[Klickitat] 🚔 Life After Sheriff Songer - Klickitat Primary Round-Up

 Klickitat County is picking a new sheriff for the first time in a decade. Longtime Sheriff Bob Songer is retiring, and three career lawmen (John Bruce, Tony Warren, and Dwayne Matulovich) are running to replace him. We walk through two candidate forums, dig into the campaign-finance filings (including who the outgoing sheriff is funding), and cover the three-way County Commission race and the quiet PUD contest almost nobody is watching.

In this episode:

• Why the sheriff's seat is suddenly open, and how the three candidates differ on the posse, Flock cameras, and "constitutional sheriff" politics
• Follow the money: who is raising what, who is self-funding, and the out-of-state donors
• How the retiring sheriff is helping fund both a successor and a commissioner candidate
• The County Commission, District 2 race and the Dallesport data-center split
• The contested PUD race with no forum, and the rest of the ballot
• How and when to vote in the August 4 primary

Resources & links:

• Read the full written round-up at skamaniadispatch.com
• Candidate sites: johnbruceforsheriff.com · tonywarrenforsheriff.com · dwaynematulovich4sheriff.com
• Campaign-finance data: Washington Public Disclosure Commission (pdc.wa.gov)
• Sheriff retirement and the new posse law: OPB
• Watch the League of Women Voters of Klickitat-Skamania sheriff forum on their Facebook and YouTube pages
• Register to vote and check your ballot: klickitatcounty.gov

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, and welcome back to Open Gorge. I'm glad you're here. We're back today with more election coverage. Today we're heading over to Click-Atack County because on August 4th, you've got a primary ballot in your hands and one race stands above the rest. For the first time in a decade, Click-itak County will be choosing a new sheriff. Bob Songer is finally retiring. He's 80 years old, served three terms, and he says it's time for younger blood. Now, if you followed this newsletter, you know Songer, the nationally known constitutional sheriff. He's the man who built the volunteer posse back in 2015. The sheriff who spent the last two budget seasons going toe-to-toe with county commissioners over staffing and money. And that chapter is now finally closing. And three career lawmen want to write the next one. So let's introduce them. First, there's John Bruce. He's got the biggest resume of the three. He came up through law enforcement in Texas all the way to police chief in the booming suburb of Frisco. And he was chief in Richland, Washington for a couple of years. These days he inspects police departments for a national accreditation group. His pitch is simple. Run the office like the professional operation it is. Do a staffing study first, then hire. Second, Tony Warren. He's the insider. He's the detective sergeant in the sheriff's office right now with almost 30 years as a Washington peace officer. He grew up in law enforcement family. In fact, he said his own father retired as the Scamania County Sheriff. Warren wants to be a working sheriff, he says, out on the road. In his words, quote, I am not one to work behind a desk, unquote. And third, Dwayne Medalovich. He's the change candidate, and is the only one not running as a Republican. He's running as an independent. He spent 19 years policing this county, then left the department about three years ago. Today, he works for the railroad. He says the working cops are behind him. Now here's what's made this race interesting to cover. The same three men sat down at two different forums, each about a week apart, and they got two completely different sets of questions. Down in Dallsport on July 9th, the room was full of posse members. Questions were about staffing, the posse, and a proposed data center. Very local, very practical. But up in White Salmon on July 14th, at the League of Women Voters Forum, the West End of the County came up with sharper questions. Would you join Songer's Constitutional Sheriff Group? Would you put up flock surveillance cameras? Those are automated license plate reader surveillance cameras that, if you'll recall, were actually removed in Scamania County after they went up due to public outcry. Would you refuse to enforce a law you thought was unconstitutional? And on that ground, the three split apart. On the constitutional sheriff question, all three said no thanks. On refusing to enforce laws, Matilovich was the firmest. He said, My job is to enforce the law, it's not to interpret them, unquote. Bruce agreed. The courts decide that, not the sheriff. Warren left himself the most wiggle room. He said some laws out of Olympia might not get enforced, quote, within reason, unquote. On the flock cameras, Bruce was a hard no for his first term. Matilovich said, quote, I don't want to be watched all the time, unquote. Warren was in the middle. He said the cameras help solve a double homicide, but they also need strict rules. They also talked about the posse, and here all three were warm. They want to keep the volunteers. They just want them to look clearly different from real deputies. Warren put it plainly. He said, quote, we all know the mall cop is not a cop, unquote. There's a new state law that would tighten what the posse can do, and it's tied up in court right now, so the posse's future is possibly genuinely on the ballot. Alright, so now for the part you know that we're really big fan of over at Open Gorge, which is following the money. We pulled the campaign finance filings from the state PDC, and they tell you about as much as any forum answer, in my opinion. Tony Warren has raised the most money, about $14,300, and almost none of it is his own. Most came from right here in the county. A raffle, t-shirt sales, neighbors, small local dollars. Dwayne Matilovich has raised about $11,800. Here's the thing, nearly half of that is his own money. Mostly the signs and materials he paid for himself. He's running lean. And John Bruce, the man with the biggest resume, has raised the lease, about $8,900. And about half of it came from out of state. More than $4,000 came from Texas alone, his old Frisco network. It's a race where everybody is running on their own local routes, and I think that's a striking map. But here's the detail that stopped me. The retiring sheriff is helping to fund the person who replaces him. So the filings show three gifts, $750 in all, going from the Songer household to Tony Warren. And they show another $200 from Bob Songer to a county commissioner candidate named Andy Callanan. So the same sheriff who spent two years fighting the commission over money is also now spending his money to shape both his replacement and the board. I think it's worth bringing up, which brings us to that commissioner race. The District 2 seat has three Republicans running. The incumbent is Lori Zoller, and she's running on stability. She says the current board finally works well together. And a new face could possibly set that back. The challenger with the most momentum is Andy Callanan, a longtime state parks ranger. And here's a twist. He's an officer in his public employee union, which is why you'll spot a union check among his PDC candidate filings. The third candidate is Jean Klagyesky, the county's building inspector. So where do they split? A data center proposed on the Dallesport Peninsula. Kladesky said no, pointing to water. And Kallanan said data centers have to go somewhere, but not there. And Zahler was cautious, reminding folks how wind and solar arrived years ago with almost no public input. We're going to be digging a little bit more into the politics and the background of land use tradition that a lot of data center conversations in this area are inheriting in a future episode. Now, before you go, two quick things. There's a third contested race that almost nobody's talking about. The public utility district, position three. A commissioner who's been on that board since 1990 is facing two challengers. No forum and barely any coverage. But in a county wrestling with power rates and big energy projects, I would say that the PUD commissioner is a race worth your attention. So what about the rest of the ballot? Most of it is uncontested and already settled. Your assessor, auditor, clerk, treasurer, and prosecutor are all currently running unopposed. So let me leave you with the question you started with. Why did the only sheriff's race get a real forum? Because it's the only wide open, high-stakes, countywide seat on the ballot. When a race is truly open and the candidates truly differ, no incumbent, just all new faces, the primary actually decides something pretty interesting, and it seems like that's then where the energy and attention goes. Here's what's next. Your ballot arrives in the mail on July 17th. Register or update your registration online by the 27th. And election day is August 4th. The top two in each race will move on to November. So do me a favor, before you fill in that Oval for Sheriff, go watch the forum. We'll post those links in our show notes. The League of Women Voters has it posted, and we really appreciate that folks are bothering to record and post all of these forums. It's very helpful. And you can also read our full written roundup with every number and links to the different candidate websites over at schemania dispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, the home of the Schemania Dispatch and the Click of Taddler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the gorge, head over to schemania dispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook.comslash opengorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.