The two races for the House of Representatives in the 1st District feature a battle for an open seat and two law enforcement veterans dueling over criminal justice issues.
After Rep. Jeanne Edwards, D-Bothell, decided to retire her Position 2 seat, she recruited Democrat Mark Ericks to run for her seat. Ericks and Edwards come from a similar mold – Edwards served on the Bothell City Council before she was elected to the House in 1998. Ericks has worked for the city, first as police chief and now as its finance director.
Joshua Freed, the Republican, is a counselor of children and families.
Each candidate believes his experience would help in the Legislature.
“I have a lot of experience that relates to budgets and balanced growth,” Ericks said.
Freed, in working with families, said he sees their difficulties up close. “They’re just trying to make ends meet.”
Freed said his priority would be jobs and the economy. He would reduce regulations on business and make government agencies “more customer-service oriented.”
Freed said he would push for greater government accountability through performance audits. That, he said, would promote the philosophy that “the government exists for the people rather than the people for the government.”
Ericks emphasizes what he sees as a need for long-range planning. Problems with education, transportation and health care “are all tied to a (tax) system that is sort of patchwork and gets developed and refined on the fly,” he said. “We need to develop a long-range strategic plan that will adjust and make corrections in the way we tax.”
He said he does not support an income tax, but that “everything should be up for grabs” in terms of possibilities.
In the Position 1 race, another member of the Bothell City Council, Jeff Merrill, is taking on veteran Rep. Al O’Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace. Merrill has been a state trooper for 19 years, while O’Brien is retired after 29 years as a Seattle police officer.
Merrill has built his campaign around O’Brien’s involvement in several pieces of legislation that Merrill says are too soft on crime. In particular, he blasts O’Brien for helping pass an amendment that would reduce sentences for some categories of sex offenders from the mandatory 10-years-plus to as little as six months. He contends O’Brien did so to save money in the budget crunch.
“You can’t compromise the safety of our kids and families just because it’s an expensive alternative,” Merrill said.
O’Brien said the amendment was only to allow nonviolent, in-family offenders to get out of prison early to work to support the family and receive treatment, with the family’s consent. In some cases, young children are unable to testify against a family member, or someone is reluctant to testify because the offender is also the breadwinner.
“The alternative is you don’t get a conviction, and you get more victims,” O’Brien said. The rule does not apply to violent offenders or to those who are not known to the victim, he said. “We did it in a responsible way, and we did it by working across the aisle with the Republicans in the Senate.”
The third candidate in the race, Libertarian Terry Buholm, is running on a platform of property tax reduction. “People are being taxed out of their houses. The way we assess homes needs to be changed.”
Buholm said assessments should not be allowed to increase more than 2 percent per year. He said the limit would not affect resale value.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
