Mike French entered Port Angeles politics in 2017 talking jobs, roads, housing, and common sense. The voters’ pamphlets show how the pitch evolved—and how little the results matched it. After nine years, Clallam is still being sold the same lines while the books, the roads, and the downtown tell a different story.
Mike French’s first printed promise was simple. Port Angeles was his lifelong home. He would work “tirelessly” for a robust economy, job opportunities, good roads, affordable housing, and a thriving business community. He would use common sense. He would be a voice of reason. He would respect the community and the Council.
That was 2017. He had never held office. He owned the First Street Haven restaurant. He listed the Hamilton PTO, the symphony, Light Opera, the Chamber, and the Downtown Association.
He did not glide in unopposed. In the August primary, he beat incumbent Lee Whetham and finished ahead of Jacob Oppelt, 1,449 to 1,281 to 1,003. That part he earned. Oppelt then moved outside city limits, checked the RCW with the auditor, and suspended the campaign too late to remove his name from the ballot. The November result—70.3% to 29.7%—was the score of a race that had already ended. Oppelt quitting did not put French in the general or remove Whetham. French had already done both. The blowout was what a withdrawn name looks like on Election Day.
Two years later he filed for Charter Review Commission in District 3—eleven names, vote for five, no primary. The pamphlet was a stub: one term on council, restaurant owner, school lines, PTO and clinic board, and no statement. He reported nothing raised and nothing spent. Voters ranked him 10th of 11 named candidates, 1,835 votes, 7.97 percent.
When the office was city council, he wrote a statement. When the office was a low-effort multi-winner commission, he filed and left the statement blank. He was already on council. He did not treat CRC as a job he meant to win.
The second council race, and the housing-first turn
In 2021, he ran again for Position 2. The pamphlet now listed four years on council and a record: Chamber partnership on a downtown plan, zoning reforms and tax incentives for housing, work with Peninsula Housing Authority and the Olympic Peninsula Community Clinic to move “our unhoused population into secure permanent housing,” and social workers paired with police.
The election was real this time. John Madden took him to November. French won 3,665 to 2,539 (58.92%–40.82%). Samantha Rodahl was out after the primary.
By then, “affordable housing” in his materials meant the housing-first model that has since been tested in public. The Tempest, a Serenity House project, did not age into a success story. It closed after a short, ugly run—fire, flooding, explosives, and the kind of street-level chaos residents do not need a consultant to describe.
Current units billed as “solutions” have landed in the $350,000 to $500,000 range. That is subsidized housing with a luxury price tag, as Clallamity Jen has said, not a ladder for working families. The people being prioritized are not the same people French’s 2017 pamphlet implied.
Countywide, on a changed map
In 2022 he ran for county commissioner against Bill Peach. There were only two names. After a charter change, that seat was decided countywide for that cycle. French lost District 3—the district he would represent—and won the county. The east end carried him. Peach still won the district after a DUI weeks before the general.
The 2022 pamphlet added homelessness, public safety, climate change, and a promise that has since become a punchline: “I will prioritize robust public engagement.”
Anyone who sits through a commissioner meeting knows what that phrase has meant in practice. Questions get parked. Emails go unanswered. Public comment is a three-minute timer, not a conversation.
He worked behind the scenes with arts interests on a Cultural Access Tax the commissioners could impose without a public vote.
He has not explained, in any satisfactory way, how $118,000 in county money contracted to Trinity United Methodist Church in Sequim then flows into OlyCAP—an NGO on whose board he sits.
He chairs Recompete and is buying a hydroseeder and excavator for Jamestown Corporation, a sovereign government with a nine-figure budget, while local contractors who paid for their own equipment watch a tax-funded competitor roll onto the same jobs.
That is not “outreach to the business community.” That is picking winners.
Public safety, in this record, includes giving shower vouchers to active drug users at the Shore Aquatic Center, a family pool.
Common sense, in this record, includes letting Towne Road stay closed for two years while he tried to appease activists who wanted a trail. Meanwhile, a house burned. The fire engine could not take the direct route due to Towne Road’s unnecessary closure, and a family became homeless. Dungeness lost its direct route to Sequim. County staff had said to finish the road before the grants died, and then the grants died. The extra cost to the Clallam County Taxpayer was $1.5 million.
None of that is “common sense.”
Civil dialogue is not a Facebook post calling speakers “unhinged conspiracy theorists” or wondering why listening to public comment would have changed a Board of Health vote.
Respect is not laughing at citizens who give public comment. Property and protest are not the same thing; French has argued that property destruction is “usually the only way we’ve ever seen actual change happen.”
He can explain the Boston Tea Party. He has a harder time explaining why the same standard never applies to the people he governs.
The economy French keeps promising
Steve Pelayo’s charts on Facebook are not campaign literature. Real GDP in Clallam lagged the state and the country for a lost decade.
Property- and sales-tax growth put the county and Port Angeles near the bottom of their peer sets.
“Job opportunities” in the current pitch often means grant machinery: dollars in, two hires to run a program, hopes for a third. Recompete is the exhibit, not the exception.
Mike French’s 2026 pamphlet drops the “robust community engagement” language and reaches for something softer: he wants his own story to be possible for every resident. Then it claims conservative budgeting—maintain services, avoid debt, protect reserves—while the board has stared at a growing deficit every cycle he has been on it. A poet laureate on county payroll is not “conservative budgeting.”
Peninsula Behavioral Health’s North View is the physical punchline: permanent supportive housing dressed as luxury condos with a view, built at a cost working families will never see, reserved for the housing-first caseload—homeless residents, many with active addiction and criminal records—and sold as how you “get ahead” in Clallam County.
The case after nine years
French did not stumble into every office. He beat an incumbent in a three-way primary in 2017. He won a contested council race in 2021. He won a countywide commissioner race in 2022 after the rules changed. Those are facts.
The other facts are the ones the pamphlets cannot outrun.
The robust economy did not arrive.
The roads project that became a two-year closure cost a family a house and the county a million and a half dollars.
Affordable housing became high-cost supportive units.
Public engagement became a process when it suited him and silence when it didn't.
Common sense became overriding the people who told him the grants would expire.
Civil dialogue became an arrogant verdict on the public—speakers tagged as unhinged, hearings treated as theater—from the same official who once wrote that property destruction is “not only fine,” and “usually the only way we’ve ever seen actual change happen.”
Nine years is enough time to test a slogan. The slogans are still on the page. The outcomes are on Towne Road, at The Tempest, in the Recompete equipment list, in the Board of Health comment queue, and in Pelayo’s charts.
New outcomes require different people. The old promises have had their election seasons.
Stay Engaged This Week
Today, 7:30 a.m. — PABA breakfast
Port Angeles Business Association, Jazzy Joshua’s (113 Del Guzzi Drive, east Port Angeles). PUD District 2 candidates Rick Paschall and Randy Brackett speak.
Breakfast meeting runs until 8:30. Livestream is on PABA’s Facebook page. Joshua’s charges $5 if you don’t order food. This is open to the public, but PABA members get to ask questions first.
Today, 10:00 a.m. — County commissioners
Regular weekly meeting, including the monthly Commissioners’ Forum — the only two-way session where residents can question the board and get answers on the record.
Thursday, 5:30 p.m. — I’ll be speaking in Happy Valley
Clallam County Watchdog’s Jeff Tozzer is the guest speaker at this month’s Republican Women of Clallam County meeting. Anyone is welcome — including non-Republicans (like me) and non-women (like me). If transparency in local government is important to you, come. I look forward to answering your questions.
Potluck at 5:30. I speak at 6:00, followed by my personalized hair care tips. It’s in Happy Valley, a few minutes south of downtown Sequim. For the address and to RSVP, email Tanya Unruh at tanyanewdesign@gmail.com.
