Buys Wins, the 42nd District Loses

Disregard this post if you’re not a member of Washington State’s 42^nd Legislative District.

In the recent mid-term election, local political newcomer Vincent Buys, a 31-year old Republican business owner from Lynden, pulled off an upset victory by defeating and unseating eighteen year incumbent Democrat Kelli Linville as the Position 2 rep of the 42nd District in the State House of Representatives. A lot of people through Bellingham are asking how this was possible, but the answer is rather simple: Buys blamed a state budget deficit on one person, made it seem like she was going to single-handedly tax everyone to hell, and frankly, had a more evident campaign presence in online institutions such as Facebook and Twitter.

Now as much as I can, I can respect Buys’ ability to win this election, which he won by a margin of a mere 241 votes. It’s a testament to a well-organized campaign, and letting ads and websites do all the talking.

Before Election Day, I attended two separate candidate forums in Bellingham where Buys and Linville had a chance to have a mini-debate, and on the fly, I wasn’t overly impressed with his ability to conduct himself against the obviously-more experienced Linville. Bias aside, Buys clung to his “support for the Defense of Marriage Act” when asked if he’d support homosexual unions (a response copied directly from Doug Ericksen at the previous forum), said that the biggest budget he’d had to manage was “his own” (which wasn’t even true, since he owns a business and could’ve used that much more politically safe answer), and was visibly nervous when posed a question about the importance of high school preparatory work for colleges and universities.

Even with all that, the numbers don’t lie. If they hold through the election certification on the 23^rd of this month, Buys will replace Linville as the 42^nd District Rep in position 2. It was a pretty foregone conclusion that Jason Overstreet was going to win the first position seat, since the exiting Doug Ericksen pledged his full support for the new Republican there. But this is the first time since the 1970’s that the 42^nd hasn’t sent a rep from each party to Olympia.

Because of this, our district is the real loser here. This is because even though there were slight Republican increases in the State House, Democrats still hold to a pretty solid majority. Consequently, no representative from our district will have the ability to caucus with the majority in the House, which means that our representation there has effectively shrunk to an infinitely smaller level than was there before.

Republicans will brag about their victory, but when something happens in this District that they want their Legislator to act on, they’re going to be left wondering why Buys or Overstreet haven’t done anything about it. That’s what happens when you cut yourself out of the process without the facts, voters.

You lose.