Last two standing square off in 18th District race

Dennis Kampe

Democrat

o Age: 64.

o Occupation: Director, Clark County Skills Center.

o Campaign funds: Raised $54,630, spent $29,976, owes $5,000.

o Campaign website: ElectKampe.com.

o Quote: State government “shouldn’t spend one cent less than we must to provide necessary services, nor should we spend one cent more than we can afford.”

Ann Rivers

Republican

o Age: 44.

o Occupation: Political consultant.

o Campaign funds: Raised $82,114, spent $68,830, owes $9,000.

o Campaign website: electannrivers.com.

o Quote: “The No. 1 job of our government must be to enable private business to put people back to work.”

La Center political consultant Ann Rivers, a Republican, and Clark County Skills Center Director Dennis Kampe, a Democrat, survived a crowded primary contest for the right to square off for the 18th Legislative District seat in the general election.

The seat opened up after Republican state Rep. Jaime Herrera announced her candidacy for the open 3rd Congressional District seat last year. The sprawling 18th District, a Republican stronghold for years, encompasses Felida, Salmon Creek, Ridgefield, Battle Ground, north Clark County, Camas, Washougal, and most of Cowlitz County.

Rivers, a resident of the district for 18 years, left all other candidates behind in fundraising in the primary election and leads Kampe in overall fundraising by nearly $30,000.

Kampe, the founder and longtime director of the Clark County Skills Center and a lifelong resident of the area, is running as a moderate Democrat with deep roots in the 18th. A graduate of Ridgefield High and Clark College, he is also a journeyman machinist, and for the past 19 years has led the nationally recognized skills center, which offers vocational programs to high school students throughout Clark County.

He says he decided to enter the race in 2008 because he wants to make sure the state continues to fund vocational programs and keep its commitment to training a highly skilled work force. He’s concerned about a decline in the number of career and technical schools in Washington.

He’s realistic about the chances that the state will fully fund education in the foreseeable future. The state needs to be “lean and mean” in its budgeting, he said, but teachers must be at the table.

Kampe is an unabashed supporter of organized labor, including teachers unions. “I totally believe teachers are underpaid,” he said at a candidate forum during the primary campaign. “I will go to the mat for it. I am a product of labor. I will take money from labor and I will represent them.”

He touts his experience managing a multimillion-dollar budget and says he’s committed to protecting the middle class from shouldering a disproportionate tax burden and to keeping local business “free from unnecessary fees, taxes and cumbersome regulations.”

He also promises to be an advocate for seniors and to protect their Social Security, Medicare and earned retirement benefits.

Kampe supports a new bridge over the Columbia River, but he opposes including light rail as part of the project and also opposes tolling Clark County commuters to pay for the bridge unless voters approve tolls in an election.

Rivers, a lobbyist with extensive experience in Olympia, says she has a plan to bring “true transparency” to state government by putting the state checkbook register with a searchable database on the Internet.

“This will not only give the citizens of Washington access to a simple reporting system of the state’s spending habits, it will also force our government to take any ‘sacred’ or ‘private’ tags off our state’s budgeting and spending processes,” she says.

A former schoolteacher, Rivers said she understands the economic pain residents of the district are facing and believes teachers must sacrifice along with everyone else.

Rivers opposes a new bridge over the Columbia River; she says she’s not convinced it would relieve congestion.

She also opposes the health care reform plan Congress passed in March.

“I don’t believe health care is a right,” she said at a candidate forum. “I don’t see anything in the Constitution that says, ‘You will have health care.’”

Though she’s a longtime Republican activist, Rivers has played down the role of partisanship in the legislative process in her campaign, saying, “There’s a lot more agreement than disagreement” between the political parties in Olympia. State Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, is a role model, she says, “because he works across the aisle.”

At a recent candidate forum at Clark College sponsored by a faculty union, she admitted that she has a lot to learn about the plight of part-time college faculty members and pledged to learn more.