Editor,

I’m writing this letter in response to recent letters to the editor that have made serious personal attacks against local candidates. The latest victim has been Marie Shimada. It’s no secret for people who know me that I’m a Republican voter and always have been. However, the attacks that I’m seeing against people who are our neighbors have devolved from policy attacks which are fair game, to deeply personal attacks which are not.

We as a community need to understand that the people running for office here in Island County are our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and in some cases our family. I strongly urge our community to avoid taking a page from the federal elections which are basically two mega corporations (DNC, RNC) trying to destroy each other. Locally regardless of political affiliation we are dealing with people, and good people to boot.

I know often these campaigns and their attacks can take a life of their own. I myself am far from innocent. I participated in unfair attacks against the current Mayor of Oak Harbor Ronnie Wright when I was supporting his opponent. I didn’t intend to, but the campaign just got ugly, and I wanted to support and defend my friend. I apologized to Ronnie after the election, and this is me doing it publicly now. Ronnie, I’m sorry and I strive to do better in the future.

I know better than anyone that these elections can take on a life of their own. But I will say in the Commissioner District 1 race we have three excellent candidates for office who are down to Earth people who don’t deserve these personal attacks. I’ve gotten to know Melanie Bacon, Marie Shimada and Damian Greene over the years, and I can tell you they are good people. They are good people who have made an extremely hard decision to run a race to help their community knowing they were almost certainly going to be attacked.

It’s up to us as citizens of Island County to insist that the political attacks stay clean. We should not be mentioning fathers of candidates in attack pieces, we should not be bringing up their personal lives and we should never involve family members. Remember after this election is over, we all have to live with each other. Let’s keep it clean.

Richard MacQuarrie

Camano Island