County race between 2 Republicans means lowering the polarization to win a majority

EAST BREMERTON -- A marijuana dispensary may not be the first place you'd find a political campaign event, and maybe even less likely to be the place you’d find Republican candidates running for local office.

But that’s precisely why Sean Murphy, who's running for the District 2 position on the Kitsap County Board of Commissioners, set up at Destination Hwy 420 earlier this month.

As shop patrons filtered in and out one afternoon, Murphy dealt Uno cards at a folding table in the dispensary lobby alongside his wife, Cerina, and Lance Byrd, a Republican candidate running for 23rd District Washington State Representative. Interested visitors could sit down with the candidates, get folded in with a handful of colorful playing cards and discuss issues.

The pot shop card game was a unique scene for politics, but the race for District 2 County Commissioner is itself an outlier, with two Republicans as the choices on the ballot for a seat held by a Democrat for the last 16 years.

Even though the race between Murphy and his opponent Oran Root makes for the first time two Republican candidates have faced off for the position in at least 25 years all while the country is embroiled in one of the closest presidential elections in modern history, dissolving party lines has become a tenet of the two Republicans’ campaigns. Posting up in a pot shop where customers might be surprised to have a conversation with a Republican would allow a relaxed and open conversation, Murphy thought. The event is the epitome of his non-polarized campaign theory.

Murphy and Root emerged from the primary election with about 25% and 21% of the vote in District 2, respectively, topping two Democratic candidates, Jeff Coughlin and Stacey Smith, who trailed Root by just a couple points, along with Democrat Matt Macklin and "Abe Lincoln Democrat" Paul Nuchims. Now another Democrat, Darryl Riley, has announced he's running as a write-in candidate to recover the Democrat’s “fumble,” as Riley described the primary, emboldened by the fact that all Kitsap County voters choose the next county commissioner, not just for the seat representing their district. There is also a contested race for District 1, between Democrat Christine Rolfes and Independent Scott Henden.

As the candidates reach the home stretch before Nov. 5, they all share a similar modus operandi: give disenfranchised Kitsap County voters who are frustrated with permitting, transportation, safety and housing, a voice at the board of commissioners’ table.

‘South Kitsap has spoken. They want a Republican’

The last time South Kitsap was represented by a Republican county commissioner was in 2007, before current commissioner Charlotte Garrido was elected to succeed Jan Angel. But a Republican has advanced from the District 2 primary election -- when only District 2 voters cast a ballot -- with the highest total each time since Garrido' ran in 2008's win. Each time Garrido ran for re-election through 2020, she has trailed a Republican candidate in August, but won the majority in the countywide general election vote.

“I think South Kitsap has spoken. They want a Republican to balance out the current Board of Commissioners, which is all Democrats,” Root said. “They want somebody to listen to them. They feel like they've been left behind. They want a bipartisan board. They want a collaborative approach. They want fiscal conservatism.”

Root challenged Garrido in 2020 and won 33.8% of the vote to her 28.9% in the primary, but lost in the general election when the Democrat took 53.64% of the vote compared to Root's 46.36%.

With two Republican names set to appear on the ballot this year, Murphy has felt “free” as his campaign advances, he said.

“There's not this back and forth of really far ideology. I think what that's allowed us to do is really spend that extra time asking people directly, ‘How do you want to be served? What do you want us to do for you?’ And we're not spending a lot of campaign time and resources trying to bash on each other.”

There a lot of potential Democratic votes for Murphy and Root to win. About 45% of registered voters cast their ballots in District 2 during the primary, but turnout reached 85% during the last presidential election year, in 2020. And when combined, the Democratic commissioner candidates garnered over 51% of the total vote during this year's primary. Both Republicans don’t think they will have a problem reaching across the aisle appealing to Democrats who don't see a candidate from their party on the ballot, however.

“What I love about local politics is we don't really have to focus on ‘Republican this, Democrat that,’” Murphy said. “I don't really find myself having a lot of conversations with Democrats where we disagree on things. A lot of times we're having the conversations and it's real easy to put the partisan stuff behind us because we're talking about our backyards. We're talking about our friends and our families and our neighbors.”

Root felt much of the same, saying “My strategy is humanity. My strategy is vision. My strategy is, it doesn't matter what party you're with, I represent everybody.”

Now that there will only be two names on the ballot for District 2 commissioner that will come with an R next to them, it will be up to voters to choose based on the candidates’ resumes alone, Root said.

Voter Guide: Kitsap County races, how to vote and more ahead of Election Day 2024

Neither Murphy nor Root planned on politics

Murphy and his family were prepared to leave Washington State and relocate to Boise, Idaho after the COVID-19 pandemic. On his campaign website, Murphy said he and his wife were fed up with the “indoctrination” of their children in school and the “damage the lockdowns had on our community." But after rethinking their role in their community and snowballing into public service, the Murphys decided to stay and put in the work.

While they were holed up at home during the pandemic, Murphy believed Americans became more polarized against each other by watching mainstream media outlets like Fox News and CNN. He was ready to pack up when he happened into a conversation with a friend about solving local issues. He realized that “we have to get people back out interacting with each other because once people interact with each other… we realize we have a lot more in common than we've been led to believe.”

So Murphy and his wife began planning community cleanup events that began to gain traction and cumulated in events with music, games, food and political guests like Republicans Semi Bird, a gubernatorial candidate, and 26th District Representative Michelle Caldier. Soon, Murphy’s events were being hosted by the Kitsap County Republican Party and he had begun to help the organization with community outreach in return.

Murphy, a Navy veteran of almost three years and independent insurance broker, has served as the vice chair of the Kitsap County Republican Party since last Fall and now he’s “running for county commissioner to see where we can't serve the county anymore,” he said.

A dedication to community service similarly drove Root’s crossover into the political realm. Growing up poor in South Kitsap, Root began volunteering at age 18 as a resident firefighter “to help people” and it “lit a candle” for him. Wanting to serve his country in a bigger way, Root later joined the Marines and became a decorated veteran.

While serving overseas, Root was struck seeing the “rawest levels of humanity” and it “made [him] more human,” he said. On deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, Root watched people in embattled regions build governments from the bottom up and saw people, once fearful, build trust with one another. He came to realize that, at base, “people just want to live safe, secure lives… they want a roof over their head, they want food in their refrigerator, they want the best for their children.”

After Root retired from the military and started his business providing worldwide Special Operations consultation and pre-deployment evaluations, he began considering service in the local government, asking “how are we going to change things if we want things changed… or improve our society? It goes back to my years in the Marine Corps. If you see something wrong, you need to do everything you can to fix it.”

Though the two candidates share a dedication to service, a political party and similar goal, they “might disagree just (whether) do we go there by taking point A, B, C, or do we go B, A, C,” Murphy said.

Different routes on core county issues

In the big picture, Kitsap County voters want a thriving community, reliable ferry transportation, safe roads where traffic is minimal, increased neighborhood safety, support for local businesses, opportunities out of homelessness and a food in their belly, Root said.

Permitting remains the number one issue though, Murphy said, and the government needs to get out of the way. Murphy wants to simplify permitting regulations and eliminate permits that exist “just to generate income at the DCD” to minimize delays in the process that he says drag down housing stock, obstruct small businesses from generating sales tax revenue and prevent impoverished people from building their own homes like generations past. The people should tell the government what they are “permitted” to do, not the other way around, he said.

Also in the interest of creating more housing stock, Root considers freezing permitting regulations to address the backlog and wants to take an internal look at the Department of Community Development to assess whether permitting delays are “a process issue? Is it a throughput issue? Is it a leadership issue?,” he said. “That's something I'll have to put my business cap on when I get in there and start looking at that stuff.”

When it comes to transportation issues, namely significant traffic in the Gorst corridor, Root looks to the waterways to alleviate pressure but points out that ferry service issues have forced people onto the road. Murphy, meanwhile, suggests turning to Navy-installed and secured park and rides at Otto Jarstad Park in Gorst or in Belfair to provide alternative transport for military and PSNS workers, allowing Mason County to absorb projected growth in Kitsap and potentially expanding military operations.

As the county confronts issues of homelessness, crime and drug use, Murphy wants to build a more robust pipeline for Kitsap to secure more mental health workers instead of losing them to areas like Seattle. Scouting students interested in mental health work and offering tuition reimbursement for college education and revisiting compensation could help the county hire and retain these crucial workers, he said.

For Root, it’s all about “mutual support.” Reducing crime, fixing the transportation system commuters rely on, making roads safer, ensuring the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office has the "resources they need” and building out housing all reinforce each other.

A write-in attempts to recover a 'fumble'

The path toward a Republican county commissioners is likely with two on the general election ballot, but Democrats haven’t given up. Darryl Riley announced his candidacy as a write-in candidate following the primary when three Democrats split the party's vote. He said he was approached by mentors and other Kitsap Democrats who implored him to run.

Riley is an entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of the Up From Slavery Initiative, a nonprofit designed to combat systemic racism and end the school-to-prison pipeline by offering programming that teaches schools, law enforcement and other institutions about Black culture and history. Riley undertook a paradigm shift after he was convicted of drug and gun crimes and an assault for which he was released in 2010 after serving 48 months in jail.

Though he had run for Bremerton City Council in 2018, Riley initially thought the prospect of running for county commissioner was “too lofty of a goal” because of “my trauma from my past,” he said. “I try to be considered ‘one of the guys,’ keep my head down, do the work.”

But when community leaders that he looked up to urged him to run, it became a point of inflection. He realized he should look at himself in the same way. So, Riley decided to run and pick up the ball after Democrats had dropped it, in his assessment.

“This community is practically 70 percent Democrat leaning and they fumble the ball and miscalculated and ran three Democrats in the primary,” Riley said. “So what are you going to do, just give it away? You're going to try to recover the fumble.”

Riley has a playbook, running on core issues like increasing affordable housing options, improving public transportation and supporting small businesses to bolster economic development. He is also committed to talking with Kitsap citizens about local issues and considers them the “subject matter experts.”

“I provide access, that's what I would bring to the commissioner's office. If I'm in the room, everybody's in the room,” he said. “And what I bring is a direct connection to the streets and to the community. I got friends that hang out in front of 7-11, but I also got friends in City Hall. I also got friends in the county. I also got friends in the jailhouse.”

Only voters living in district 2, which covers South Kitsap and south Bremerton, vote for the commissioner’s seat during the primary, but the whole county will vote for the position in the general election. Because the county votes majority Democrat, Riley believes he’s got the numbers to win.

But as a write-in candidate, Riley knows his political race will also be a race to educate voters. They have to know that the whole county votes in the general election, which race to write his name in, and how to spell it.

“The only two R's in the race that you should be voting for should be in ‘Darryl,’” Riley said.

Campaigning key is community interface

Accessibility to the public remains at the core of each candidate’s campaign as election day nears and Kitsap voters begin to see ballots arrive in their mailboxes.

Murphy wants to “continue talking to the community every chance we get all the way through this” and has even put his personal cell phone number on his campaign cards and said he will continue to have the same number while in office to maintain an open line to his community.

“People don't trust in the government,” Root said. “A lot of stuff, maybe there's not much we can do about, but there's a lot of stuff we can. Having a cup of coffee with somebody, having a small town hall around a table, listening to people if there's a local issue that people want to talk about,” are some of the ways that trust gets rebuilt.

Ballots will be mailed out to voters by October 18 and voters must register or update their addresses online by October 28. General Election day is November 5.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Republicans face off in Kitsap County Commissioner District 2 election