While comfortably prevailing in local elections, maintaining Lewis County’s reputation as the reddest county in Washington west of the Cascades, the Lewis County Republican Party has seen an array of internal divisions in recent years, squabbles that have often bled out into the public and in part led to the unsuccessful challenge of an incumbent county commissioner in the November election.
Frustrated with the turmoil, a group of local conservatives broke away from the party last summer, establishing the Conservative Coalition of Lewis County.
Mitchel Townsend, the new chair of the Lewis County Republicans, said he believes the split arose in part out of “dysfunctional leadership.”
“So I decided at that point to start to lean in,” Townsend said. “Redesigned the website a couple of different times, and started to work on the committees, the platform committee, bylaws committee, social media committee, and started to leverage some of my expertise in education to try and start to build a foundation to modernize and professionalize the party.”
Earlier this month, Lewis County precinct committee officers tapped Townsend, a longtime educator at Centralia College, to serve a two-year term as the new chair of the party, a group he said he believes must be modernized in order to maintain its success.
“I think it’s done a fairly good job traditionally, but I also think that it’s antiquated in its data collection, its outreach, its canvassing, its fundraising,” Townsend said. “I could just go down a whole list of things I think could benefit from modernization … all of the things that the Democratic party excels at that we haven’t been able to build into our structures to date.”
The work, he said, is important. Without improvements to the party’s structure, Townsend believes Lewis County, a longtime stronghold for Republicans, could turn blue in the next five to 10 years.
“We have more and more Democrats that are moving into Lewis County demographically,” Townsend said. “And if we don’t get our act together, and start to unite and modernize and professionalize our party, then eventually, in my opinion, we’re just going to be swept away into the dustpan of history. Based on demographics alone.”
Townsend pointed to Democrat Damian Bean’s unsuccessful campaign against Lewis County Commissioner Sean Swope this year as a “canary in the coal mine.”
“We’re looking at demographically, a lot of people that are moving in from out of Lewis County, we’re looking at a lot of people that are leaving Lewis County because of the lack of economic opportunity and family wage jobs,” Townsend said. “And so if we’re not creating the structures to educate people on why Lewis County and its history is worth saving and augmenting and improving upon, then those other political structures are going to sweep it away.”
Townsend’s roots in Lewis County date back more than three decades. He resides in the Silver Creek area.
Townsend said he holds a master's degree in education and computers from Pepperdine University, a bachelor's degree in European history from the University of Puget Sound, and a master’s degree from the Gonzaga School of Professional Studies and Organizational Leadership. Townsend said he also nearly completed a doctorate from the University of Calgary, finishing the coursework before a lack of federal loan funding prevented him from completing his final paper.
Townsend served for more than a decade in the U.S. Army.
When describing his Republican viewpoint, Townsend pointed to his European history degree and his military career.
“I look at the constitution of the United States — and I’ve taught that at the college as well, constitutional democracy — I look at that as a model for coexistence,” Townsend said.
Townsend became involved in Lewis County politics while sitting on budget advisory panels, an experience he said showed him the “significant amount of dysfunction as far as county government, specifically in budgeting.”
Following the death of former Lewis County Commissioner Gary Stamper in 2021, Townsend eyed his seat on the board, though he “didn’t make the cut” within the county party.
“He was a mentor of mine,” Townsend said of Stamper. “So I wanted to carry his legacy forward.”
As his nomination fell, Townsend decided to build his profile in the party “so that they would take my future candidacies seriously.”
Townsend ran unopposed for a seat on the Mossyrock School Board in 2023, earning 769 votes and garnering 96.12% of the vote. As for a higher office in the future, Townsend said he “hasn’t specifically decided.”
In his new role, Townsend wants to “create a model of successful constitutionally-based conservative governance in Lewis County,” which could be “modularized and exported to other counties in Washington state,” according to a copy of a plan provided by Townsend.
To achieve this, Townsend called for a five-step plan that includes “unity, collaboration, professionalism, integration and accountability.”
In the county GOP chairman role, Townsend said he wants to “open the door” for reconciliation, including with members of the Conservative Coalition and other groups that have moved away from Republican politics in recent years.
“The first thing you do is reunite the groups that are already Republican into one unified organization,” Townsend said.
The second step, he said, is educational outreach, which he said includes teaching “young people” about the importance of America’s history, American exceptionalism and patriotism.
“As a political party, this is our foundation, these are our principles, this is what we believe in,” Townsend said. “And so moving away from ugly partisanship is part of that. And how do we do that? It’s education.”
