Four years ago, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion cham­pi­on Hilary Franz emerged from a crowd­ed field to head Wash­ing­ton State’s Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources after two term incum­bent and fel­low Demo­c­rat Peter Gold­mark opt­ed to retire.

Since assum­ing the post, the dynam­ic and ener­getic Franz has criss­crossed the state work­ing to drum up sup­port for invest­ments in wild­land fire­fight­ing, geo­log­ic haz­ards map­ping, and rur­al infra­struc­ture. All of that work seems to have left a pos­i­tive impres­sion with Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers, who favor Franz by a com­fort­able mar­gin for a sec­ond term in NPI’s most recent statewide survey.

49% of like­ly Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers polled by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling last week for NPI said they’re vot­ing for Franz, while 36% said they’re vot­ing for Repub­li­can chal­lenger Sue Kuehl Ped­er­son. 15% said they were not sure.

The win­ner of this con­test will serve in the Wash­ing­ton State exec­u­tive depart­ment for four years, head­ing up Nat­ur­al Resources (DNR). The posi­tion is required by the Con­sti­tu­tion, but its duties are not spelled out there, as the Framers felt the scope of the job should be deter­mined by the Legislature.

SECTION 23. COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC LANDS — COMPENSATION. The com­mis­sion­er of pub­lic lands shall per­form such duties and receive such com­pen­sa­tion as the leg­is­la­ture may direct.

RCW 43.30.105 pre­scribes that the Com­mis­sion­er shall be DNR’s leader.

The depart­men­t’s cur­rent pro­grams and ser­vices con­sist of Aquat­ics, For­est Health and Resilien­cy, For­est Prac­tices, For­est Resources, Geol­o­gy, Maps and Sur­veys, Nat­ur­al Resources Police, Nat­ur­al Her­itage Pro­gram, Prod­uct Sales and Leas­ing, Recre­ation, and Wild­fire. It man­ages over 5.6 mil­lion acres.

Here are the num­bers again and the exact ques­tion we asked:

QUESTION: The 2020 can­di­dates for Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands are Demo­c­rat Hilary Franz and Repub­li­can Sue Kuehl Ped­er­son. Who are you vot­ing for?

ANSWERS:

• Hilary Franz: 49%
• Sue Kuehl Ped­er­son: 36%
• Not sure: 15%

Our sur­vey of six hun­dred and ten like­ly 2020 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, Octo­ber 14th through Thurs­day, Octo­ber 15th.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respondents.

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 4.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

Wash­ing­ton State Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz empha­sizes the impor­tance of fund­ing geo­log­ic haz­ards research at an event in the Capi­tol State For­est (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

“Under Hilary’s lead­er­ship, the [Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources] is increas­ing rev­enue for schools and com­mu­ni­ties by pro­tect­ing work­ing forests and agri­cul­ture in our rur­al areas, increas­ing clean ener­gy devel­op­ment, and cre­at­ing eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties in our towns and cities,” Franz’s web­site says.

In addi­tion to her fire­fight­ing and cli­mate advo­ca­cy, Franz’s cam­paign has empha­sized her efforts to stop Trump’s off­shore drilling ini­tia­tives and pull the plug on Cooke Aqua­cul­ture’s irre­spon­si­ble fish farm­ing oper­a­tion in Puget Sound.

Unusu­al­ly for a Demo­c­rat, Franz’s reelec­tion enjoys the sup­port of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness in addi­tion to the labor move­ment, envi­ron­men­tal advo­ca­cy com­mu­ni­ty, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

Franz’s oppo­nent, Sue Kuehl Ped­er­son, is a for­mer chair of the Grays Har­bor Repub­li­can Par­ty who has sev­er­al degrees and work expe­ri­ence as a fish­eries biol­o­gist and pow­er man­ag­er. Ped­er­son eas­i­ly has the most impres­sive cre­den­tials of any of the Repub­li­cans run­ning for a statewide office this year.

Her web­site, how­ev­er, does­n’t offer much beyond her voter’s pam­phlet state­ment, which declares: “Our pub­lic lands have been rav­aged by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters includ­ing tree infes­ta­tions and for­est fires. They’ve also been dam­aged by a man-made dis­as­ter: state man­agers that have focused on serv­ing spe­cial inter­est groups instead of pro­vid­ing for tax­pay­ers, school dis­tricts, and out­door recre­ation­al enthu­si­asts. No more pol­i­cy-by-press-con­fer­ence. No more angling for high­er polit­i­cal office. It’s time for new lead­er­ship.”

Con­sid­er­ing Ped­er­son­’s edu­ca­tion and sci­ence back­ground, it’s extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ing that her state­ment does­n’t acknowl­edge the dam­age that we have caused to our cli­mate through our pol­lut­ing ways.

She does acknowl­edge cli­mate change in the sole blog post on her web­site, but she has yet to offer any­thing resem­bling a cli­mate action plan as part of her cam­paign. (Franz is an out­spo­ken cli­mate action advo­cate, and was the open­ing speak­er at NPI’s 2019 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala in Renton.)

Ped­er­son­’s web­site does­n’t seem to have changed much since the spring, indi­cat­ing that her inter­est in wag­ing a cam­paign may have waned.

Franz earned twice as many votes as Ped­er­son in the August Top Two elec­tion, secur­ing an out­right major­i­ty with 51.13% of the vote. Ped­er­son came in ahead of three oth­er Repub­li­cans, a Lib­er­tar­i­an, and a Demo­c­rat for the sec­ond spot.

With the oth­er Repub­li­cans now out of the way, Ped­er­son will like­ly get a high­er per­cent­age in the gen­er­al elec­tion. But this is not going to be a com­pet­i­tive race. Even vot­ers in coun­ties Democ­rats often have trou­ble win­ning seem to like Franz. She ought to do very well in next mon­th’s gen­er­al election.

Vot­ing in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is cur­rent­ly in progress and is set to con­clude on Novem­ber 3rd, 2020 at 8 PM Pacif­ic in Wash­ing­ton State.