Clarifying my opposition to Marc Boldt

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I have not and likely will not be endorsing in this race. I freely admit that I am totally opposed to Marc Boldt's re-election since he's completely sold out to the left, forgotten/ignored GOP principles, supports the CRC scam in it's entirety and wants to hang tolls around our neck for the next several decades that will destroy a great deal of small business in Clark County as a result.

NO candidate or campaign or anyone involved or in any way concerned with any candidate or campaign was aware of or approved or had input into this post.

Further, Marc Boldt is my brother in law, and I worked for him as his legislative assistant for 6 years while he was in the state house.)

I’m frequently asked (and have been accused) through two questions:

1. Are you on Madore’s payroll?

2. How can you oppose your own brother-in-law… isn’t he family? And, as a corollary, how can you oppose a family member?

The answer to the first is easy.

No.

I am not working directly, indirectly, peripherally, or in ANY capacity for Madore, his campaign, or any of his subsidiaries. No, I’m not being paid through surrogates.

I have been “charged” with this, and people in the Boldt campaign have been, according to my sources, telling people who can’t understand why I would oppose Marc that I’m doing it for a check. While it might fit neatly into Marc’s meme, the fact is that’s untrue.

The answer to the second is a little more difficult.

I’ve known and observed Marc Boldt since late 1994… when he ran what amounted to an admittedly brilliant, under-the-radar-screen, little-to-no-help campaign that took out democrat Majority Leader Kim Peery in an upset as stunning as the British win at Agincourt.

It was a thing of beauty; Marc outspent 9 to 1 or so… and he got, as I recall, a 1200 vote victory as a part of the 94 tide.

He was a hard-charging conservative, fearless in his integrity and principals, Republican all. He was a good man, a man of integrity, a hard working man who was both a state representative and a concrete truck driver.

He was the blue collar on the blue-collar worker.

We didn’t agree on everything… like his ultimate vote for the Mariner’s Stadium after telling me for weeks he’d be a “no,” a message I was supposed to pass on to the hundreds who called in the district office primarily demanding that he actually VOTE “no.”

I wasn’t thrilled about writing his Growth Management Act appeal on company time during session, but one does what one is told… even though for the entirety of MY tenure in Olympia, the democratian, who had demanded his resignation, was firmly convinced that I was Marc’s boss and he did what *I* told him to do.

I was tossed under the bus when Marc signed off a letter I’d written… the infamous “Darcy Peters” letter that the democratian brings up every couple of years or so when that slimeball editor wants to take a shot at me… never mind that with Marc’s signature, it became HIS letter.

It was a tough, pressure-packed gig working in Olympia… but not working for Marc, who was so laid back he let me fill out my own personnel evaluations most years… and then he just signed it.

I left Marc to take over the Executive Director’s position at the State GOP in Tukwila in mid 2000.

I was thrilled when Marc ran for and won his county commissioner seat: I thought that he represented the thing that Clark County needed the most: Conservatism on an out of control board.

It was OK…. At first. I’d noticed a FEW strange votes… and then Marc went over the edge by voting to confiscate our weapons in the event of commissioner-declared emergency… about 60 seconds or so after Katrina.

That was, of course, Unconstitutional on its face. I emailed all 3 of the commissioners: I told them that if they wanted my weapons, they’d better send a whole lot of deputies to come and get them… at the time, the commissioners were Boldt, Stuart and Morris. Only Marc replied. His response?

“The legislature gave us the authority… if you’ve got a problem with it, take it up with them.”

Really, Marc? You’d vote for an obviously unconstitutional county ordinance because you wrongly believed you had the authority to do so?

And then I noticed the tax increases… 0.2 in the sales tax for rehab, voted in by Boldt and Stuart… and jacked up without a vote of the people, of course.

And always a yes on jacking our property taxes… and always a “no” on allowing us a vote.

His mishandling of the ballpark/Yakima Millionaires’ fiasco, a deal he should have joined with Mielke on and killed immediately that stretched out for months and cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in staff time troubled me.

Marc’s complete collapse of conservative values as illustrated by his support of the CTran gerrymandered tax district, unknown to me until this year; his lie to me that he would make sure we had a county wide advisory vote on the CRC in February 2010… his subsequent lie about holding a charter vote, and his terror at a vote for the CRC scam… his vote that violated ethics laws concerning payments to Lifeline that he would have benefited from directly, since part of that money would have gone to his wife… and that bizarre, inexplicable robo call where he pushed for the expansive and unneeded CTrans tax increase… his continuing insistence that he’s a Republican when he votes with Steve Stuart so much that he frequently doesn’t even second Republican Mielke’s motions… the combination of all of these things told me that Marc was unfit for public office.

As difficult as it seems to grasp, there’s nothing personal in this: if Tom Mielke did this kind of thing, I’d go after him as well.

But I oppose Boldt… like 70% of us in his commissioner district opposed him, because he has failed us.

I oppose him because he’s flipped so far to the left that the newspaper will lie for him, campaign for him, and endorse him… the same newspaper who once demanded his resignation while he was a state representative.

I oppose him because for the first time I’ve seen him in politics, he’s reduced to lying about his record on his literature, claiming even NOW that he hasn’t raised taxes, even though he voted to raise them for 6 out of the last 8 years in addition to sales tax and fee increases over that same time period… while also claiming that he’s “fought” for MY right to vote on loot rail, an outright lie.

So, is it the paper that’s changed; is it the paper who is now Boldt’s most rabid supporter because Boldt follows their agenda like Gunga Din carrying water for the British Army?  Or has Boldt become a full-blown RINO, a closet democrat?

Or is it that Marc has sold us all out… that Marc has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the downtown special interests who find themselves terrified of David Madore?

Regardless.

My opposition to Marc Boldt does not translate into support of David Madore.

That’s complicated because the pragmatic politico goes with that “enemy of my enemy is my friend” shtick.

But I do know this: it’s time for Marc Boldt to go. And go he should.

To those who wonder… I hope this helps. There are many other reasons, some that I cannot discuss. But this is as much of a summary as a summary can be of a complicated issue where I despise Marc Boldt’s politics, but not the man himself.