Dye, Lathim offer similar perspectives in state House race

The choice in the 9th Legislative District election race between veteran politicians Mary Dye and Richard Lathim largely boils down to their resumes.

Both candidates are Republicans. Both are involved with their family farms. Both also agree on many issues important to Mid-Columbia voters, from state transportation funding to teacher strikes to local oversight of police shooting investigations.

Lathim served 28 years as Franklin County’s sheriff before losing narrowly to Jim Raymond in 2014. He says his experience bargaining with several unions and dealing with annual audits will serve him well in Olympia.

It’s important for the western side of the district to be represented, Lathim said. Adams and Franklin counties are largely Hispanic, with economies that depend on crops like wine grapes and tree fruit. The district also includes all of Asotin, Garfield, and Whitman counties as well as parts of Spokane County.

“Through my 37 years working in this area in law enforcement, I am aware of the vast differences and have good understanding of some of the cultural challenges, as well,” Lathim said. “The job of a representative is to represent all the people of a district.”

Franklin County is the only one of the state’s 25 largest counties that does not have a state legislator reside there.

Dye, of Pomeroy in Garfield County, was appointed to the seat in May and must defend it in the Nov. 3 election.

She has been a Republican official for years, starting at the precinct committee officer level and working her way up to delegate to the national convention. She helped George Nethercutt in his victory over then-House Speaker Tom Foley in 1994.

She also has been a longtime advocate for agriculture, she said. She helped create a work group that crafted a white paper that led to the “freedom to farm” provisions in the 1996 farm bill that was designed to move farmers away from direct subsidies toward subsidized insurance for catastrophic events.

She later became spokeswoman for the Save our Dams campaign, appearing on national television programs and helping organize then-President George W. Bush’s 2003 visit to Ice Harbor Dam.

Dye also wrote the energy, natural resources and agriculture policy for the 2012 national Republican platform, calling for an “all of the above” energy plan, she said.

But she denied that she votes the party line. It was great to be a part of the Republican caucus with other members who have honed their views over the years, she said.

“I make my decisions based on the principles that I believe in,” she said. “I do believe that individuals can make better decisions than a government that’s removed from them ... I think that I represent our district well, because this is the general sentiment of our district. We’re very self-reliant and we don’t want a lot more taxation.”

Transportation package

Both candidates criticized the approval of a $16 billion statewide transportation package this year.

Dye, who voted against it, wants something that is fiscally sustainable, saying the current package will require the state to borrow against its children’s future.

“The problem with the transportation package was that it was put together with a long-term bond, so it was borrowed against a gas tax increase, and they do the projects later,” Dye said.

“We’ve seen that played out a couple of times in the past,” she said. “When you weigh in the inflation factor on these projects, a lot of our projects in Eastern Washington get swept away. I didn’t want that to happen to our projects. I want to protect our projects.”

Dye will work to make sure the state delivers money for the Lewis Street overpass in Pasco and other area projects, particularly with pressure to give up money for education, she said.

Lathim is primarily concerned about gas taxes increasing, particularly in the vast, rural 9th District, which stretches from Othello to the southeastern corner of the state, he said. The first phase of a two-year, $11.9-cents-per-gallon tax hike went into effect in August.

“You get to these small communities, where most of them are low-income earners, and they’re having to drive pretty substantial distances to work, and then you start talking about increasing the cost of gas,” Lathim said.

“Fortunately, gas prices have gone down since the gas tax passed, but they’re not going to stay down forever,” he added.

Teacher strikes

Neither Lathim nor Dye think the Legislature should put more teeth into the law prohibiting teacher strikes.

“It’s unfortunate when the strikes interfere with the kids’ education, but it is a local issue,” Lathim said.

A strike in Pasco caused a two-week delay this year in the start of school, to Sept. 15. A Franklin County judge ordered the Pasco Association of Educators to pay an $8,000 fine on Sept. 11, with $2,000 more in penalties possible for each day the strike continued.

Lathim does not want to see tougher penalties on teachers who go on strike, unless it is a particularly long stoppage, saying strikes are part of the freedoms Americans enjoy.

“I’m sure that the Pasco School District should have gone to court sooner to get that injunction and, maybe, press harder if they wanted to alleviate the strike going for almost two weeks,” Lathim said. “It was resolved in two weeks, and that’s not over-burdensome on the school district.”

Dye said more parents should participate in school board activities, and make clear that it is their kids being impacted, rather than the union.

“I don’t think teachers should bear the brunt of their union organization,” Dye said. “I think that the teachers are advocating for things that they’re being told to so that they can speak in concert with their union.”

“I don’t think their union is serving them well right now,” she added. “I think their union is speaking out of turn, and I think it’s time for parents and communities to step up and show up.”

Both candidates would like to see negotiations between school districts and teachers unions open to the public.

Police shootings

Both Dye and Lathim want to continue to see local authorities investigate and prosecute shootings by police officers, rather than state or federal officials.

The Latino Civic Alliance plans to ask the Legislature to move such authority to the state after Franklin County Prosecutor Shawn Sant decided not to prosecute the three officers who killed Antonio Zambrano-Montes earlier this year.

“I trust the local jurisdiction to be fair,” Dye said. “But I also think that there needs to be some facilitating of relationship building — whether that’s through leadership or whether that’s through reaching out into the community.”

The state association of sheriffs and police chiefs started addressing the issue years ago, Lathim said. They developed the idea of special investigative units for police shootings, like the local group that investigated the Zambrano-Montes case.

“That’s a model that we were encouraging every region in the state to develop, and the state patrol is behind that,” he said.

Lathim would also like to see better training for police leaders.

“I think that what happened in Ferguson, if that police chief had been better trained to deal with the public and give some information out, I think things might have been a whole lot different with how they turned out,” Lathim said.

“But they were just quiet and let the public kind of put together what they thought were the facts,” he said. “And then, they didn’t turn out to be the facts.”

Dye leads in fundraising

Franklin County ballots will be mailed Oct. 13.

The winner will serve the final year of the two-year term of former Rep. Susan Fagan, who resigned earlier this year. The job pays $45,474 per year.

Dye easily finished first in the three-person August primary with 9,132 votes, or 48 percent. Lathim finished with 4,899 votes, needing a machine recount to confirm his second-place finish over Democrat Kenneth Caylor, a former Othello city councilman.

Dye is also ahead in fundraising, bringing in $33,401 and spending $14,594, according to the most recent filing with the state Public Disclosure Commission. She received donations from many business groups and legislators, including Reps. Larry Haler, R-Richland, and Maureen Walsh, R-College Place.

Lathim has raised $12,547 and spent $9,692. He received $1,900 of that from the Law Enforcement Administrators of Washington.

Lathim also got a donation from Tekoa City Councilman Ted Blaszak, who has opposed efforts to close part of the John Wayne Heritage Trail.

For more election stories, go to tricityherald.com/election.

This story was originally published October 10, 2015 at 9:43 PM with the headline "Dye, Lathim offer similar perspectives in state House race."