OLYMPIA — Incumbent Steve Tharinger outpaced Terry Roberts in a race for a 24th Legislative District state representative seat, according to initial results Tuesday night.
Tharinger, D-Port Townsend, had about 57 percent of the vote to Roberts’ 43 percent.
Tharinger had 74 percent of the vote in Jefferson County, 53.8 percent in Clallam County and 46.79 percent in Grays Harbor County. Roberts collected about 26 percent of the vote in Jefferson County, about 42 percent in Clallam County and about 53 percent in Grays Harbor County.
Tharinger said that he is happy with the outcomes for the legislative district, including Mike Chapman being elected to the Senate and Adam Bernbaum taking over Chapman’s vacant House seat.
“I was glad to see that the initiatives didn’t do well,” Tharinger said. “I think it’s important that the climate commitment policy was supported by the voters as was the long-term care program, and I think voters also realize the importance of having the capital gains tax to address the regressivity in our tax structure, so that was all pretty good news for Washington and for the 24th district.”
Roberts, R-Quilcene, said while the current count is not what he had hoped for, he is still hopeful that uncounted ballots can lead to a victory.
“Whenever you’re running against an incumbent, you have an enormous amount of history there, good and bad,” he said. “You have lots of name recognition, so overcoming that takes lots of resources.”
Roberts said that the “little things here and there” that Tharinger has done in his tenure have carried a lot of weight in the district.
Tharinger, who has served in the district since 2011 previously served three terms as a Clallam County Commissioner, said he hopes to maintain his role as the chair of the House Capital Budget Committee as well as his membership on the House Health Care & Wellness Committee. Those roles position him well to advocate for the district, he said.
“The revenues for the operating budget are kind of in the red,” Tharinger said. “Transportation budget also has some challenges. I think the capital budget, which I’m more involved in, we should be OK, but things just aren’t going to be as robust as they’ve been over the last four to six years. Quite a bit of federal money came into the state because of COVID and the Infrastructure Act, and we’ve been able to distribute that across the district. Those monies have been appropriated, so we’re kind of back to the way things were before that happened.”
Roberts said he thinks the district is one that could support a Republican candidate.
“When we look at the turnout, we’re gonna see that there were a lot of Republican voters that did not vote,” he said. “They’re registered, we’ve identified them as Republican for the most part, and they just didn’t fill out a ballot.
Tharinger said he will continue his efforts on salmon recovery.
“That’s important for us up here on the Peninsula. We have some of the most productive streams and best habitat, so we want to enhance that and maintain that,” he said. “Obviously fishing, both commercial and recreational, is an important sector of the economy up here.”
Tharinger said he sees a need to look at better ways to invest in culvert projects with the remaining funds.
“On forestry, the Peninsula is one of the best places on the planet to grow trees,” he said. “It’s not as destructive to harvest trees here, because they will grow back. I think there’s impacts both economically, and from the economic impacts, I would argue there are psychological impacts when we lose that sector of our economy. There’s always a lot of discussion about the junior taxing districts and how to make them whole.”
If harvesting doesn’t happen, Tharinger said people will come after the capital budget, which is borrowed money.
“I think finding that balance is always important,” he said.
Roberts said he heard a lot of constituent support for reducing taxing. He believes in reducing taxing across the board, not just regressive taxing and said that reduced taxes would be good for the economy. Roberts said that whenever he brought up the idea of making government more efficient with his opponent, it seemed to fall on deaf ears.
________
Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman @sequimgazette.com.
Terry Roberts.
