By David Turnoy

The San Juan County Democrats held their endorsement meeting June 18 for the upcoming August primary, for which you will receive your ballot next month. We will send out a campaign flyer for the fall election, but for the primary we will get the word out by way of articles in the media.

Here are the endorsements we overwhelmingly approved:

• US Congress – Jason Call

• US Senate – Patty Murray

• State Representative – Alex Ramel

• Prosecuting Attorney – Amy Vira

A few notes about our choices:

Congressman Rick Larsen has served our district for 22 years. He has brought a lot of funding to our county, and he was helpful with his town halls early on during the pandemic. But we are now at a point that we need to move forward more quickly than his policies will support. We need a Green New Deal for the existential crisis of global warming, we need universal healthcare as over 100 million Americans owe health care debt and scores of thousands die needlessly every year under our for-profit healthcare system, we spend more on defense than the next nine countries combined yet we have more children in poverty than any other industrialized nation; the list goes on and on. It is time for a course correction, and Jason Call is right on all these issues and more. One of the reasons Jason is able to stand for what the people want is because he doesn’t accept any PAC or corporate contributions.

Representative Alex Ramel is being challenged by another Democrat, Trevor Smith. Alex has been a wonderful representative, introducing much helpful legislation on issues we care about and becoming part of the House leadership. It is important to note that Trevor never reached out to us in San Juan County in any way.. Alex Ramel clearly deserves re-election.

Amy Vira is unopposed for prosecuting attorney, and with ten years’ experience in that office, she will do a fine job.

You may wonder about the small number of positions considered here, and that is because only partisan offices are on the primary ballot, or positions where there are more than two candidates. We endorse in races where candidates ask for consideration, and the candidates are required to fill out our questionnaire. There will be many more positions on the fall ballot.