On a torn-out page from a legal pad, Dave Germain, president of the Conservative Coalition of Lewis County, drew a horizontal line.
America’s two party system, as he sees it, isn’t a set of two boxes, but a spectrum. A line.
Two inches from either end, he marks a tally. From there to the ends of the page, he said, are the far-left and the far-right.
The coalition’s Vice President Sherri Murphy piped in, “Both of which are far gone.”
Germain wagers those groups make up around 20% of political views in the United States. Naturally, then, the other 80% land somewhere in between. The group he founded in January, he said, is for those people.
Last Tuesday, under sunshine in Centralia’s Pine Street Plaza, three members of the Conservative Coalition of Lewis County met with The Chronicle: Germain, Murphy and at-large board member Frank Corbin.
After a few months of focus on bylaws and the group’s organization, they want to start welcoming politicians, citizens and anyone else to their meetings on the fourth Monday of each month at the Chehalis Eagles building. Dinner starts at 6 p.m.
Last month, the group hosted Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, who spoke “about unity” to around 45 attendees, the board members said.
For the upcoming July 24 meeting, the group is holding a picnic at Lintott Alexander Park in Chehalis. For attendees over the age of 90 or under the age of 3, the picnic is free. Otherwise, it costs $5 to attend. It’s a potluck, and visitors with last names starting with letters A to H are asked to bring a main dish, while those from letters I to Z are asked to bring sides.
Anyone is welcome to bring dessert.
The board has seven members. The others are the Lewis County Republican Party’s former state committeewoman Ruth Peterson, former secretary Sharra Finley, former treasurer Jeanne Hall and a current Chehalis School Board candidate, Anthony Mixer.
Each are conservative, which the three interviewees last Tuesday defined broadly as being largely against taxes and big government, being at least morally against abortion, though some are against it legally, too, and being “constitutional.”
One failed attempt to oust the current chairman and a contentious election later, the new group’s members don’t feel welcome at Lewis County Republican Party meetings. Corbin, Germain and Murphy felt the party wasn’t following “Reagan’s 11th Commandment,” which was to never speak ill of other Republicans.
It wasn’t policy differences that caused the wedge, Murphy said, but a “definite split in the style of leadership that we’re seeing. And decorum.”
Germain added, “You ever see the movie Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze? ‘Just be nice.’ He tells his bouncers, ‘Just be nice.’ … I don’t like the acrimony, somebody yelling at somebody, somebody accusing somebody of something, somebody throwing something at somebody else, the name calling, all that kind of stuff.”
At some scale, what’s happening in Lewis County has been happening in the Republican party throughout the United States for years, Corbin said.
Locally, there was U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who joined just nine other House Republicans to vote in favor of impeaching Donald Trump after Jan. 6, 2021. Some labeled her a “RINO,” conservative slang for “Republican in name only.”
Late last year, Joe Kent, a Republican from Yacolt, nearly took her place; he lost in the November election by less than one full percent. A former CIA operative, Gold-Star husband and Green Beret, Kent is self-proclaimed “anti-establishment” and, drawing from personal experience, is largely against foreign military intervention by the United States, which won him favor from at least a handful of previously blue voters.
Corbin, a longtime precinct committee officer in Lewis County, though, disagreed with Kent’s stance on the war in Ukraine. Corbin was more intrigued by Heidi St. John, another Republican candidate. St. John’s advertisements alleged that Kent wasn’t Republican enough, either, despite him saying he doesn’t mind being called “far-right.”
Kent, who cited some common ground with anti-establishment politicians of all kinds including Bernie Sanders once, was called “Portland Joe the Bernie Bro.”
The election became all about “who is the most Republican?” Murphy said. Ultimately, the race was won by Democratic candidate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Murphy noted, adding the division in the party could be its downfall. Perhaps it already is.
During the 2022 election cycle, Murphy’s husband Tracy was running as a Republican for Lewis County Sheriff. According to the campaign at the time, local party leaders had called him a “slimy Democrat.”
When asked via letter to apologize, Brandon Svenson, chair of the Lewis County Republican Party, crumpled up the letter and tossed it at the candidate.
Svenson, in an interview Monday morning, likewise said the party’s divide was reflective of a nationwide issue.
“Oddly enough, most of those people (who now make up the Conservative Coalition of Lewis County) are the ones who brought me into the Republican party in the first place,” Svenson said. “I don’t want to discount those people.”
Where the new group’s board members see unity, however, Svenson sees concession. He called the new Conservative Coalition “third party-ish.”
He wrote the following in a text to a reporter: “The retreat of this small group of moderates from the the Lewis County Republican Party reflects the epitome of the weakness, lack of conviction and conservative values that lead to our new leadership, large increase in Precinct Committee Officers and membership, as well as record fundraising.”
The chairman mentioned that Republicans are traditionally anti-abortion. One previous party executive board member urged that Republicans in the state of Washington would never “win” on the issue of abortion, therefore, the party should drop it in order to preserve chances at advancement, Svenson recalled.
Svenson said the issue, for him, is one of faith. He would rather lose elections than back down, he said.
“There’s a verse in Revelations that says, ‘You are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm and I will spit you out of my mouth,’” Svenson said, later adding, “I’m not gonna yield. Having said that, the Conservative Coalition of Lewis County, quite frankly, … they’re lukewarm, or Romney-type Republicans.”
Agreeable people, he said, “get taken advantage of.”
Years ago, Svenson showed up to a Lewis County Commissioner meeting with a “RINO” sign, presumably aimed at Commissioner Lindsey Pollock, who the party recently censured for her criticism of its leaders.
In early June of this year, a neo-Nazi group protested a Lewis County Pride event. The same day — but, according to Svenson, in a completely unaffiliated action — leaders of the Lewis County Republican Party set up a booth in downtown Chehalis during a drag show to get signatures on a petition against recent legislation they (and Pollock) have criticized as taking away parents’ rights. The legislation requires that shelters keep information about youth runaways confidential if kids are seeking gender-affirming care.
Pollock said the party leaders were making “common cause” with the neo-Nazi groups, which culminated in 30 precinct committee officers voting unanimously to censure her. The move means they won’t support her if she runs for re-election, according to the party’s statement.
“Your paper said, right up front, ‘a unanimous vote’ to censure Lindsey Pollock, 30 to nothing. That meant they had 30 people, 30 voting members,” Germain said. “So, where’d the rest of them go? Got me, I don’t know. But they’re welcome in our house.”
Not all are filled positions, but there are 95 Republican precinct committee officer positions in Lewis County, and 2022 saw a record turnout with more than 50 candidates filing, according to previous reporting by The Chronicle.
All three of the Conservative Coalition of Lewis County’s board members interviewed last Tuesday said it wasn’t their goal to splinter off from Lewis County Republicans, but to welcome a diversity of opinions. They’re considering filing as a political action committee, commonly called a “PAC.”
Going forward, the group intends to bring in more speakers and to provide support, either in resources or money, for candidates. Members have to pay a fee and be sponsored by an existing member of the group. Everyone, regardless of political beliefs, is welcome to attend meetings.
Asked if the two groups could coexist and support one another, Svenson seemed doubtful.
According to Murphy, though, the end goal is to “support” the Lewis County Republican Party, or, at least, Lewis County’s Republican voters and candidates.
“For the first time in my adult life of being a very loyal and active Republican, I have felt, in Lewis County in the last couple years, I’ve felt without a home,” Corbin said, later adding, “(The coalition) can’t replace the Republican Party, but we can do Republican things. We can still work to get conservatives elected. … What’s happening in the nation is brewing here in Lewis County. And if we don’t do something to address that, then we are risking losing.”
