Grant Co. Republicans gather for annual fundraiser

MOSES LAKE — Members of the Grant County Republican Party gathered last week to listen to their state legislators, raise money and honor long-time GOP volunteers.

“I think it’s a big part of recognizing the people who built the Grant County Republican Party,” said David Hunt, the newly elected chair of the county GOP.

County Republicans gathered at the Pillar Rock Grill on Saturday to get a legislative update from Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, and Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy, as well as hear from Todd Myers, the director of environmental policy for the conservative Washington Policy Center. The fundraising dinner is held every year to honor Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

The party also auctioned off a ride-along and lunch with Grant County Sheriff Joe Kriete, a modern muzzle-loading, 50-caliber rifle, 20 tons of dirt, gravel or topsoil from Tomer Construction, a fishing trip and a stack of pies.

“We raised a lot of money,” Hunt said after the dinner.

Myers, a long-time advocate of conservative environmental policies and most recently the author of “Time to Think Small: How Nimble Environmental Technologies Can Solve the Planet’s Biggest Problems,” reminded attendees that protecting the environment is a conservative value. Especially given that much of the nature government seeks to regulate and preserve is in place like Grant County.

“We are the stewards of the environment. We are the ones who choose to live near nature because we love it and we know how to be good stewards. And, we should be willing to say that and be proud of it,” Myers said.

Myers said he is beginning to see after years of policies that have failed to preserve or improve the state’s forests and salmon runs, some in Olympia are beginning to consider conservative policies in support of free markets and property rights as the best way to accomplish those things.

“The reason I see a change in how people are thinking about the environment is because young people are starting to get fed up with government failure,” he said. “People, when they get on the ground, when they take personal responsibility for trying to make the world better, they recognize that conservative values and free markets are the way to go.”

Both Warnick and Dent outlined the battle the Republicans in the legislature wage as members of the minority party. Of the state’s 49 senators, only 20 of them are Republicans, Warnick said, so it becomes a challenge to get their legislation through as well as block legislation they believe should not pass.

“We got this bill mandating schools have 30 minutes of recess,” she said. “That should be up to school boards, the local school boards. That’s why we elect school boards, to decide whether there should be recess or not.”

Warnick said state mandates on everything from hospital staffing levels to what kinds of fishing should be allowed undo the ability of people to govern themselves.

“We’re mandating everything that our local businesses and local districts should be doing,” she said.

Dent said a recent struggle over which version of a riparian bill — one asked for by Gov. Jay Inslee or one crafted by a bipartisan group of legislators — showed just how difficult Inslee is to deal with. After working with a number of interests involved in preserving shoreline and riverbank health, Dent said Inslee found a way to kill the bill simply because it was not the one that came from his office.

Dent said Republicans need to avoid the temptation of picking on each other and focus instead on being united and electing a Republican as the next governor of Washington.

“We can’t keep doing this. We have to be united,” he said. “We have to get a different governor.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.