District 3 Didn’t Choose Him. The East End Did.

Norma Turner’s charter change, a League-run Charter Review, and countywide voting gave Mike French a job the West End never asked for

District 3 voted no. The rest of the county voted yes. That is how Mike French became commissioner, and that is how he is trying to keep the job. The League of Women Voters helped write the rules, Norma Turner helped bankroll the candidate, and the West End is still waiting for its own vote to count.

In July 2025, this site asked a simple question: Who speaks for the West End? The answer, a year later, is still not District 3.

Each of the three Commissioner Districts contains one-third of Clallam County’s roughly 78,000 residents. View the map here.

A Charter Review survey that year found 74 percent of 1,457 respondents wanted to return to district-only voting for county commissioners. That would have meant the people who live in a district nominate and elect the person who represents them — the system Clallam used before a 2020 charter amendment.

Instead, the current hybrid lets District 3 pick two finalists in August, then hands the November decision to Sequim and the east side of Port Angeles.

The Commission asked the public. Then it sat on the results for nine days and released them hours before a meeting. That delay made it nearly impossible to move an amendment through the required steps in time for the November ballot. A majority-Democrat Charter Review Commission, 12 of 15 members endorsed by the Clallam County Democrats, never put restoration of district-only voting in front of voters. So why did they even ask the public to take the survey? They asked the public, then ran the year as if the answers didn’t matter.

Last year’s Commission was chaired by Susan Fisch, then secretary of the League of Women Voters of Clallam County. She received the most votes of any Charter Review commissioner and ran the process. Fisch ran the calendar like a private club. Items she opposed never got a meeting and objections to that practice became bylaw fights.

The League has had a grip on Charter Review for years. Last year was not an exception. It was the tradition.

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The 2022 race was the proof of concept

In the August 2022 primary, only District 3 voted. Incumbent Bill Peach beat Mike French 53.34 percent to 46.44 percent.

In the general, the whole county voted. French won 51.52 percent to 48.32 percent.

If only District 3 had voted in November, Peach still would have won: 53.8 percent to 46.2 percent, even after a late DUI charge against Peach. District 3 preferred Peach in the primary and preferred Peach in the general. Voters in Districts 1 and 2 flipped the seat. That is not a theory. That is the certified count.

The amendment that made that possible was proposed by Norma Turner, former president of the League of Women Voters of Clallam County and a 50-year member.

It passed countywide 54.21 percent to 45.79 percent. Turner’s amendment gave Mike French his commissioner seat.

She did not stop at rewriting the rules. PDC records show Turner gave French $1,000 last month.

That is not the “nonpartisan” League writing a check. It is the person most identified with the local League writing the check after rewriting the map.

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August 2026: District 3 spoke again

This August, District 3 voters chose Jake Seegers over French, 3,675 to 3,288 — 52.66 percent to 47.11 percent. Both names advance because the general is countywide. The district that has to live with the commissioner picked Seegers. The east end gets the last word. Again.

Imagine Washington’s 6th Congressional District narrowed the field to two people — say Emily Randall (D) and a local independent — and then the entire country picked the winner because “Congress votes on things that affect all Americans.” No one in this county would call that local control. County commissioners vote on roads, fees, health policy, and land use that hit Forks and Clallam Bay differently than they hit Sequim. The principle is the same. The people who live with the office should determine the election.

District 3 is the most rural, the poorest, and the most dependent on timber, trades, and distance. French’s record doesn't reflect that district. As chair of the Board of Health, he backs harm-reduction ideology. He has supported tighter rural burning rules through ORCAA. He supported the Cultural Access Tax, which commissioners could impose without a public vote. Four years ago, at a League forum against Peach, he asked why the county wasn't permanently funding the Conservation District. That idea later showed up as a parcel fee on property.

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Why keep commissioners partisan — and only commissioners?

The local League has stated that all county elected officials should be nonpartisan except the commissioners. Not the auditor. Not the assessor. Not the sheriff. Not the prosecutor. Only the three people who set policy and pass budgets keep party labels.

That is not a small carve-out. Keep the party label on the commissioner and a local campaign becomes tied to the White House. The League never has to say this aloud, because it has Indivisible to do that.

The League’s own site still recites that it does not endorse candidates or parties. Its calendar and its company tell another story. It promotes and appears with Indivisible Sequim and Indivisible Port Angeles — groups that endorse candidates and publish partisan guides. League members have helped staff Conservation District elections in a race Indivisible had already picked a side in. The League has paid for newspaper ads attacking a sitting president.

Tomorrow the LWV Civics Education Committee is slated to staff a table and give a voting presentation at the Election Protection Fair — an RSVP-only Indivisible event at St. Luke’s in Sequim.

The same network put out an invitation with a skunk at the bottom, the image that has become shorthand for anti-Seegers messaging. That is not a League endorsement on letterhead. It is a platform, a table, and a brand loaned to a group that does the endorsing. Nonpartisan is the title. Indivisible is the hands.

National League materials are not written in Clallam County. They are written in the orbit of D.C.: democracy “under siege,” a DEI lens on every process, immigration, abortion access, climate, guns. Local chapters are mandated to follow. Clallam’s LWV chapter talks like a civic club but votes like a progressive ideological sect. Calling that nonpartisan does not make it so. It just keeps access to the forums, the ballots, and the Charter Review gavel.

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Respect the neighbors

Four years ago District 3 rejected French when only District 3 voted, and it still preferred Peach when you isolate the general-election precincts. This August it chose Seegers. The League’s most prominent local figure helped change the rules so the east end could overrule the west. She helped fund the man who benefited. The Commission she and her network have shaped refused to let the public vote on putting the old rule back — after asking the public and getting a 74 percent answer.

Forks, Clallam Bay, Joyce, Beaver, Neah Bay, and La Push are not suburbs of Sequim. They are a third of the county with a different economy and a different vote. Countywide general elections for a “district” seat are how you keep that vote from mattering.

District 3 has said who it wants. The honest thing is to let that stand.