Former Camas city councilwoman Liz Pike announced Monday that she will run for state representative in the 18th District.
Pike was motivated to run as a Republican because “our state government needs to reform and we need to start being more efficient,” she said by phone Monday. “What I’m willing to do is dig in and make tough choices to prioritize how Washington does business.”
Pike, who has owned Pike Advertising Agency since 1995, is the political affairs director for the Building Industry Association of Clark County. She unsuccessfully ran against incumbent Camas Mayor Paul Dennis in 2007. Dennis won re-election with three times as many votes as Pike received.
Current 18th District Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, is likely to lose his eligibility to run for the seat because the lines of the district are expected to change following the 2010 Census. The proposed legislative map moves about 38,000 constituents, including Orcutt himself, from the 18th District to the 20th District to balance out inequalities in population.
Orcutt has said he plans to seek election in the 20th District, whose Rep. Gary Alexander, R-Olympia, is likely to be moved into the 2nd Legislative District during redistricting.
Pike was raised in Brush Prairie and has lived in the 18th District for most of her life. She has two adult children.
During her race for mayor of Camas, Pike said the city was run by entrenched bureaucrats who skirted the law in the solicitation of bids, handling of animal control and housing issues. She asserted that Dennis got an unfair break on a traffic ticket, and that Dennis and the police chief ran a police department that was lax on enforcement.
Dennis delivered information to rebut her charges. He drew the support of the police, firefighters, city workers, members of the city council and even the Camas school board, among others.
According to Pike’s campaign website, her priorities are to fully fund education, shrink state government, and reduce government regulations.
“I see a lot of job-killing regulations,” she said, calling out stormwater regulations, enforced by the state’s Department of Ecology, as an example.
