I actively attended the recent election candidate debates at Centralia College, and I wanted to recognize the excellent job The Chronicle as the sponsor did overall. I was able to ask hard and direct questions of most of the candidates, and the resulting answers were stunning to say the least.
The Democratic Party candidates were woefully unprepared to include the former U.S. Attorney Nick Brown, candidate for attorney general, who admitted giving up on arresting fentanyl traffickers. Commissioner candidate Damian Bean was no exception. He is simply an empty suit.
Mr. Bean, the commissioner candidate for District 1, was unprepared to answer simple questions concerning every aspect of the job he is seeking. Watching him, I was astonished that the Lewis County Democratic Party was this incompetent in selecting and preparing him.
I asked him directly what qualifications he had to prepare himself to manage a large county with a $37 million budget besides being in the Boy Scouts. His answer to that question was that the Boy Scouts had given him leadership skills. He was not even an Eagle Scout. The rest of his answer was a rambling list of personal projects he participated in, all of which slip my mind in their applicability.
He is simply an empty suit propped up as a Trojan Horse in Lewis County for the failed Democratic policies coming out of Olympia.
Sean Swope, on the other hand, has a proven conservative track record as our successful county commissioner who has led by example and delivered results for the people who elected him. He has earned a second term.
The choice is clear, a Boy Scout or a proven dynamic leader who gets results.
Mitch Townsend
Silver Creek
