Three seek Fourth District ticket to November

Five-term incumbent "Doc" Hastings watches as three people vie for chance to unseat him from Congress

The primaries are only a few days away and most every absentee ballot has reached local mailboxes.

And the Democratic race for the Fourth Congressional District spot is still going strong.

Three candidates, Craig Mason, Sandy Matheson and Richard Wright, hope to win the right to go against five-term Republican U.S. Rep. Richard "Doc" Hastings in November. Meanwhile, they are still campaigning with the clock loudly ticking until election day.

All three appeared at Thursday's candidate forum at Big Bend Community College as part of a campaign that has not died down.

While still on the stump, they have high hopes of being selected to do battle with the incumbent lawmaker from Pasco at the end of the year.

Craig Mason, a former instructor at Columbia Basin College, said that his chances were good enough to make the race "a coin toss" between him and Matheson. He added that what has helped him has been the grassroots support of his party followers.

Conversely, Mason said, he feels Matheson has hurt her chances by making what he saw as "two major errors.

"She spent $20,000 in consultants who don't understand the district," he said. "She refused to articulate any clear critique of Hastings."

Mason did criticize Hastings, saying the Republican congressman was a radical deregulator, whose deeds in Congress had brought about the Enron crisis, which he said was responsible for the shutdown of two Washington state aluminum plants at Wenatchee and Goldendale.

"He has dragged us into a war that has created terrorists rather than fighting them," he said.

Matheson succinctly replied to Mason's words, saying she was running a "professional campaign.

"We are raising money and it shows the strength of our candidacy," she said.

The civic leader and businesswoman from the Tri-Cities said that what will help her win will be the fact that she is "different" from other candidates.

The strengths of her campaign are based on a 20-year record of community service, she said, and not on promises of what she will do if elected.

"I have a 20-year-record of doing what I say I will do," she said.

Matheson said the focus of her campaign will not change if she is chosen to go up against Hastings. The message of her campaign, described by some pundits as moderate, will not change, she said.

"I presented myself to voters with my strengths and that will not change," she said. "We are feeling good about our campaign."

The third candidate is Wright, a Tri-Cities businessman who said he is hoping his approach to politics attracts voters.

"I hope people want to have a candidate that has not collected campaign contributions from special interest groups," he said. Wright has pledged to finance his campaign with his own money.

Calling himself a person of integrity, Wright said he is the only candidate of the trio who has come out against a draft for the war in Iraq. He is, however, in favor of developing an exit strategy which will leave open the chance to have Iraq develop its own government.

"If I get into the final election," he said, "I hope the people in the district will want to change what has happened in the past four years."

During Thursday's forum each candidate staked out their position on a variety of issues.

On health care, Matheson said it was necessary to promote prevention programs, and make wise spending decisions, figuring out the true value of health care.

Mason said that the first priority would be to make sure "everybody was covered.

"We need to stop the free ride of the pharmaceutical companies."

Wright said a more competitive system was needed, with stronger federal regulations to make sure no abuse or overuse of the system took place.

Reproductive rights was another question tossed at the candidates. Mason said that if the right to choose was to be stopped, it had to be stopped for all. If morality is to be brought into law, he said, there can't be any exceptions.

Wright said there were times where the decision to terminate a pregnancy should be allowed.

"In cases of rape and incest," he said, adding that people should not try to pass bad laws to circumvent Roe v. Wade, a decision he said he disagreed with.

Matheson said that until people stopped unwanted pregnancies she supported a woman's right to choose.

On another topic, Wright said he opposed gay marriages, eliciting a small ovation from the crowd, before adding that the issue needed to be decided on a state basis, not a federal or county basis.

Matheson said gay marriages was an issue to be decided in a court of law, "not in the court of public opinion."

She added she opposed a constitutional amendment on the topic, as well.

Mason said that he did not have to be for how people addressed their freedom of choice in their private lives.

"Freedom of choice is a duty we owe to each other," he said.