ISLAND COUNTY DEMOCRATS: August 2022 Newsletter
The Island County Democrats publish a monthly newsletter, which we are posting here. We believe that the statements made by the leadership of each party is of general public interest.
Message from ICD Chair, Joseph Busig
Promising Primary Results!
Local Democrats did very well this Primary Election! With a high turnout in Island County of 52%, voters sent a clear message.
To begin with county elections, Janet St. Clair will advance in the County Commissioner race into the General Election against Republican Tim Hazelo. While the County Commissioner primary election only covers their district, and is not countywide, Commissioner St. Clair had an impressive showing with 49% of the vote to Hazelo’s 39%. Next, in the race for County Treasurer, Democrat Tony Lam led with an impressive 58% of the vote against Republican opponent Richard MacQuarrie with 42%. For the County Clerk race, Debra Van Pelt led with a significant margin of 62% to “No Party Preference” Deirdre Butler at 38%. Finally, Democrat Barbara Fuller came behind incumbent Republican County Auditor Sheilah Crider at 46%.
Now, moving on to the 10th legislative district races, Dave Paul and Clyde Shavers made a very strong statement with their showings! In Island County alone, Shavers won 55% of the vote and Paul won 57%. District wide, Shavers and Paul still led their Republican opponents at 52% and 54% respectively.
These primary wins couldn’t have been possible without voters, volunteers, or grassroots support. We thank you all so much. Into the General Election, we certainly hope to maintain these leads and push all of our endorsed candidates over the edge. Please find ways you can help out our endorsed candidates by visiting our 2022 Endorsed Candidates page to get in touch with individual campaigns. Whether your help is monetary, mailing postcards, text/phone banking, knocking on doors, sign-waving, hosting events, or even spreading the word it makes all the difference on election day. Your contributions to ICD also help us continue to assist our endorsed candidates, especially in this crucial midterm election year.
Respectfully,
Joseph J. Busig
Chair, ICDCC
Message from Island County Commissioner, Janet St Clair
Dear Friends,
The primary is behind us and I’m so proud of Island County. We had over 51% voter turnout, the highest in the 10th Legislative District and one of the highest turnouts in the State. I want to congratulate my colleagues Clyde Shavers and Dave Paul on their success. What is even more exciting is that it is clear that reason, hard work and compassion prevailed. Democratic voices were strong. I’m pleased with my results, moving forward in my district to be top two with over 49%. On Camano Island, the people spoke and I received 54% of the votes, increasing the number of supporter votes by nearly 1000 in comparison to 2018. It’s a lot of data but it tells a story as data often does. It is a story that values respectful and inclusive leadership, experience and hard work. I will continue to share the results of my work on healthcare, housing and human services, climate resilience and environmental protections, support for working families and access to the internet to support economic development, education and health equity. I hope you will join me at one of the many community events and forums to learn more. You can find info about my campaign at www.janetstclair.com where you can endorse me, volunteer or make a donation. You can also join our virtual community on Facebook at Committee to Elect Janet St Clair | Facebook. I will continue to work to serve the people of Island County, not the extreme partisan politics of my opponent. I believe there is more that draws us together than those things or people who seek to divide us. Let’s do this! Let’s win in November! Thank you for your support.
Janet St. Clair, Island County Commissioner District 3
Message from ICD DEI Committee
Dear Island County Democrats,
It has been my honor to be chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and participate in the organization alongside inspiring, dedicated, and compassionate folks. I have been so proud to be a part of the changes in the Party through these past years and I’m excited to see where it will head in the future. This month was my final month as chair of the DEI committee and as of September, I will formally resign from this position.
I hope the ICD will continue to challenge the Democratic Party on the state and national level to make radical change because young people have a turbulent and bleak future ahead of us if we continue on the path we are on. I urge the ICD to support and work for the massive expansion of sovereignty for Indigenous Tribes throughout America both recognized federally and those that are not. We must drastically change housing in this country by expanding healthy, safe, publicly-funded housing, filling in that missing middle housing sector, vastly expand mixed use land development for more accessible neighborhoods and living and lessen gasoline and car dependency, and repeal the illegalization of the rent cap in Washington state. We need mental healthcare expansion where we have more high quality options for long-term care, in-patient care, and support through mental health crises that do not have to involve the carceral system. We are all deserving of relaxing, beautiful, calming, and caring places that support our mental health stabilization in times of need.
We cannot cede in the national fight for universal healthcare. Americans pay exorbitant amounts of money for subpar and complicated healthcare where our bodies are parceled up by the insurance and pharmaceutical industrial complex and our whole health is neglected. This country needs to dramatically improve conditions for healthcare personnel and radically change this country’s healthcare system to meet the needs of healthcare workers and their patients and clients. We need an infrastructural overhaul to meet a disability justice framework. For far too long, disabled folks have been subject to structural violence when infrastructure fails to meet the needs of all Americans. ICD needs to continue to work for a public utilities system for internet and electricity. On a national level, Democrats need to be part of the fight for forgiving student loan debt while transforming the public education that has slowly stopped being about enrichment, health, and growth of students. I call on Democrats to fight to raise the minimum wage to a liveable wage nationwide, advance the democratization of the workplace, and to elevate workers’ rights and protections to collectively bargain. United States residents deserve freedom to be creative, self-expressive, innovative, and connect with one another and this is why I call for an expansion of public budgets for arts programs. I urge Democrats to think about food sovereignty and what that could mean for communities that have been structurally edged out to food deserts.
These devastating times call upon us for radical, revolutionary climate and environment legislation that puts the planet we inhabit first, not because it’s the “right thing to do” but simply because humanity’s existence depends on it. This summer has been particularly destructive globally causing deaths due to overwhelming heatwaves, draughts, famine, loss of natural resources we hold dear and depend on to live, climate related natural disasters, declining quality of life, new diseases, mass extinction of species, and the heating of oceans.The action on the part of the current administration to open more public land to drilling oil and gas pipelines deeply saddens me. It makes me think our current political representatives do not comprehend how cataclysmically climate change will impact future generations or perhaps they are not concerned about the catastrophe we are currently living in. Perhaps they would like to instead focus on making more money for any industry commodifying and exploiting destructive and non-renewable energy sources. Climate-related crises dubbed as isolated incidences of “natural disasters” in the past like Hurricane Katrina demonstrated to me when I was a child that marginalized communities, children, disabled folks, Black people, Indigenous folks, People of Color, older adults, and poor Americans, will bear the brunt of climate change with little support from the structures and institutions currently in place. The nation saw in the 2021 Texas power crisis (occurring due to lack of oversight and enforcement of regulation standards and climate change) that the deregulation of energy infrastructure only results in cutting corners to save some money, but in the end, it costs us our lives. Like Hurricane Katrina and the 2021 Texas power crisis, because the current climate catastrophe we are living through is the result of systemic, global failures on multiple levels, we have to engage with this issue on a systemic, global level. The environment does not care that we extract resources from one place and performatively safeguard our domestic lands because the environment is inextricably and delicately connected. The environment does not care about bi-partisanship, compromise, or who is a donor to whose campaigns, or reaching across the aisle. I call on Democrats to push legislation to turn away from the extraction and profit model of economics and fossil fuel dependent infrastructure that has led us here. There are decades of scientific evidence showing us the use of fossil fuels is the leading cause of climate change. We have scientific and financial evidence that 100 companies create 71% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. We have a strong knowledge base and ingenuity we need to reverse climate change and its impacts. What we do not have, however, is time to wait until the end of the decade to reverse the climate catastrophe. By then, most of our most senior politicians will have retired or completed their term limits and have no obligation to fulfill any promises made. We do not have time for a “moderate” approach to climate change.
Finally, I urge Democrats to practice skepticism on any expansion of military and police budgets and escalation. I urge Democrats to ask themselves if these funds can be used in more preemptive ways that rid of the structural causes of global violence and domestic crime. And ask “Which groups of people globally will be the recipient of the violence perpetuated by the military-police industrial complex?”
Once again, I would like to thank the Island County Democrats and I would like to give a special thank you to the ICD Chair Joseph Busig for all of his incredible work.
Rachel Colston
ICD DEI Committee Chair
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