What’s up with the Clark County Republican Party?
Let’s start with County Commissioners David Madore and Tom Mielke. Madore’s solution to our bridge problem starts with a small four-lane bridge to nowhere at east county’s 192nd Avenue that dead-ends at a red light on Portland’s congested Airport Way. It has a billion-dollar price tag and distracts us from the real problem, replacing the 90-year-old scary Interstate 5 Bridge.
But there’s more.
After the M&M boys hired state Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, to be the county’s director of environmental services, Clark County paid out $250,000 to settle a lawsuit on this back-door unfair hiring.
But there’s more.
Our new Environmental Director Don Benton is a state chair for American Legislative Exchange Council, a “lobby” group, infamous for laws that protect corporate polluters from environmental regulations.
But there’s more.
Last September the Tea Party, led locally by Lynda Wilson, took control of the Clark County GOP and many mainstream Republicans have walked away. If given their way, these Tea Party radicals would gut Washington’s minimum wage, gut gun background check laws, underfund schools, and find a way to establish an oil terminal in Vancouver. I thought low-paying jobs and oil-saturated dirt was a Texas thing.
