Lands Commissioner

Republican incumbent Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland is running against Democrat challenger Peter Goldmark, an Eastern Washington rancher and unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 2006.

Commissioner Sutherland has been in office since winning the 2000 election. Prior to that he was Mayor of Tacoma, and then Pierce County Executive, along with a plethora of conservation commission and committee memberships.

Doctor Goldmark (he has a Ph.D. and was a research scientist) was Governor Mike Lowry's Director of Agriculture for 5 months in 1993. He's served on several Governor's councils and committees on the environment since then.

Commissioner Sutherland took a very slim majority of the August Primary over his only opponent (Dr. Goldmark) by 2 1/4 % of the vote.

While this office's race tends to polarize between the environmentalist/eco-terrorist crowd and the pro-timber industrialist crowd I find that Commissioner Sutherland has been really very fair in his execution of policy and administration of the state Department of Natural Resources.

This department was a virtually unmanaged mess when Commissioner Sutherland took control eight years ago, and has turned its administration around. He took a department with competing policy objectives that brought in $6 million per year into a streamlined-in-objective less-beauracratic entity that now brings in $16 million per year.

While Commissioner Sutherland has received endorsements from the timber industry he is not in their pocket. He's actually fair.

Doctor Goldmark has pointed out that the DNR has made some mistakes over the past eight years, but I don't see these as a worthy call for the ousting of a fair, centrist, experienced administrator of the largest department in our state's government.

Doctor Goldmark's five-months of experience administering a state agency just doesn't compare to the eight solid years of successfully directing the DNR in which Commissioner Sutherland has proven himself.

I am voting for Doug Sutherland for Commissioner of Public Lands.