Marine vet mounts timely challenge to Senate

Marine veteran Mark Wilson couldn’t ask for a more fitting moment in history to launch his primary campaign against Sen. Maria Cantwell.

While the Democratic challenger from Kitsap County was outlining his antiwar position to me via phone Monday morning, the Pentagon was about to confirm that 2,000 U.S. soldiers had died in Iraq. A Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive poll was set to show a majority of Americans calling the war a mistake for the first time. And rising political star Paul Hackett, the most prominent of a handful of Democratic Iraq war vets running for Congress, was announcing his candidacy for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio.

In addition, Wilson counts himself among a growing number of activists targeting Democrats in Congress whose antiwar rhetoric doesn’t match their voting records. While prominent protesters such as Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan lash out at Hillary Clinton and other icons of the left, Wilson says he’s getting a strongly positive reaction to his candidacy from Washington state Democrats who feel “disenchanted and disenfranchised” by elected officials of their own party.

“We’re still hearing talking points regarding ‘stay the course,’ ‘it’s too early to leave,’ ‘achieve the goal’ and ‘complete the mission’ when in fact it is the U.S. military’s presence in the region that is causing the conflict, and we are in the middle of a civil war,” says Wilson, who advocates an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. “I don’t see that there’s going to be any sort of victory or mission accomplished by our continued presence there other than enormous profits for weapons producers,” he adds.

Wilson, 51, served during the Vietnam era, but received a medical discharge before seeing combat because of a fall that briefly left him paralyzed. His two eldest sons have served in the military, along with his father, two uncles and “every able-bodied man in the last three generations” in his family, he says.

Calling the war “unnecessary, illegal and immoral,” Wilson says this military background has attuned him to the home-front costs of “the Iraq adventure” – first responders taken from communities as reserve call-ups, families scraping to make up for lost income, and high rates of alcoholism and domestic abuse when soldiers return from the front lines.

Those issues galvanized the Poulsbo electric wire and cable distributor to enter politics. But Wilson also calls for environmentally friendly energy independence, abolishing corporate welfare, ending the war on drugs and repealing the USA Patriot Act. He believes those positions will resonate with progressive Democrats and, in a general election, with Greens and Libertarians as well.

He should know: Wilson ran as the Green Party candidate last year against Sen. Patty Murray and earlier was a Libertarian candidate for Congress. That history leaves him open to portrayal as a political gadfly. However, he argues, “If I’m able to actually reach out to both those third parties, then … I would see my candidacy as being much stronger than” Cantwell’s.

Although he’s a West Sider, Wilson says he’ll appeal to Eastern Washington voters in part by opposing free-trade agreements such as CAFTA and promoting renewable energy initiatives that would create “tremendous opportunities” for agriculture and the construction industry.

In his first month on the stump, Wilson has raised about $10,000. If he can bring in $500,000, he thinks he’ll have a shot at beating Cantwell next year. And if he comes up short, he’ll take solace in forcing his opponent to adopt more progressive positions.

“If that occurs then I would be grateful to see that influence, but truthfully my goal is not to do that,” Wilson says. “My goal is to win.”