Matt Brown takes over as chair of Yakima County Republicans
Yakima politician Matt Brown, a local pastor, business owner and member of the Yakima City Council, is the new chair of the Yakima County Republican Central Committee.
Brown, 34, was elected to the executive board after the party’s latest reorganizational meeting. Republican precinct committee officers met Dec. 3 to hear from candidates and elect leadership to treasurer, secretary and commissioner district director positions.
The new board includes conservative politicians who may be familiar from recent elections, including former Yakima County Commission candidate Autumn Torres as vice chair and former school board candidate KateAshley Clarke as director in Commissioner District 2.
Brown said the new leadership brings energy and excitement to the party, and the board is changing direction to focus on recruiting candidates to flip school boards and councils throughout the county, he said.
Brown said past leadership has “done an OK job at pushing when it comes to partisan seats, when it comes to county commissioners seats or different things like that, but when it comes to these local, small elections like city council and school board, they’ve kind of been a forgotten piece.”
The local positions are the ones that affect people the most, he said.
Another goal is to grow the party and community participation through events and education, he said.
“A lot of people have been getting frustrated recently, and it’s not productive if they don’t know how to put their frustration towards something,” Brown said. “I want to help them to move it in the right direction.”
Informing people about issues and candidates will help people feel more confident about who they’re voting for and what they’re voting on, he added.
“I think what you’ll see with that is voter turnout will increase because people will have confidence in the direction and be actually confident in candidates,” he said.
Efforts by the party to get out the vote will continue, and Brown also hopes to increase outreach to the Hispanic population. Yakima County Republicans have not had a Hispanic outreach program or director in the past, something Brown said he would like to add.
“One of the things that I’m looking at doing right now is actually building a coalition to start reaching out into that community and talking to them. Just having that dialogue, that outreach, is key going forward,” he said. “Our county is definitely majority Hispanic, and so we need to be reaching them with our message and our points.”
Brown is the operations pastor at Yakima Foursquare and the owner of a production company.
Here’s the full executive board elected Dec. 3: Brown, chair; Torres, vice chair; Lisa Herke, secretary; Dave Mullen, treasurer; Phil Ostreim, state committeeman; Dana Johnson, state committeewoman; Tom Dittmar, Yakima County Commissioner District 1 director; Clarke, Yakima County Commissioner District 2 director; and Jacob Castillo, Yakima County Commissioner District 3 director.