OROVILLE – The candidates for Okanogan County Commissioner PDistrict 1, Nick Timm and Marc Doney, participated in a candidates’ forum last Tuesday evening.

The forum was sponsored by the Oroville WA Chamber of Commerce and the Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune and was held at the American Legion Hodges Post #84.

The candidates were given three minutes to introduce themselves and then took questions read by the moderator, chamber president Rocky DeVon. The following are the candidates introductory statements.

Nick Timm

My name is Nick Timm and I am running for Okanogan County Commissioner. I was born and raised in Okanogan County where I grew up farming, ranching and orcharding. My family has been here almost since Okanogan was Okanogan. I graduated from Okanogan

High School, took many honors as a student- athlete and signed up for the United States Airforce before graduation day. I took 10 and a half years to go all over the world on C17 aircraft. It was my job to push men out of a perfectly good plane. Every minute was a blast, it was a lot of fun.

I’m a believer in strong, conservative principles being the way forward. Small government, small business, patience and communication. I’m running on three core principles, personal rights, property rights and common-sense law enforcement. The first gives the right to live as we see fit and the pursuit of happiness, the second provides the space to pursue our goals and the third affects the first two to provide a baseline for a law-biding society.

I’m running because I’ve done everything I can on the private side of things. My wife, my employees and many, many people from the community have helped to rebuild the City of Okanogan and helped to get business and people going strong again.

We must invigorate our home while protecting the unique world in which we all live. As your next county commissioner, we will all work toward the success of the entire county. Good, local businesses are the first step to solving big issues. I’ve lived that way and I’ve seen the results.

I believe in the right to protect yourself when things get bad and I believe in the value of hard work, dedication and vision. We keep Okanogan County Okanogan County by supporting our small businesses, agriculture and strong family values – all while looking towards the future.

Change happens whether we want it to or not. We have a rare chance, right now to make a stand. Get in the driver’s seat and do something positive. We can continue to let change drive us, God only knows where. Or, we can drive the change and make sure we guide the future of Okanogan County to the right place for our people.

I’ve got the track record for business success, both large and small and a proven ability to lead. And the ability to create jobs that takes years of practice and I’ve put those years in. I do have a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Statistics. A big part of being a commissioner is sifting through data and understanding what the studies are saying and how to effectively employ them.

A county is like a big business with a large budget, lots of employees and issues which come up every day that you have to deal with. A commissioner must communicate, lead and plan for the future.

Marc Doney

My name is Marc Doney and I’m running for Commissioner District 1. I don’t have what is a very unique background. I grew up over in Snohomish County with a couple of brothers in a little town called Machias. I’m just a country kid, I guess you’d say. I worked on dairy farms, chicken farms, stuff like that.

After high school, I ended up meeting my wife. We got married really young. We had a couple of kids along the way and a few grandkids.

I ended up joining the Marine Corps, I spent about six years in the service. After I left the service, I ended up just going back to construction and what I knew. I did that for a little bit and opened up my own business. And my wife opened up her own business and we’ve been small business owners off and on over the years. We’ve been married for 34 years now.

Eventually, along the way, I had a buddy who was in the State Patrol and he said hey, you should look into law enforcement you might like it. And he was right, and I did. After a while we came over to Eastern Washington and I ended up finishing up with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy over there tasked with the north end of the county.

I took a pastor job here in Okanogan County in the Omak about 11 years ago if I got my math right. We’ve been here ever since.

It has become home for us essentially. We have made some of the greatest friends and relationships we’ve ever had. The people here are just wonderful. It’s been impactful on our lives.

I love the conservative stuff; I love what Marc just said. I believe in conservatism and just the Constitutional stuff, property rights and water rights. I’ve got to be frank with you, I’m really concerned about this election cycle, just what I was seeing on a national level and on a state level. And I got to thinking if for some reason Trump didn’t become our president and Bob Ferguson ended up becoming our governor, it really concerns me where our nation would go, where our state would go. It got me thinking about the local level and how much we really need strong leadership.

I feel I have a really strong relationship with the sheriff and I feel if for some reason things did go south and things went in a downward direction, we’d need to have some really strong leadership in this county and I want to be part of that. And we’d keep the absurdity in Olympia as it were and keep it from our communities, our families and our businesses.

That was the real emphasis for me for jumping in the ring. I’ve never been a politician, I’ve never done this before, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m just trying to do the best I can for the people of this county.

Other than that, there’s nothing all that special about me, I don’t think. There are things that concern me going into this election cycle. I think we have a lot of issues, property rights and health and safety. We’ve got some housing shortages issues and some mental health crisis issues. We’ve got a lot of things going on in this county. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of funds or resources like some big city or county does.

I think it’s going to take some good, strong leadership to make some tough decisions, but the kind of decisions to benefit some people and do the best with what we have. I think this county is full of people who are willing to do that – they’ve just got to put their boots on and get to work.