Clark County turns blue as Democrats gain favor

Here in Clark County, it’s a landslide.

Bigger than George Bush’s. Bigger than Ronald Reagan’s. Bigger than Richard Nixon’s.

It’s all but certain now: The last presidential candidate of either party to carry Clark County more decisively was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Led by Barack Obama’s eight-point victory in the county Tuesday, Democrats smashed into open seats in the state Legislature and county board of commissioners and seem to have come within a hair of unseating state Sen. Don Benton, one of the best-funded lawmakers in Washington.

In short, something happened in the suburbs.

Did swing voters blame Republicans at every level for the policies of President Bush? Did enthusiasm for Obama lure Democratic loyalists out of the woodwork? Did the financial meltdown shift what people want from their government?

It’s still too early to say. But as they rubbed their eyes and nursed their coffee Wednesday, Clark County’s political pros started composing the stories they’ll spend the next few years telling one another about the election of 2008.

Most of those stories will start in the middle of the county: the 17th Legislative District.

The 17th district is the county’s urban frontier. It runs from east Vancouver to the southern edge of Battle Ground, then west to interstates 5 and 205. It takes in Sifton, Brush Prairie, Glenwood, the Padden Parkway and Washington State University Vancouver.

It’s roughly the shape of Nevada. And on Tuesday, it seems to have turned out just as blue.

Democrat Tim Probst stunned Republican Joseph James with a 13-point win for the open seat now held by Republican state Rep. Jim Dunn. Democratic state Rep. Deb Wallace got 62 percent, her biggest win yet. On Wednesday, WSUV instructor David Carrier was running 263 votes behind Benton, the Republican incumbent.

“When you get the precinct results, I think you’re going to find that the 17th is where the Republican Party lost most of its ground,” Brent Boger, a Republican state committeeman, said Tuesday.

Boger described the area as classic suburbia, with political moderates concerned about their careers.

“People are more concerned about having their jobs than they are about taxes at the moment,” Boger said.

He said the suburbs, hit by the building industry collapse, the gas price spike and the foreclosure boom, revolted against the GOP across most of the country.

“As returns were starting to come in from the East Coast, I looked at other suburban counties where Republicans had done well -— where Bush had done well — four years ago,” he said. “McCain’s numbers were not good.”

Ryan Hart, chairman of the local Republican Party, said he was dismayed by Republican losses in the district.

But he didn’t think his party will need to change its message to reverse them.

“I think the 17th is a microcosm of what we see in the battleground states, in the swing states across the country,” he said. “It tends to reflect the national mood.”

Hart praised James for what he called a well-run campaign in a difficult year.

“I think that this is still a center-right country,” Hart said. “We have a message that reflects the majority of the electorate. … We just need to find candidates that can clearly articulate that message.”

Commissioner Betty Sue Morris, a Democrat retiring after 20 years in office, disagreed.

She said the Republicans would win by scaling back opposition to social issues like abortion and focusing on ways to fatten people’s wallets.

As for the 17th, Morris said 2008 looks like the reversal of 1994, when Republicans painted what was then a blue district red.

Elected in that year: Benton and now-Commissioner Marc Boldt. In 1996, Dunn followed.

The 1994 sweep, Morris said, was due to an overly ambitious 1994 Democratic Legislature.

“They did health care, juvenile justice reform, education reform and, I believe, sentencing reform,” she recalled. “The backlash was tremendous.”

Morris warned the heavily Democratic Legislature — not to mention the President and Congress — against overreaching with similarly broad initiatives such as universal health care.

Dena Horton, the local Democratic Party chairwoman, had similar advice.

“Biting off more than you can chew is something that we will have to be wary of,” she said. “If we don’t have the resources to pay for things, I think that’s going to hamper us.”

Democratic Commissioner Steve Stuart and former Republican state Sen. Don Carlson, who now works in Olympia as a lobbyist, agreed, too.

Carlson said his party will probably be able to win back the suburbs simply by waiting its turn.

“I think they have to be patient and let the Democrats make their problems,” he said. “They’re going to watch the results. They’re going to be taking notes on everybody that screws up.”

Michael Andersen: 360-735-4508 or michael.andersen@columbian.com.