San Juan County Democrats Meeting this Month

— from David Turnoy, Chair, San Juan County Democrats —

We discussed the recent decision by our county councilors to appoint Liz Lovelett to the vacant state senate position.  While [Lovetlett] looks to be doing a very good job so far, what concerns us is the fact that our county councilors ignored the wishes of their constituents in voting for Liz rather than Kris Lytton.  The councilors technically have the right to vote for whomever of the three nominees they choose, but our county clearly heavily favored Kris, as did the PCO votes at the meeting to nominate the three candidates.  As yet there has been no public statement by the councilors on this matter, though we have strongly encouraged them to do so.

Ken Crawbuck’s resolution on wealth and income tax was discussed.  Everyone present supports the idea in theory, which is to significantly raise income tax on the wealthiest and to tax wealth.  The debate was over whether we want to see this oriented toward setting rates at the level that would generate the most revenue, toward fighting inequality, or toward doing whatever best furthers democracy.  These goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  A committee of people will continue to try to refine this and distill it down to one page, as it may end up being a model for the state party.[Precinct Comittee Officer]

Stephanie Buffum of Shaw Island, whom you probably know better as the director of Friends of the San Juans, has been confirmed as PCO from Shaw.  Welcome, Stephanie, and thanks for being willing to join us and help us.

We are debating whether to have an entry in the 4^th of July Parade this year and also whether to have a booth at the county fair.  If you are interested in helping to coordinate either of these, please let me know.  Without volunteers, these events will not happen for us.

Liz Smith, newly arrived from Maine, joined us for the first time.  In Maine she was in the position of participating in elections with Ranked Choice Voting, a system that allows one to rank their choices for a particular office so that if their first choice doesn’t survive, their second choice then gets their vote.  Washington state is considering this in the legislature this year for local elections.  The system promotes democracy and promotes more positive campaigns, two things we could use more of.  The city of Vancouver, WA, uses this for their elections.

Geri [Turnoy] reported on the 40^th Legislative District.  Tomorrow [March 10] is a general meeting in Anacortes.  There will be an endorsement meeting in Bellingham on June 2, followed by a meeting in Friday Harbor at the Grange (thank you, Bill Severson) on Oct. 6, with the year’s final meeting just north of Burlington on Dec. 8.  There will also be a 40^th town hall with Liz Lovelett and Jeff Morris on March 23 in Burlington.
           
The state party is in the process of choosing whether to adopt a primary/caucus model or a straight-but-improved caucus model for the selection of presidential candidates.  Those of us who participated in 2016 well remember the chaos of the local caucuses and we were hoping that we would move to a primary this year to solve that.  But because the state party didn’t think the legislature would approve of Ranked Choice Voting for the primary, the only choice for a primary we are being given is a primary without any change to specify a second or third choice. 

The caucus model automatically has Ranked Choice, because when it becomes obvious that a candidate is not going to meet the 15% threshold required to be considered, the attendee switches to another candidate.  We voted 17-10 to go with the improved caucus for 2020, on the theory that using it this time with the Ranked Choice voting [RCV] it includes would set the stage for moving to a primary with RCV in 2024.

Just to see where we were as far as who favored a primary with RCV, we almost unanimously supported such a measure.  So it is really a shame that we don’t have that available for 2020, but hopefully we can move to that in 2024.  Lerner [Limbach] and Sharon [Abreu] will represent us in this matter at the April state meeting.  By the way, if you have comments as to what you would prefer, you are welcome to go to the state party website and communicate those.
           
Nancy Greist presented on a citizen advocacy action group the Colorado Democrats have used called CLEAN [Community Legislative Early Action Network].  This has been used for citizen action to support good legislation, and we are thinking of implementing this here in our county.  Laura Jo will be researching the various contact information we would need to put this in place.

Those are the main points from today’s meeting.  Thanks for reading.  We will look to have our next meeting on Saturday, April 13.