History, politics, people of Oly WA

Thurston Democrats don’t follow the pre-ordained “sides” on school board races

I missed the endorsement meeting this last Monday at the Thurston County Democrats, and I’m really regretting it. Wow, endorsing Craig Ottavelli over Matthew Green, that’s a huge one. Matthew (I did his website, btw) is a long time Thurston County Dem and a former city council member. Craig’s a nice guy, and probably deserves and endorsement, but I wonder why the group backed off doing a dual endorsement.

The really surprising part is the endorsements for the school board. The last couple of days I’ve written about the rift in the current school board showing up in the races this year (here and here). The county Democrats endorsed one candidate from the majority camp and one candidate from the minority camp.

Jeff Nejedly’s endorsement (from the minority camp) doesn’t surprise me. He’s made an effort with the organization. He’s been showing up to meetings since the spring, has had a presence at the Burger Booth and has essentially done the things that canidates to do make good with us. Frank Wilson sounds like a good guy, but he just wasn’t there.

On the other hand, not endorsing Lucy Gentry Meltzer probably has to do with something else. I’ve heard her described as a “one issue candidate,” meaning she’s approaching the race with an axe to grind. I’ve heard that we try to stay away from those kind of candidates. The one issue is arts funding, if you’re interested, but I really have no idea if this was directly related to her not being endorsed. I wasn’t a the meeting.

Read all of our endorsements here.

1 Comment

  1. Ken Camp

    I can’t say why the group didn’t do a dual endorsement of Craig and Matthew, but the reason Matthew didn’t get my vote, as a PCO, for endorsement is because he didn’t even bother to show up to the meeting and ask for our endorsement. Of the few candidates who didn’t show up, they didn’t get my vote. You have to show you want the endorsement in order to get it. I even voted for the candidates who couldn’t be there but sent a surrogate on their behalf. But Matthew didn’t even have a representative there.

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