Booth, Dansel vie in 7th Legislative District Senate

After last year’s rancorous fight to fill Northeast Washington’s vacant Senate seat, the current contest in the 7th Legislative District is a quieter affair.

Incumbent Brian Dansel, a Ferry County Commissioner who won last year’s special session and served in this year’s 60-day session, faces fellow Republican Tony Booth, a Colville and Okanogan auto dealer who entered the race late and trailed badly in the August primary. Both are conservatives who oppose tax increases and want the state to do more to grow jobs in the predominantly rural district.

Under state law, Dansel, 31, can’t run for re-election to both the county commission and the Legislature and is giving up the county seat. Booth, 43, entered the race during the May filing week and is self-funding his run.

Whoever wins will head to Olympia in January where the Legislature could devote much of its energy debating how much to spend on public schools, and how to find the money to do it.

Dansel would start by giving the school districts more flexibility with the money the state provides. Some programs, like the “highly capable” program for exceptional students, are good ideas but small districts in the 7th get so little money they aren’t effective, he said. He’d like to see all money from the state Lottery go to public education and dedicate any new revenue the state gets in the coming biennium first to public schools.

“I still don’t know if that will satisfy the Supreme Court,” Dansel said, a reference to the court’s order to the Legislature to fulfill its constitutional duty to make public education the state’s “paramount” duty.

If that’s not enough, he’d oppose a tax increase in favor of targeted cuts to state programs rather than across-the-board reductions.

Booth said he’d have to first study the education budget “all the way down to the bottom line” before making any decisions. But he doesn’t think that would put him far behind the curve because, he contends, “most senators don’t even have a clue what the McCleary decision says,” a reference to the name of the court case.

One issue getting increased attention from district voters is what the state should do about the growing number of wolves in the region. A Stevens County rancher lost at least two dozen sheep to a wolf pack this summer. Dansel contends the Department of Fish and Wildlife was slow to respond, and didn’t follow the established plan when they did.

The department eventually killed one wolf; he thinks it should have removed the entire pack. Wolves are multiplying so fast that they should lose all state protections in Eastern Washington and the number of packs should be limited, Dansel added.

People have a right to protect their property, Booth said, and shouldn’t have to seek state permission to shoot a wolf on that property if livestock have been attacked.

Booth wants the state to cut paperwork and streamline the tax reporting system for small employers to make it easier for them to hire new workers. He also has advocated requiring anyone who receives unemployment compensation for more than 60 days to pass monthly drug tests. Dansel thinks that would be expensive, impractical and probably illegal.

“Unemployment laws are very strict and that would exceed federal law,” which controls much of the unemployment compensation system, Dansel said. Some of the district’s residents have natural resource jobs that mean they regularly go on unemployment for part of the year. He doubts they would support submitting to drug tests.

Booth says he’s not sure whether it is legal, but would address a concern he’s heard from some voters about people who stay unemployed and use their benefits for drugs: “I would not start this bill but I would stand behind it,” Booth said. “This might come up some day down the road.”