Eyman cohort Don Benton announces his retirement from the Washington State Senate

Break­ing news out of Clark Coun­ty this after­noon: Entrenched Repub­li­can incum­bent Don Ben­ton, who has long been one of Tim Eyman’s biggest boost­ers in the Leg­is­la­ture, is retir­ing from the Wash­ing­ton State Senate.

Via The Columbian:

Ben­ton said in a state­ment Sat­ur­day that he will fin­ish his cur­rent term, which expires at the end of the year. Ben­ton also works as Clark County’s direc­tor of envi­ron­men­tal ser­vices. He said he made his deci­sion to leave the Leg­is­la­ture with “a heavy heart,” but added his boss­es at the coun­ty didn’t want him to con­tin­ue serv­ing as a law­mak­er while also work­ing as the envi­ron­men­tal ser­vices director.

Ben­ton is one of sev­er­al mil­i­tant Repub­li­cans in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture who espous­es anti-gov­ern­ment views despite hold­ing a pub­lic sec­tor job.

In case you’ve for­got­ten, these were the out­ra­geous cir­cum­stances under which Ben­ton got that job more than two years ago:

Claims of crony­ism are sweep­ing through Clark Coun­ty gov­ern­ment after a state sen­a­tor [Ben­ton] was giv­en the job of a man who may have exposed a mis­use of Clark Coun­ty funds.

That’s caused out­rage from hun­dreds of citizens.

So far, one coun­ty employ­ee has resigned in protest over this hire. A protest also is planned for out­side of the Clark Coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing Tues­day — with more than 200 peo­ple so far sign­ing up to speak at that meeting.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the poten­tial for abuse now seems to be the prac­tice,” said Demo­c­rat Steve Stu­art, chair of the non-par­ti­san Clark Coun­ty Board of Commissioners.

A lit­tle more con­text: It’s impor­tant to under­stand that at the time, Clark Coun­ty (which encom­pass­es Amer­i­ca’s Van­cou­ver) was gov­erned by a three-mem­ber coun­ty com­mis­sion made up of two mil­i­tant Repub­li­cans and one Democrat.

If this isn’t a text­book def­i­n­i­tion of crony­ism, we’re not sure what is:

Ben­ton was giv­en the posi­tion just a few days after apply­ing. He’s a per­son­al friend of one of the com­mis­sion­ers, Tom Mielke.

Last month, the group vot­ed to get rid of Direc­tor of Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Kevin Gray.

Adding to the con­tro­ver­sy is that Gray is con­sid­ered by many as a man who blew the whis­tle on alleged cor­rup­tion in the coun­ty. In a whis­tle-blow­er mem­o­ran­dum, Gray said he has been tar­get­ed and expe­ri­enced retal­i­a­tion after report­ing that a super­vi­sor was using coun­ty mon­ey for his pri­vate business.

Six months before Ben­ton got the job described in the excerpts above, he nar­row­ly won reelec­tion in an extreme­ly tight con­test with Demo­c­rat Tim Prob­st, who had giv­en up his House seat to chal­lenge Ben­ton for Senate.

Ben­ton’s mar­gin of vic­to­ry was just sev­en­ty-four votes.

On Jan­u­ary 13th Prob­st announced he would chal­lenge Ben­ton again, set­ting up anoth­er mar­quee con­test in 2016. Now that Ben­ton is out, Prob­st will be run­ning for an open seat. It’s worth not­ing: If Democ­rats can get Prob­st elect­ed and knock out one oth­er Repub­li­can in anoth­er leg­isla­tive dis­trict with­out los­ing any seats, they will have a major­i­ty in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate a year from now.