News

Five to Four

by Josh Feit

What was Washington State Republican Party chair Chris Vance afraid of? Vance and the party's executive board voted on May 15 to prohibit former King County Republican chair Reed Davis from speaking at this week's Republican convention. I wanted to know why Vance was treating Davis like the FCC treats Howard Stern, so I pressed Record and let the banned candidate give his speech. (As we went to press, Republicans--trying to stave off bad publicity--were hoping to cut a deal so Davis could give an edited version of his remarks at the convention. But I got the NC-17 version.) "This is the most expensive Congress since Lyndon Johnson," Davis, who's running in the Republican primary against U.S. Representative George Nethercutt for the chance to take on Patty Murray, began, comparing Bush's Republican Congress to the spendy days of Democrat LBJ's Great Society.

Vance claims he's not picking on Davis. He says the candidate simply refused to sign a standard Republican pledge to direct animus at Dems rather than Republicans. Davis' refusal (competing R's in other districts have signed the pledge) made Davis ineligible to speak at the convention.

Davis' purgatory isn't that simple, though. The state Republicans endorsed Nethercutt last September--a rare move in a primary--as a ploy to get the White House's guns to lock and load for Nethercutt early. Davis, a Seattle Pacific University prof who looks like Jay Leno and calls himself a "Dick Armey Republican" (he's a conservative purist who opposes the USA PATRIOT Act), calls Vance's Nethercutt endorsement "gutless."

"How dare Vance suck up to the White House," says Davis, who unexpectedly barreled into The Stranger's offices, rather than doing our scheduled phone interview. "Vance isn't supposed to follow the White House. He's supposed to follow the grass roots and let them decide in the primary."

Never mind Democrats--Davis wants to take aim at Republicans. Here's more of Davis' speech: "I'm taking issue with an administration that does not like to be taken issue with, but discretionary, nonmilitary spending in the past three years has exploded 30 percent. When you have spending at that rate, it means we've lost our soul as a party. If George Bush cut taxes and Congress increased spending, where are they getting the money? It's coming out of Social Security. It won't hit right away, but it will hit. We are creating the perfect economic storm. Nethercutt sits on the appropriations committee, so he has been at ground zero for spending.

"The problem is that the pork is now running in the billions of dollars. Right here, look at Sound Transit. [Patty Murray's] the one who's led the charge. We call it Patty's pet project, but Nethercutt's been missing in action on Sound Transit, and our administration has been writing the checks. So Republicans have lost credibility. It's going to be tough for us to look people in the eye and say, 'we feel your pain,' when we inflicted so much of it."

josh@thestranger.com