As a candidate, Port of Vancouver District 1 Commissioner Don Orange was unapologetic about owning a house outside the port district and renting an apartment within it just so he could run for office.
Orange won the November election with just under 65 percent of the vote. Soon after, without making any public pronouncements, he bought a house in District 1, on Northeast 35th Avenue, as verified by county records.
“I told everybody I was going to do that,” he said. “I don’t make a very good tenant; I’ve owned my own home for 30 years.”
During the campaign, his critics cried carpetbagger; but he brushed off the mounting criticism, saying he moved specifically because he was concerned about the port and that he planned to buy a home in the district after winning the election — though, at the time, he was too busy to go house hunting.
Well before running for office, Orange was staunchly against the Vancouver Energy oil terminal that was then proposed to be built at the port. Last year, he decided to run for outgoing District 1 Commissioner Brian Wolfe’s seat so to give the commission the votes it needed to end the lease with the company.
Orange rented, and registered to vote from, an apartment in the district shortly before he filed his candidacy in March 2017.
His opponents seized on the issue, hoping to find enough leverage to push him off the ballot. In August, opponent Carolyn Crain filed a lawsuit, then a voter challenge, claiming that he did not and never did live in the apartment. Her efforts proved to be futile.
Her attorney filed the lawsuit in Superior Court a day too late to challenge his residency status. In late September, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey dismissed the challenge to Orange’s voter registration.
The issue dragged on for about a month. Orange prevailed, but his campaign ultimately paid an attorney more than $13,000 to defend against the challenge.
Later, reporting showed that Orange’s opponent, Kris Greene, was involved in the effort to push him off the ballot.
Orange said that he and his wife started looking for a house a couple weeks after winning the election. He moved out of the rented apartment soon after buying.
“I moved in the middle of January,” Orange said last week.
Orange has owned a house on Northeast 179th Street of Vancouver and outside the port’s taxing district since the 1980s. His wife still lives in the two-story farm house. He said they plan to sell the house in late summer and that she’ll move into the new house in the fall.
“We found a single-story (home) that will suit us as we get older,” he said.
Orange is one of many Clark County politicians who in recent history have changed addresses for political purposes.
His predecessor, Wolfe, rented a house in the district about two weeks before filing for the election in 2005. He bought his home within the district about two years later.
