The View From Here

I got a closer look at a few of our candidates for city council this week. What an unpleasant and demoralizing experience it was.
For the past few months, The Reporter has been running a regular series of Q and A sessions with the candidates in both Issaquah and Sammamish. It was my idea at the beginning of the election season that this would be a clear and precise way to uncover what sort of councilors these people would make,  not to mention what sort of people these councilors would make.
It was a chance to hear their thoughts on some of the issues facing the cities and hopefully urge the candidates to state their positions on matters vital to its residents.
For our last session before the election, I wanted to bring the candidates out of their comfort zones a little – the questions to that point had, on the whole, elicited fairly dry, noncommittal, burea-speak responses – and I hoped to get closer to the core of the candidates as citizens and as humans, and present that to my readers.
So I asked them their thoughts on Referendum 71, and whether or not lesbian and gay couples and seniors in committed relationships should have the same rights and protections as heterosexual couples.
I expected a reaction. What I didn’t expect was indignation and outrage.
Several candidates e-mailed me back to say that the rights of gay and lesbian couples had nothing to do with their city. They clearly expressed the idea that the residents of Sammamish and Issaquah who believe their rights as humans are violated by any laws denying them the same protections and privileges as heterosexual couples are nothing to do with them.
Believe it or not folks, there are gay and lesbian people in Sammamish too, and they vote, and I am sure they would be interested to know what you think of this critical piece of legislation.
Referendum 71 is a statewide vote to keep the domestic partnership law that provides legal protections for lesbian and gay couples and seniors who are in committed relationships – and it is being decided by exactly the same people these candidates are appealing to for votes, here on the Eastside.
The reactions to this question varied, from “you’ve got to be joking, I’m not answering this,” to the several brief, dismissive, petulant answers you will see on page 2 of this coming edition.
I was hugely disappointed that these candidates were so eager to shirk the challenge of answering a difficult and important question that would do much to paint a clearer picture of themselves as people and citizens.
I had hoped their responses would do a lot to allow us to better understand them as real people, not just managers, accountants, or real estate agents.
As I asked Mayor and candidate Don Gerend, whose uninformative answer was about the worst of the lot, if in your 10 years as a councilor, Mayor, and elected leader of this community, no journalist has ever asked you a question that requires you to examine your personal values and morals, well, what exactly has been going on?
I was astonished that several candidates felt it so outrageous that a newspaper editor would want to know their personal feelings on an issue that is massively important to some percentage of their constituents, and, at the very least, is an important one for the future direction of the state and all its residents.
Councilors make decisions every week that demand exploration of their morals and values, not just their ability to understand property law.
For example, in Sammamish, the development of the Town Center and the city will include making decisions on the provision of social services, access to medical care for the under-insured, counseling, support services, crisis support, drug and alcohol abuse programs.
The SMP process was a constant enquiry of their environmental and conservation values. So is the fiery debate at Beaver Lake Park.
In Issaquah, the city is grappling with the importance of providing a Family Resource Center for low income families.
All of these matters, which have, or will, come before council will all be influenced by the morals and personal values of the councilors.
I, for one, am very interested to know what sort of people they are, and I am striving to present that to readers also.
I told the candidates I did not believe for one minute those who argued that statements about family and personal values aren’t a part of a campaign, when all too often they are accompanied by wives/husbands/children at public events, and their mailouts includes photos of them with their families.
Perhaps it is a generational thing, but I firmly believe the morals and values of candidates has everything to do with how they might govern at a local level, at any level.
As councilors regularly remind us, one third of the population of Sammamish is under the age of 18. By examining the importance with which they considered their answers on page 2, it is clear which candidates represent a younger generation increasingly concerned with human rights issues such as Referendum 71, and which are content to be ignorant of the values needed to lead these growing cities into the future.