Democrat Marine sets sight on Vick’s seat

Washington State Rep. Brandon Vick, R-Felida, has a challenger in a U.S. Marines Major and supply chain consultant as Democrat Chris Thobaben of Salmon Creek will square off with the incumbent come November.

While candidates for government seats featuring three or more in the running are now in the last legs of campaigning before the August 7 primary, those with only two seeking election have their eyes set three months down the line. That includes the race for Legislative District 18 Position 1, featuring Vick and Thobaben. Vick was first elected to the position in 2012.

In 2016, Vick was re-election with 63.3 percent of the vote. His opponent was Democrat Justin Oberg, who was only 23 when he challenged the incumbent. 

Thobaben, who served 8 years active duty, including two deployments to Iraq, before transferring to the reserves, is a recent transplant to Clark County. He moved here with his wife and four children in 2016. The decision to run came after he was asked to help rewrite the state Democratic party’s platform, during which he saw some clear issues with what was already there. 

Thobaben said he was “dismayed, honestly, as to the antiquated and undeveloped concepts” that the party had as policy points. He said the platform had become too broad, commenting that “everything was becoming important, but subsequently nothing was.” 

Thobaben was contacted by the state Democratic party the Friday before filing week about the possibility to running, given that Vick was likely to be unchallenged. 

Thobaben said that District 18 hasn’t had a vision on making Washington the best state for allowing people, businesses and the economy to thrive. He gave some examples of past legislative missteps such as the current contention between school district teachers and district administration on compensation following the supposed solving of the McCleary decision. 

“It was a failure of our legislature to understand how education finance works,” Thobaben said. 

Thobaben also noted that Vick voted for a bill this past session that would shield certain records of state legislators from public requests.

“Nobody should be happy about that,” he said. “They are a public servant. They are not there to make a salary by making some arbitrary votes. They serve us.”

If Vick were the pro-business candidate, Thobaben would be pro-labor, as he noted several endorsements from unions he has received. He related that stance to one of his key policy points — affordable access to healthcare.

“No injury or illness in the family should be the difference between surviving and crisis,” Thobaben said. He added that the amount of money someone makes should not determine what quality of care they are able to receive.

He said businesses have a vested interest in supporting their employees, noting that a chief cause of turnover was workers not being able to live with stability given their current payment and benefits.

“I think that labor and industry can really work together to achieve that end,” Thobaben said about getting that stability. “Where people are more stable or people are more productive, everybody wins.”

Another point of focus for his campaign is energy, given that the state Democratic platform indicated that climate change should be treated as a crisis. The process of moving away from fossil fuels, he said, needs to be pragmatic. The National Audubon Society joining the Carbon Capture Coalition as part of that strategy is an example he offered. 

“They didn’t do it because they love coal and natural gas,” Thobaben said, adding that allying themselves with the technology and its proponents was better than nothing in addressing the need to slow and eventually halt manmade climate change.

Outside of fossil fuel mitigation, Thobaben mentioned that Washington has an energy production portfolio of geothermal, wind, hydropower, tidal power on the coast and nuclear power.

Thobaben touched on some of the consternation regarding nuclear energy, especially with recent issues at the Hanford Site regarding leaks. He said that fissile material refined for energy production was only at 3 percent enrichment while the type of refinement going on at Hanford was closer to 97 percent.

“We were refining things to kill people, in a very literal sense, in a race. Environment, safety, everything went out the window because we had to win the Cold War,” Thobaben said of Hanford. He added that U.S. infrastructure and regulations are aging.

“We are operating off of nuclear policies established in the ‘50s and ‘60s with technology from the ‘70s,” Thobaben said. The current nuclear plants in the country are generations behind cutting-edge, he explained, adding that investment into the latest technology could allow for cheaper energy and the jobs generating it would need to run.

“If we can reduce our already low energy costs even further, now we can pay our people more because businesses are already offsetting some of their costs for energy,” Thobaben said. 

Thobaben also touched on the impacts hydropower generation has on the region’s iconic salmon and steelhead population, adding that with a diverse energy portfolio those impacts could be reduced by lessening the need for dam-generated power.

Thobaben also talked about transportation, specifically the Interstate 5 corridor.

“We have to replace the I-5 bridge,” He said. The fact that a lift bridge could halt traffic on the interstate corridor that connects California to Canada, the nation’s second-largest trading partner, was “an asinine concept” to him.

On top of traffic issues, Thobaben also touched on the safety issues with the bridge. 

“It’s not if, but when we have the next earthquake,” Thobaben said. “If that bridge is lost in that earthquake, not to mention any loss of life that’s on the bridge at the time, that is the corridor to get disaster relief services.”

Thobaben said replacing the I-5 bridge was paramount, with the possibility of another crossing coming after, be it a tunnel or an additional bridge. 

Thobaben said that his experience looking at the supply chain side of small business would allow him to write policy for the benefit of that part of the economy.

“If you understand small business processes (and) what they depend on … then you can write better policies from the get-go,” he said. 

Though Thobaben is running as a Democrat, he said that much of his platform transcended party lines and he’ll need help from the right. 

“I will not win this race without Republicans who recognize that our economy, our veterans, our community, our health care are Republican ideals that they have just lost focus on,” he said.