volunteers and talk strategy in an office on Trent Avenue. Both House candidates, along with Tim Hattenburg, the 4th District Democrat running for the state Senate, are ringing doorbells.
The Democrats have attended more than a dozen public forums sponsored by the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Spokane County Domestic Violence Consortium and other groups. Except during the chamber’s forum, their Republican opponents didn’t show, Peck and Foote said.
“They chose not to attend the ones they don’t agree with,” Peck asserted. “We want to go to as many as we can.”
Peck said the Democrats attend not only to share their platforms, but to better understand the issues facing the organizations.
But Schindler listed several forums she attended that the challengers didn’t, including a church event, a gathering of pastors, and meetings with members of the medical community.
Crouse said the incumbents already have a good handle on the problems constituents are battling, and there isn’t time to partake in all the events. He added that Sen. Bob McCaslin once advised him, ” ‘Larry, you dance with the people who brought you,’ ” but he said not attending organizations’ forums doesn’t mean he doesn’t support their causes.
While Foote says one of the reasons he’s running for office is because the representatives “don’t respond to voters,” the incumbents say they’re the best choice to voice the conservative views held by many people in District 4.
Position 1
Jim Peck wears the same silver belt buckle every day.
It has the crest of the National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 161st Infantry, which he trained before retiring from the Army in 1995. Peck said he’ll wear the buckle every day until the soldiers from that unit come home from Iraq.
During his 28 years in the Army and the Army Reserve, Peck served in the Vietnam War and Desert Storm. He said he learned how to make tough decisions, among other lessons.
“It taught me that politics matters. It affects people,” Peck said. “It taught me real patriotism – not just putting a flag in my lapel.”
Ironically, Peck was a Republican and Crouse was a Democrat for years. The men each switched parties during the 1980s.
Crouse is conservative now, socially and fiscally. He grew up in Seattle and at age 20 met his wife, Peggy, at a hamburger joint. Soon after, he became a devout Christian, which shapes many of his views. He’s against abortion and gay marriage.
Crouse moved to Eastern Washington at age 29 and says having spent half his life here and half his life on the West Side makes him a good legislator.
“I put my district first, but you have to look at the state as a whole,” he said.
Crouse worked at Kaiser Aluminum and as a real estate agent – the same career path as McCaslin. He said he’s still influenced by his days as a union worker, and that he collaborates well with Democrats because he understands their positions.
Peck adds to his military career six years as a chemist, and his current work as a substitute teacher. He also serves on the Liberty Lake Planning Commission.
Peck and his wife, Joy, moved to Liberty Lake after he retired. He fell in love with the area when stationed here in the 1980s.
Peck said he wants the people of the state to care more for one another.
“In the military, we look after each other in peacetime and in wartime,” he said. “In the civilian world, that’s not true.”
He said he’s also fiscally conservative, but thinks the Republican incumbents put too much emphasis on businesses’ needs.
“All three of our legislators here are very much pro-business and significantly ignoring labor and working families,” Peck said. “All of their solutions address business problems and not people problems. I think we can address both.”
Crouse contends state restrictions and taxes on businesses are strangling their ability to prosper. He wants to overhaul the industrial insurance program and allow small businesses to buy into group insurance plans.
Crouse supports using state funds to support charter schools.
Peck says the state needs to do a better job funding public schools; too much of the burden falls on local levies.
He wants the state to provide financial incentives to attract and support small businesses. He also wants to give small businesses tax incentives for providing employees with health insurance.
Position 2
The legislators and citizens who work with Lynn Schindler might know her as a straight-talking representative who is serious about controlling state spending.
They might not know that she takes Irish dance lessons with her granddaughter and that she once worked as a TV weather woman in Milwaukee.
“I always got blamed when the gray skies came,” she said Wednesday in the Sprague Avenue campaign office she shares with the other incumbents.
But don’t ask Schindler about the ground she was breaking as a woman on a TV newscast more than 30 years ago. She doesn’t get caught up in gender comparisons.
“I don’t want to be known as a woman legislator,” she said. “I want to be known as a good legislator.”
Ed Foote is her eager challenger. He grew up in Spokane Valley, in a house that stood where City Hall is now. While knocking on doors this week, he stressed to voters that he is their neighbor. That tickled one woman, who – despite having a sign in her window that said she shoots solicitors – culd be heard saying, “That’s a nice guy,” as she went back into her home.
Foote grew up in a family of conservatives, but he was liberal-minded from an early age. His experiences teaching English overseas further solidified his liberal views on education and health care.
Schindler and Foote couldn’t be further apart on some issues, including gay marriage.
“I think it’s sad when the government legislates what happens at home and in bedrooms,” Foote said.
Schindler supports a law that defines marriage between a man and a woman.
To help solve the health care crisis, Schindler wants to loosen Washington’s regulation of insurance companies. Too many have left the state, and the lack of competition is driving up costs for consumers, she said. She wants to cap the amount of money a jury can award malpractice victims to compensate their pain and suffering. Doctors are responding to higher malpractice insurance costs by leaving Washington, she said.
Schindler isn’t happy with Washington state’s Growth Management Act. She said regional hearings boards appointed by the governor have too much authority over growth regulations set by local governments.
Foote is against using state money for charter schools, and said the state needs to stop cutting funding for education.
He wants to revamp the business and occupation tax. He advocates giving tax breaks to businesses that pay living wages and eliminating the breaks for those that outsource jobs.
Foote supports importing prescription drugs and buying them in bulk at a lower cost.
“Too many families in the 4th Legislative District are having to choose whether to spend money on their prescription drugs or on food,” he wrote recently.