We’re all arguing about the real fault for the purchase and white-elephanting of the Tyson Seafood plant, but there’s something worth pointing out. While the plant itself still sits empty, there was some good done on another piece of the property.
Quixote Village, an award winning and self governing homeless village, has called the site home for just over two years now. The history of Quixote Village is pretty interesting, growing out of a protest downtown and then riding the wave of local politics on homeless encampments and churches for a few years before settling down.
So, yeah, I’ll admit it. The Tyson plant has been empty and in county hands for going on 20 years now. Some people who first purchased it now support Gary Edwards for county commission. The folks that moved on to another solution support the same people I’d vote for.
But like most history, things are never really as simple as an easy retelling. The entire property the county purchased in the late 90s did not got to waste. Obviously.
Well, when I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I was wrong about this one.
From the Olympian in 1999.
My research stopped in 1998 soon after the purchase of the property when Oberquell and O’Sullivan both made steps to move forward and Edwards was largely silent. If I took one more step into 1999, I would have seen organized and vocal opposition by both commissioner O’Sullivan and Sheriff Edwards.
I still think there’s a point to Commissioner Oberquell being involved in the original purchase of the old seafood plant. And, I think Edward’s implies too heavily that the plant was purchased under the leadership of the current commission. But, that said, I was wrong.
Gary Edwards, now candidate for county commission, gives a long-winded interview to a local conspiracy theorist. It includes this small little gem about a listless county commission, stumbling into a multi-million dollar problem:
Gary, you’re so smart. Only if we’d listen to you then. Or your supporters.
But, it turns out that not only was Edward’s complicit in the purchase of the Tyson Seafood plant in the late 1990s, but two of his supporters help guide the purchase and early development.
First though, I should back up and say that Edwards glosses over the legal situation the county was in at the time, by simply saying “I was running an overcrowded jail.”
Back in the late 90s, the Thurston County jail wasn’t just overcrowded. It was beyond that, it was inhumane. To the point that the ACLU was pressuring the county to improve the conditions in the jail. Edwards was running a bad jail.
As long ago as 1996, we reported to you some of the complaints that inmates relayed to us. These included:
severe overcrowding, with many inmates forced to sleep so close to toilets that they were stepped on or urinated on by other inmates
poor sanitation and lack of access to hygiene supplies
infrequent changes of clothing and linen
denial of prescribed medications and lack of treatment for health care
limited indoor or outdoor exercise areas
lack of access to a law library
inmate kites or grievances not answered
broken plumbing and poor ventilation
Most of these problems were directly attributable to overcrowding. We received complaints from corrections officers as well as inmates, who also expressed their concerns that the dangerously overcrowded situation made their jobs unreasonably dangerous due to the enhanced risk of injury from assault, fire, and communicable disease.
So, as a way to push back against overcrowding, the county commissioners spent $3.8 million to buy an old fish processing plant only a few miles from the current county jail.
So, who was on the county commission then? Diane Oberquell, who is listed as an Edwards supporter, Judy Wilson and Dick Nichols (both Republicans). When Edwards was serving as county sheriff at this point, he was also a Republican.
And, since even satellite jails take time to develop, the Tyson plant (though purchased by this point) was still a topic in 1999. By this time Nichols had retired from the commission and had been replaced by Kevin O’Sullivan. Commissioner O’Sullivan was part of the county commission (along with Wilson and Oberquell) that continued to push for the use of the Tyson plant as a jail. O’Sullivan also currently endorses Edwards.
I can’t find anything in the record during those years Edwards speaking up against the Tyson plant purchase. In fact, what I did find was advice by the sheriff’s office to move forward despite growing public opposition to the plan.
Here is a portion of county commission minutes that show not only one of Edwards’ undersheriffs pushing for the Tyson plant, but also Oberquell.
When it came time to decide whether to purchase the seafood plant that Edward’s now criticizes, it was his supporters and employees were at the helm. Also, as county sheriff, he was in a choice position to publicly call out what he says now was a horrible waste of money.
By being vague about it now Edwards seems to hint that the current commission (the longest tenure of which didn’t begin serving until 2000) is at fault. But, when you scratch the surface just a little bit, the people now surrounding Gary Edwards first dug the Tyson Seafood plant money pit.
It’s my favorite because it showed something new and interesting to me.
For one, it blew up my idea of political party labels and how voters use them. In fact, I could see, voters really did react to a relabelling of a conservative local politician. In recent years a lot of Republicans have taken well funded runs at sitting Democrats on the county council, but have come up short.
But, Blake won, mostly it seems because he decided to label himself as an Independent and not a Republican. The data seems to bear this out. In almost every precinct, from the most liberal to the most conservative, a portion of voters who would not vote for a Republican would vote for an Independent who happened to be conservative.
Since the start of the new campaign season, I’ve heard more than a few times from liberal folks up here that: “We won’t be fooled again. This time we know Independent means Republican.”
There are also two new Independents running for county commissioner who seem like they’d probably be Republicans in another setting. Obviously since one of them used to run regularly as a Republican.
So, my question is, how far out from the central, more liberal, part of Thurston County does this story need to travel before an Independent (really Republican) needs to lose.
Turns out, pretty far.
What I did here was sort precinct results by usually most liberal to most conservative (based on 2012 election results) and started replacing the vote totals from Bud Blake’s 2014 campaign with an aggregate for a Republican in 2012.
That’s a really rough experiment, but it was an interesting practice. I assumed that the map wouldn’t extend much further than the main urban core of the county, but it really did pick up most of the peninsulas (if I can call those neighborhoods that) and some precincts in south county (mostly around and in towns though).
And, here is why I think I can do a lot better than this map. I think turnout is going to have a big part to play. Not only was Blake’s party label a factor, but turnout dropped a lot in 2014. For the next post I’m going to play around with trying to find out how an increase in turnout this year will change the dymanic.
