Washington State has a second potentially competitive race (along with Darcy Burner's strong challenge to Dave Reichert in WA-08) this year with Peter Goldmark's entry into the race for Congress in Washington State's far eastern Congressional District. The district is huge and geographically mostly rural but centers on the thriving city of Spokane where 65% of its voters live.
This last Wednesday, Goldmark rode into Spokane by horseback along the Centennial Trail with a gang of supporters for a kickoff rally. He's a great candidate for the district, a cattle and wheat rancher from Okanogan County who has a doctorate in molecular biology, has a lab on his 8,000 acre ranch and does research on new strains of wheat and writes in scientific journals. He has been director of the Washington State Agriculture Department and a member of the Washington State Biodiversity Council. He was a regent of Washington State University until he quit to run for this office.
This is the new face of the rural Western Democrat. And it sizzles! Goldmark reminds one of Brian Schweitzer, charismatic Governor of Montana and Jon Tester, candidate for Montana's Senate seat held by the ethically challenged, extremely unpopular Conrad Burns.
The district is currently represented by Republican Cathy McMorris, who won the open seat in 2004 vacated by George Nethercutt. McMorris is a conservative Republican who votes with DeLay 98% of the time and received $5,000 from DeLay's ARMPAC. Nethercutt quit to run unsuccessfully against Patty
Murray in 2004. Prior to that, the seat was held by Democrat Tom Foley for 30 years, even as the district grew increasingly conservative. Foley was a popular Speaker of the House for 6 years before being unseated by Nethercutt in 1994.
Goldmark cites the corruption in the Republican Congress and has said he expects this year to deliver an even larger turnover in Congress, this time for the Democrats according to an Seattle AP article written by Nicholas K. Geranios which ran in several newspapers across the state a week ago. The article also notes:
Goldmark decided last year that he would run against McMorris because he felt the nation was on the wrong path.
Goldmark was particularly worried about the plight of the farm economy, which he believes the Bush administration has ignored. He would also focus on cutting the nation's dependence on foreign oil, by promoting alternatives to oil that could be grown and processed in farm country.
Joel Connelly, a popular columnist for the PI, wrote about the Goldmark family history in politics in the State when Goldmark was considering running last fall. It's a history of courage and consequences that might give a son pause about following his father into politics. Here's what Connelly wrote:
He is the son of John Goldmark, a Democratic state legislator from Okanogan County who was accused of having communist sympathies and lost when he ran for a fourth term. He sued his accusers and won a landmark libel lawsuit in 1963 that helped put an end to red-baiting.
<snip>
John Goldmark won a landmark libel trial against a local newspaper, the Tonasket Tribune, which smeared him as a communist in 1962.
The candidate's brother Chuck Goldmark, an attorney, mountain climber and civic leader, died after being stabbed with his wife and two sons in their Madrona home. David Rice, a political extremist, is serving a life sentence without parole for the murders.
Several Washington State blogs have also written about Goldmark. Steve Zemke at Majority Blogs wrote about the Wednesday kick-off, as did I at Evergreen Politics. Molly posted a brief IM interviw at the (liberal) Girl Next Door.
This is going to be a fun race and will make it very clear where red counties in the rural West are headed. Cathy McMorris has been named one of the "10 Up-and-Coming House Conservatives" by the Human Events newspaper and sits on the Republican Steering Committee. Plus, McMorris has just become engaged to a man who works in San Diego and she ought to be able to retire to the warm country and enjoy her marriage without being hassled by being in a newly Democratic House.
In this kind of a year, with a candidate as good as Goldmark and McMorris' crummy record, Washington might just get Foley's old seat back.
Consider contributing.. Besides, he's a friend and former roommate of our own teacherken.