Time to worry about Snohomish County, too: Washington’s right wing frets about Sheriff Adam Fortney’s reelection prospects

With less than one week to go until Gen­er­al Elec­tion Day 2023, there’s mount­ing evi­dence that local Repub­li­cans and right wing groups are grow­ing con­cerned that key races aren’t going to turn out in their favor. I wrote last week about how Lisa Brown’s ascen­dant can­di­da­cy for May­or of Spokane has Repub­li­cans across the state spooked. Now, it appears that Repub­li­cans are also wor­ried about the reelec­tion prospects of right wing Sno­homish Coun­ty Sher­iff Adam Fortney.

They have many rea­sons to be nervous.

It’s been rough going for Fort­ney as sher­iff these past four years:

• He lost the Sno­homish Coun­ty sher­iff office’s accred­i­ta­tion, which his pre­de­ces­sor Ty Tre­nary had worked hard to get. (Most coun­ty sher­if­f’s offices in the state are not accred­it­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Asso­ci­a­tion of Sher­iffs & Police Chiefs; Sno­homish Coun­ty was one of the few that was.)
• He ordered account­abil­i­ty tools put into police cars to mea­sure offi­cers’ dri­ving removed, say­ing: “I am going to trust them to dri­ve their car.” (The devices cap­tured vehi­cle loca­tion, direc­tion of trav­el, speed, brak­ing and airbag deploy­ment, as well as the use of emer­gency lights and seat belts.)
• He decid­ed to re-hire not one, not two, but three deputies who had wise­ly been ter­mi­nat­ed by Tre­nary for mis­con­duct. His ratio­nale, in his own words: “I’m the new sher­iff… I get to weigh in on my guys’ discipline.”
• He stu­pid­ly hired a vig­i­lante to be a sher­if­f’s deputy, then when that deci­sion was under scruti­ny and crit­i­cism from the pub­lic and the press, he defend­ed it, only to reverse course a month lat­er after con­clud­ing it was an unten­able sit­u­a­tion that was mak­ing the sher­if­f’s office look bad.
• He declared he would not enforce law­ful pub­lic health mea­sures intend­ed to pro­tect Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from a dead­ly dis­ease: SARS CoV‑2, the nov­el coro­n­avirus, also known more sim­ply as COVID-19.

And inap­pro­pri­ate inci­dents like this:

In 2019, Fort­ney helped orga­nized a ride­a­long for Anna Rohrbough, a con­ser­v­a­tive Sno­homish Coun­ty Coun­cil can­di­date. He had donat­ed $125 to her cam­paign. She gave $250 to his. The Repub­li­can can­di­date used pho­tos from the ride in a Face­book post. Ride­a­longs were sus­pend­ed after the incident.

Fort­ney sur­vived two recall attempts ear­ly in his term; the logis­tics of get­ting a recall before vot­ers proved too dif­fi­cult for orga­niz­ers back in 2020. But now Fort­ney has to face the vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton’s third largest coun­ty because the four year term he was elect­ed to in 2019 is expir­ing, and he wants another.

Stand­ing in the way of his goal of a sec­ond term is his oppo­nent Susan­na John­son, who has decades of expe­ri­ence work­ing in the sher­if­f’s office and is notably endorsed by Fort­ney’s liv­ing pre­de­ces­sors: Ty Tre­nary, John Lovick, Rick Bart, and Jim Sharf, plus for­mer inter­im sher­iff Tom Davis.

The for­mer four par­tic­i­pat­ed in a video tes­ti­mo­ni­al urg­ing a vote for John­son, which you can watch here if you’re inter­est­ed.

The Her­ald of Everett, the largest news­pa­per in Sno­homish Coun­ty, is also back­ing Susan­na John­son. Though it should­n’t have come as any sur­prise to any­one giv­en Fort­ney’s record, the paper’s recent endorse­ment of John­son — and its account­abil­i­ty-focused news cov­er­age of this con­test — has nev­er­the­less real­ly ran­kled local right wing com­men­ta­tors and media operatives.

Pod­cast host Bran­di Kruse, for exam­ple, was so irri­tat­ed that she pledged to help recruit peo­ple to wave signs for Fort­ney, a pledge she then made good on:

I had no inten­tion of get­ting involved in the race for Sno­homish Coun­ty Sher­iff, but the Everett Her­ald just made it per­son­al. With days to go until the elec­tion, a reporter with the coun­ty’s largest news­pa­per did what has sad­ly become com­mon in polit­i­cal report­ing in this state. He pub­lished a piece look­ing to scare vot­ers away from sup­port­ing Sher­iff Adam Fort­ney by unfair­ly tying him to right-wing extrem­ism. The reporter called Fort­ney a “con­tro­ver­sial” “far-right” sher­iff with (gasp) “Con­sti­tu­tion­al leanings.”

It’s no sur­prise when fear­mon­ger­ing is used in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, we see that from both the left and the right. But as a for­mer jour­nal­ist, it pains me to see this kind of divi­sive, one-sided rhetoric from a news orga­ni­za­tion so close to an elec­tion – and in a race where pub­lic safe­ty should be at the heart of the conversation.

I very rarely endorse polit­i­cal can­di­dates, in part because fans of our show are fierce­ly inde­pen­dent-mind­ed and take great pride in research­ing can­di­dates for them­selves. I know they will do that in this race as well, and encour­age every­one to research both Sher­iff Fort­ney and his oppo­nent, Susan­na John­son, before cast­ing a vote.

But I sim­ply refuse to stand back and watch a news out­let tip the scales by prey­ing on the fears and emo­tions of vot­ers. It goes against every­thing I stand for, and every­thing we’re try­ing to change with the show.

Please join me tomor­row, Mon­day Octo­ber 30 from 3:30–5pm to do some good-old-fash­ioned sign wav­ing for Sher­iff Fort­ney in Lyn­nwood. We will meet on the cor­ner of 196th and 44th by the Fred Meyer.

In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing a sign-wav­ing event for Fort­ney, Kruse also had him on her pod­cast, with the goal of mak­ing Fort­ney look as rea­son­able as pos­si­ble to bol­ster his appeal to vot­ers in the final days lead­ing up to the election.

In the appear­ance on Kruse’s show, Fort­ney tried to present him­self as some­one above par­ti­san pol­i­tics, echo­ing these pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed com­ments: “I don’t care about Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat… I don’t care about red team or blue team.”

On the sur­face, this sort of talk might seem very strange, giv­en that Fort­ney is a a fierce right wing Repub­li­can, but it makes total sense to our team, because Fort­ney is try­ing to get reelect­ed in a juris­dic­tion that leans Demo­c­ra­t­ic and faces a no-non­sense chal­lenger who has a ton of com­mu­ni­ty support.

Right wing Repub­li­cans can parse elec­toral data just like any­one else, and they know that last year, Pat­ty Mur­ray got 57.52% of the vote in Sno­homish Coun­ty, despite a mas­sive­ly financed effort by Repub­li­cans to get Tiffany Smi­ley elected.

Repub­li­cans also know that their elec­toral coali­tion is chang­ing, both in Wash­ing­ton State and else­where, hav­ing been reshaped by Don­ald Trump. Vot­ers with col­lege degrees — who are the most reli­able odd-year vot­ers — have increas­ing­ly aban­doned the Repub­li­cans for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the only one of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties that remains com­mit­ted to Amer­i­can democracy.

If Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing Sno­homish vot­ers unite behind Susan­na John­son, Adam Fort­ney can’t win. It’s that sim­ple. It’s basic elec­toral math in a juris­dic­tion like Sno­homish Coun­ty. Hence Fort­ney’s com­ments about pro­fess­ing not to care about Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, or claim­ing he’s a bipar­ti­san guy. He needs at least some vot­ers who lean Demo­c­ra­t­ic to embrace his candidacy.

In real­i­ty, Fort­ney is a very, very par­ti­san right wing Repub­li­can. I can say that with con­fi­dence because our team has been observ­ing both his words and deeds for a very long time. A few exam­ples that illus­trate the point:

• A few months ago, Fort­ney brought extrem­ist sher­iff Mark Lamb of Ari­zona to town for a fundrais­er, at which a num­ber of guns were auc­tioned off. Lamb sup­port­ed the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion and sub­scribes to the dis­cred­it­ed legal the­o­ry that sher­iffs are the supreme legal author­i­ty in the Unit­ed States and are not required to enforce laws they believe to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. No “apo­lit­i­cal” sher­iff would have brought Mark Lamb to town.
• Fort­ney appeared at the “Sum­mer Free­dom Fest” orga­nized by Bri­an Hey­wood and Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton in July to pro­mote one of Hey­wood’s right wing ini­tia­tives, specif­i­cal­ly the one that would roll back recent­ly passed state laws to make police pur­suits safer. An “apo­lit­i­cal” sher­iff would­n’t be tak­ing part in an effort orga­nized by the Repub­li­can Par­ty to get rid of police reform laws sup­port­ed by the vast major­i­ty of voters.
• More recent­ly, Fort­ney was part of a polit­i­cal event up in Everett orga­nized by a right wing talk radio sta­tion, Bon­neville’s AM 770 KTTH, fea­tur­ing Dave Reichert, Jason Rantz, Bryan Suits, Semi Bird, State Repub­li­can Chair Jim Walsh, and… Bran­di Kruse. It dou­bled as a pub­lic­i­ty event for Rantz, who is hawk­ing a book. Again, this is sim­ply not the kind of gath­er­ing that an “apo­lit­i­cal” elect­ed offi­cial would ever par­tic­i­pate in.

It’s entire­ly fair, giv­en what Fort­ney has said and done, to char­ac­ter­ize Fort­ney as an extrem­ist and a right wing Repub­li­can who has had a con­tro­ver­sial tenure as Sher­iff. Bran­di Kruse, despite claim­ing to have had “no inten­tion” of get­ting involved in the con­test, has been invest­ed in Fort­ney’s reelec­tion all along, which is why she’s jump­ing so ardent­ly to his defense now. Kruse (who appeared with Fort­ney at “Free­dom Fest” in July) can see a reelec­tion bid in trou­ble, so she’s try­ing to help give Fort­ney a last minute makeover of his cam­paign image.

Sim­i­lar­ly, The Lyn­nwood Times’ right wing pub­lish­er Mario Lot­more wants to see Fort­ney reelect­ed. Lot­more is real­ly unhap­py with the cov­er­age Fort­ney has been get­ting, so he pub­lished this com­plaint-laden edi­to­r­i­al a few days ago.

It could use a good fisk­ing, so I’m going to go through it bit by bit.

Let’s begin:

🚨To all of our read­ers, when did pub­lic safe­ty become a par­ti­san issue?

The answer here is sim­ple: it always has been. All issues are par­ti­san issues. That’s what makes them issues in the first place. If there aren’t mul­ti­ple sides and mul­ti­ple points of view, then there’s noth­ing at issue. “Not/shouldn’t be a par­ti­san issue” made an appear­ance on our Ban­ished Words List a few years ago, it’s a worth­less phrase that our team is tired of hear­ing and reading.

This morn­ing our inbox was inun­dat­ed with emails and my cell­phone with 14 voice­mails and 23 texts from read­ers frus­trat­ed at what they con­sid­er par­ti­san pro­pa­gan­da per­pet­u­at­ed by a com­pet­ing local news­pa­per in Sno­homish Coun­ty regard­ing the Sno­homish Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office race.

Those would be Fort­ney par­ti­sans wor­ried about Fort­ney’s reelec­tion. What were they expect­ing: that Fort­ney would be put on a pedestal by the local media?

We at the Lyn­nwood Times fol­low objec­tive jour­nal­ism and not the advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism you read so much in main­stream news out­lets. This is why main­stream is fail­ing. Because of the inter­net, peo­ple can read a myr­i­ad of per­spec­tives and see through the propaganda.

We’ve scru­ti­nized what Lot­more and his team are pub­lish­ing at the Lyn­nwood Times and it isn’t what we’d con­sid­er objec­tive jour­nal­ism. It’s actu­al­ly advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism. And that’s fine — advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism, which we also pub­lish here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate (note the word “Advo­cate” in the name!) has a rich tra­di­tion going back to before the found­ing of this country.

Con­trary to what Lot­more claims, big media out­lets aren’t in trou­ble because they prac­tice advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism, or claim to adhere to the objec­tive tra­di­tion but real­ly don’t. Rather, the entire media indus­try is strug­gling to respond to huge eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al shifts. Old busi­ness mod­els, espe­cial­ly adver­tis­ing-depen­dent ones, sim­ply don’t work any­more. Sur­viv­ing out­lets large and small, includ­ing rur­al fam­i­ly-run news­pa­pers, are all try­ing to find a path forward.

Main­stream news out­lets should tread care­ful­ly on mak­ing safe­ty a par­ti­san issue. In WA state, one par­ty has con­trolled the coun­ty and the state exec­u­tive gov­ern­ment for decades, incre­men­tal­ly pass­ing laws hin­der­ing polic­ing, legal­iz­ing drugs, and empow­er­ing offenders.

Again, pub­lic safe­ty has always been a par­ti­san issue.

As for con­trol of the coun­ty and state gov­ern­ments, it’s true that Wash­ing­ton and Sno­homish Coun­ty have been most­ly-Demo­c­ra­t­ic run for decades. That’s because the vot­ers keep elect­ing Democ­rats to gov­ern. But there have been a few excep­tions: Repub­li­cans con­trolled both cham­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture in the 1990s for a while, and this cen­tu­ry, they had a six-year stretch where they con­trolled the state Sen­ate. And, of course, Adam Fort­ney who is the cur­rent top cop in Sno­homish Coun­ty, is a right wing Repub­li­can, as we’ve established.

It must be not­ed that it was the vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton who decid­ed to decrim­i­nal­ize cannabis in 2012 through an ini­tia­tive to the peo­ple; the Leg­is­la­ture has fol­lowed their lead. And our research has found that the police reform laws law­mak­ers have passed more recent­ly are very pop­u­lar, includ­ing in swing counties.

The “chick­ens are com­ing home to roost,” to quote the infa­mous phase from Rev. Jere­mi­ah Wright, also known as Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s pas­tor. The polls show over­whelm­ing­ly, 67% of Amer­i­can’s reject the defund the police rhetoric and the failed poli­cies that we are now expe­ri­enc­ing. So, I say again, tread care­ful­ly on mak­ing safe­ty is a par­ti­san issue.

Invok­ing Jere­mi­ah Wright and Barack Oba­ma’s names in an edi­to­r­i­al about the cov­er­age of the Sno­homish Coun­ty sher­if­f’s race is an excel­lent way to announce to dis­cern­ing read­ers that you’re a right wing Repub­li­can who’s still quite mad about the out­come of the 2008 elec­tion, which Democ­rats won in a landslide.

As for “defund the police” rhetoric, that is nowa­days arguably espoused more by fanat­i­cal right wing Repub­li­cans than any­one on the left. It nev­er became pol­i­cy around here — the police weren’t defund­ed. But if Trump gets back in and gets a Repub­li­can major­i­ty next year, we could see the police get defund­ed, start­ing at the fed­er­al lev­el. Com­mit­ted sup­port­ers of Don­ald Trump speak of need­ing to dis­man­tle the FBI because they think law enforce­ment are out to get them.

The Depart­ment of Jus­tice’s suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of hun­dreds of Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion­ists has made them very, very angry and very, very resentful.

Here is a the­o­ry… The gov­ern­ing par­ty (and those elect­ed to rep­re­sent and pro­mote that gov­ern­ing par­ty) are putting ide­ol­o­gy before pub­lic safety.

A the­o­ry?

What you meant to say was “My view is…”

The “wel­com­ing city” and “sanc­tu­ary city” poli­cies passed in 2017 and 2018 direct­ing local and state law enforce­ment to NOT coop­er­ate with Fed­er­al immi­gra­tion enforce­ment, often by reject­ing “detain­er” requests embold­ened drug car­tels to estab­lish oper­a­tions in cities. Then sher­iffs and DA adopt­ed catch-and-release polices. Then we had sher­if­f’s and gov­er­nors across the coun­try and WA release crim­i­nal offend­ers because of c‑vid in 2020. Dur­ing that same year in 2020, elect­ed offi­cials refused to call out the vio­lence and destruc­tion of riot­ing through­out WA State and allowed vig­i­lantes to take over a por­tion of Seat­tle for weeks.

Lots of right wing gripes thrown togeth­er some­what inco­her­ent­ly here.

Elect­ed offi­cials of the gov­ern­ing par­ty allowed, and in some cas­es, pro­mot­ed Defund the Police rhetoric. Between 2021 to 2023, law­mak­ers passed bills reduc­ing sen­tenc­ing and con­se­quences for adult crimes and gang mem­bers who are minors, and let’s not for­get hin­der­ing pur­suit laws. DAs refused to enforce drug offens­es through­out WA state. Also, because of the defund the police rhetoric that turned into leg­is­la­tion or pol­i­cy, School Resource Offi­cers were tak­en out of pub­lic-school sys­tems through­out WA state and law enforce­ment per­son­nel left the pro­fes­sion in droves in which we are now fac­ing a polic­ing short­age through­out the state and Sno­homish Coun­ty. The ones that are there are over­worked and demoralized.

Anoth­er pas­sage of gripes.

Notice how there’s been absolute­ly no dis­cus­sion of:

• The mur­ders (by police offi­cers sup­posed to be keep­ing peo­ple safe!) of George Floyd, Bre­on­na Tay­lor, Ahmaud Arbery, Manuel Ellis, and so many oth­ers, whose names could fill an entire blog post.
• The costs to tax­pay­ers of lock­ing peo­ple up. We’ve been invest­ing in mass incar­cer­a­tion for decades, and it’s clear­ly not work­ing for us.
• What’s actu­al­ly in those police reform laws passed by the Leg­is­la­ture, which pub­lic opin­ion research shows vot­ers are very sup­port­ive of.

Also, many pub­lic sec­tor pro­fes­sions are present­ly fac­ing per­son­nel shortages.

Lot­more fails to con­cede that com­plex dynam­ics are dri­ving trends affect­ing law enforce­ment right now. Those dynam­ics can be seen across the coun­try, in Repub­li­can-run juris­dic­tions as well as Demo­c­ra­t­ic ones.

So, I ask Sno­homish Coun­ty res­i­dents, who are to blame for the fen­tanyl epi­dem­ic, gangs in schools most like­ly orga­nized and run by drug car­tel prox­ies, surge in vio­lent crime, youth shoot­ings, and the fear of “pub­lic unsafe­ty” which is our new reality?

Adam Fort­ney is cur­rent­ly in charge of the Sno­homish Coun­ty sher­if­f’s office and has been for sev­er­al years. By your log­ic, should we just blame him?

If news out­lets want to make pub­lic safe­ty a par­ti­san issue, then where is the assess­ment of the con­tri­bu­tion to “pub­lic unsafe­ty” by the gov­ern­ing par­ty and the link of their elect­ed offi­cials and sur­ro­gates to that gov­ern­ing par­ty. Advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism fails both the peo­ple and the profession.

There’s a say­ing: if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen.

If par­ti­san pol­i­tics both­ers you so much, maybe do some­thing else? Also: If you don’t like advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism, why do you prac­tice it while say­ing that it’s bad?

Sno­homish Coun­ty res­i­dents have two choic­es for the direc­tion of pub­lic safe­ty — a Sher­iff can­di­date backed by the gov­ern­ing par­ty or a Sher­iff that is not?

In oth­er words: Please vote for Adam Fort­ney, I’m real­ly wor­ried he won’t win! 

The 2023 local elec­tion cycle will con­clude lat­er this month with the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of offi­cial returns. Bal­lots are due back by next Tues­day, either to a drop box by 8 PM Pacif­ic, or to a post office by the last out­go­ing mail col­lec­tion time.

Do your part for our democ­ra­cy by being a vot­er this year — and every year.