Retired Sequim School teacher and Indivisible activist Martha Rudersdorf is back on Facebook—this time under the name “Karla Keasey Rogers”—explaining why she’s voting for Mike French. Her video paints Jake Seegers as a “youngish,” “very wealthy” outsider from Texas who has been “nonstop telling us what is wrong with our county” while buying up properties. The claims collapse under even basic scrutiny of his life story, financial filings, debate statements, and property records.
Posting as “Karla Keasey Rogers,” Martha Rudersdorf’s short video endorsing Mike French for Clallam County Commissioner District 3 is circulating on Facebook.
She begins by calling Jake Seegers a “very wealthy, youngish man and his family” who “moved to Clallam County from Texas.” She says he has been “nonstop telling us what is wrong with our county, our home,” that he is using his wealth to “buy up properties across our area,” and that he “promises to fix things without any reference to working with others and without a clear knowledge of the costs of his solutions.”
She contrasts this with Mike French, who “grew up here,” “treasures and respects what we have here in Clallam County,” and is “a collaborator, open and willing to work with others.”
These are not minor slips. They are the exact talking points that have circulated for months from the anonymous Salsa Picante blog—an account that portrayed Seegers as a Texas real-estate developer quietly accumulating land and airport-adjacent parcels. The blog has gone largely dormant, but its framing lives on.
“Youngish” and “From Texas”
Age is irrelevant to the job of county commissioner. More importantly, the geographic claim is inaccurate.
Jake Seegers was born in Montana. Following his father’s medical schooling in Dallas and medical residency in Salt Lake City, his parents, both medical professionals, moved to northern Mexico when Jake was eleven to do nonprofit medical work with the Tarahumara people. He spent much of his childhood there, moving to Texas only for two months of his senior year of high school. He attended college in Bozeman, Montana, earned an MBA in Ohio, worked briefly in New York City, then worked in finance and portfolio management in Midland, TX, and lived in El Paso while his wife attended medical school. The family then spent three years in New Hampshire during her residency before moving to Clallam County in 2019. Their daughter was born here.
If labels matter to Indivisible members, the more accurate description is that Seegers spent much of his formative years in rural Mexico. His own campaign site describes assisting his parents in mobile clinics, taking vital signs and preparing prescriptions in Spanish. One might expect an Indivisible activist with her own documented ties to nonprofit work in rural Mexico to treat that background as a feature rather than a liability.
Wealth and Property
Rudersdorf’s “very wealthy” framing also does not match public records. Seegers’ PDC financial affairs statements show modest holdings. He has been a stay-at-home father and primary educator for their children; his wife, an emergency-room physician, is the primary breadwinner and works locum shifts that take her out of town for weeks at a time.
He is not a real-estate developer. He has never built a house. The family rents their home while saving to build, someday, on land they bought on Freshwater Bay. They sunk their life savings into purchasing that property. They also own a small, primitive camping parcel on the Elwha and co-own another near the ocean in Grays Harbor County with close friends. Three parcels total, no houses.
By comparison, public assessor data show Rudersdorf and her husband own a home in Clallam County appraised at roughly $635,000 and a second Sequim property appraised at about $185,000. Ordinary ownership is not a scandal for either family. Treating Seegers’ limited holdings as evidence of predatory wealth while ignoring one’s own large portfolio is selective framing.
The Debate She Attended
Rudersdorf attended the Clallam County Democrats’ candidate forum. The claim that Seegers offers solutions “without any reference to working with others and without a clear knowledge of the costs” is difficult to square with the transcript.
Seegers opened by speaking about wanting kids and grandkids to have the chance to stay or return, with economic opportunity, clean and safe places, and the ability to afford a home. He repeatedly framed public safety as the foundation for economic development, fiscal responsibility, and affordability. He cited specific numbers:
County expenses up 51% since 2019 versus 26% inflation (Bellevue CPI)
Sales and property tax revenue up 39%
An additional $16 million in grants spent
Law enforcement spending lagging inflation
On Recompete, Jake detailed overhead—millions flowing to administrative costs across Olympic Community of Health, NODC, and the county itself—before any program delivery
He contrasted $30,000-per-unit transitional housing costs with $350,000–$500,000 permanent supportive units
He described a three-hour meeting with Makah Tribal Council member TJ Greene, praised Jamestown S’Klallam’s economic success as a model for lower fees, taxes, and regulation, and said he had reached out to all four tribes
He spoke about property rights, vacation-rental rules, the need for measurable outcomes (recovery and self-sufficiency rather than inputs like syringes distributed or beds filled), and the practical limits of “housing first” without accountability
These are not the remarks of someone uninterested in costs or unwilling to engage stakeholders.
Collaboration
Rudersdorf calls French “a collaborator, open and willing to work with others.” French has posted publicly about speakers at county meetings: “Speaker after speaker shouting at county representatives and employees are unhinged conspiracy theorists spouting complete nonsense.”
He also wrote: “The most amazing thing to me is, they really think their nonsense should be convincing. Like, if the Board of Health had a public hearing and let them voice their positions, the decision would’ve been different?”
Commissioner French currently chairs the Board of Health and listens to public commenters.
A commissioner represents an entire district, not only the people who agree with him. Dismissing public commenters in those terms doesn't read like the open collaboration Rudersdorf describes. French’s record on specific issues—harm-reduction expansion, permanent supportive housing costs, shelter performance, and budget growth—can be evaluated on outcomes rather than rhetoric. When people examine Mike French’s record, they often take the easier path — attacking his challenger’s age, origin, or modest assets — rather than celebrating French’s accomplishments.
Origins and Distractions
Rudersdorf isn’t from here; she grew up in Wisconsin. She and her husband bought farmland in Sequim, subdivided it, and sold the parcels; several homes now stand on that land. That is ordinary real estate activity. It is also ordinary that people move here from elsewhere—whether from the Midwest, Texas, New Hampshire, or Mexico—and that some own more property than others. These facts do not disqualify anyone. They become distractions only when people use them selectively against one candidate while leaving policy questions (public safety, measurable results from nonprofit contracts, housing costs, and whether current approaches produce the outcomes residents want) unexamined.
When I emailed Rudersdorf to ask what led her to call Seegers “very wealthy,” the source for the Texas claim, and where ordinary ownership ends and scrutiny begins, she replied that she wouldn’t be answering questions. I invited her to contact Jake with any questions, but she hasn’t.
That is her choice. It also aligns with an approach that treats labels and voting for party-over-people as sufficient and sees further inquiry as unnecessary.
Clallam County voters can decide for themselves. Public records, the full forum transcript, financial disclosures, and assessor data are available. The choice is between focusing on those records and the results of recent years, or continuing to recycle anonymous blog framing about a “wealthy outsider.”
The information is out there.
Read it.