Residents are showing up for a candidate on the River Road overpass while the same week shows open-air drug use a few blocks from the courthouse. Online, people are mapping who actually holds the seats, the boards, and the school curriculum — and who gets memorialized on a church sign. If you still think “compassion” is the only word that matters, this Social Media Saturday feed is a hard read.
Show Up on the Overpass
Today, Saturday, a rally for county commissioner candidate Jake Seegers runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the River Road Overpass in Sequim. Park across the street from Applebee’s. If you want a different direction for Clallam County, this is the simplest way to say so in public.
This Is the Fruit
Local League of Women Voters activists helped put a grades 3–5 textbook into schools that walks children toward protest — including joining a Black Lives Matter protest “which aims to prevent more police shootings of unarmed Black people and help our country overcome racism.”
Now look at the League’s harvest. A social-media photo showed Port Angeles High School students at a courthouse protest this year with signs that included “My future will not be dictated by Nazis,” “F**k ICE,” “one abortion could have saved democracy,” and “Nobody is illegal on stolen land.”
The League was founded to help voters understand government, not to draft third-graders into a faction. When a civic group becomes a pipeline for slogans, it stops being a league of voters and starts being a political machine that still gets to use the old stationery.
Who Is Actually Building Institutional Power?
A Facebook comment framed Seegers as part of a Christian Right plan to migrate into small towns, buy property, and build local theocracies.
The well-organized, well-funded operations that already dominate Clallam politics do not sound like Christian Nationalists. They sound like the Sequim Good Governance League, Indivisible, and the League of Women Voters.
How many people in those groups arrived from somewhere else, brought a ready-made ideology, and then ran for office? Look at the Sequim City Council. Count League members on the Sequim School Board. Count Indivisible members on the Charter Review Commission. Count how many Indivisible-aligned appointments Mike French has placed on advisory boards.
Seegers moved here, bought property, and put his name on a ballot. That is an election. The other side already holds the councils, the boards, the commissions, and the appointments. Don’t share the smear. Share the roster: who came from somewhere else, who ran, who got installed, and who already owns the seats that matter.
Remember What This Place Could Be
More people are posting that Clallam still has real potential. What they are tired of is this: question whether the current approach is working, and you are told you lack compassion.
Don’t give up. This county is worth saving.
Small Business Is Not a Prop
One owner said cleaning garbage left by trespassers off the storefront has become a daily chore.
If small businesses are the backbone of the local economy and the tax base for essential services, local government is not treating them like assets. It is treating them like janitors for a policy they did not vote for.
A Takedown on Peabody — and a Choice in November
People driving to Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting watched a police takedown on Peabody Street, where an open-air drug encampment has spread across the sidewalk opposite the Salvation Army. Port Angeles police said a wanted fugitive fled on a bike with a dog in the trailer, crashed, injured the dog, and the dog bit an officer.
Unsanctioned camping on a sidewalk. Open-air drug use. Blocks from the courthouse and City Hall. A fugitive, an injured dog, and a bitten officer are not a surprise. They are the product.
In November, voters decide whether they want more of this.
Three Fingers Pointing Back
The county Health Department is back on the “myths and misinformation” circuit warning of cherry-picked data, emotional framing, and one study treated as scripture while a stack of other peer-reviewed work is ignored.
This is the same department whose health officer, Allison Berry, has called cleaning used needles from abandoned camps theft. It does not measure how many people actually leave addiction for recovery. And the harm-reduction model it sells still leans on a 26-year-old needle-exchange study that does not describe what Clallam is doing on the ground.
A reminder for Health and Human Services: every time you point at someone, three fingers point back at you.
PABA Forum: District 24, Live at 7:30 a.m.
Port Angeles Business Association’s next meeting is Tuesday, September 29, 7:30–8:30 a.m. at Jazzy Joshua’s Restaurant & Lounge and is open to the public. The group is hosting a forum for 24th Legislative District candidates. Kaylee Kuehn and Marcia Kelbon will appear in person.
Still Waiting on the Sign
It has been months. CC Watchdog is still looking for a straight answer to a simple question: What does this sign mean?
Jobs on the West End — Credit Fight Optional
Commissioner Mike French says the Riverside Mill is hiring because of Recompete. Mark Ozias’ NGO, the North Olympic Development Council, wants a piece of the credit too. The record shows the company moved from Canada to Forks because of tariffs. Either way, it is family-wage work for west-end locals. Show up Thursday for the hiring event.
Whose Names Go on the Board
A 2023 photo from Indivisible’s headquarters, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Sequim, shows the reader board memorializing George Floyd (Minneapolis), Breonna Taylor (Louisville), Ahmaud Arbery (Georgia), and Atatiana Jefferson (Fort Worth).
Did that readerboard carry the name of infant Otis — born with fentanyl in his system, then found dead in a car seat in the bushes at Kah Tai Park after his father hid the body? Did it name Ted Eastman of Port Angeles, found dead of a fentanyl overdose in his truck, two days after the family buried another brother lost to the same drug? Did it name Sequim artist Richard Madeo, fatally assaulted just blocks from that church by Aaron Fisher, later convicted of manslaughter?
Virtue signaling is easy when the names are national, and the cost is plastic letters. Local deaths require some uncomfortable accountability.
The Audit They Waited to Mention
A Facebook user asked why everyone has “conveniently forgotten” this: inadequate internal controls over financial and accounting reporting in 2022 and 2023; the public not told about the investigation until after the election; City Council members and commissioners, including Mike French, sat on that board knowing they themselves were under the auditor’s review; the matter still referred to a prosecutor and still unfinished.
The Peninsula Daily News story landed in November 2025, less than a week after voters had already been to the polls, and after a local blogger broke the story.
Pay attention to who sat on that board, who still sits there, and what they failed to fix for more than a decade to let this happen.
Read Clallamity Jen
Clallamity Jen’s latest on Substack, “Welcome to the Clallam Zone,” is worth a read. She takes the League of Women Voters apart on moral consistency — not as a civics club that stumbled, but as an ideological shop that will move the goalposts whenever the team needs a new position.
Read it, then ask whether “nonpartisan” still means anything in this county.
One Street, Two Rules
Rita on Facebook caught the Port Angeles split screen: on one side of Park Avenue, encampments along Peabody Creek are not allowed because the National Park Service owns the land. On the other side of Park Avenue, encampments spread because it is city property. The problem is not mysterious. It is unenforced. Port Angeles City Council: this is the part where you listen.
A Blast Near Tumwater Creek
A resident near the Tumwater Creek encampment heard something like a bomb. The explosion rolled across the city. Neighbors also report constant gunfire and fireworks.
Is this the “compassionate” model you are comfortable funding for “our most vulnerable”? Will it take a blast that takes out a council member’s windows? A firework that finds a commissioner’s roof? Until then, it is just another night in Port Angeles.
Help Wanted — Depending on Your Paperwork
The Jamestown Corporation is hiring. For the county’s second-largest employer, the posting is clear: “American Indian/Alaska Native preferences apply.”
That is not a level field. It is a racial screen for the county’s second-largest employer.
There are 17 openings: only seven full-time, five part-time, five per diem with no guaranteed hours. Transport driver (per diem) and peer support start at $20.91. Cedar Greens sales consultant starts at $17.50. The “living-wage jobs” that press releases advertise look a lot like this one: Addiction Medicine Executive Director at Jamestown Healing Clinic in Sequim, $239,937.50–$279,927.00.
“Lead with purpose. Make an impact. Enjoy balance.” That might be easy to do at a quarter million a year. The rest of the workforce is closer to minimum wage.
@JeffTozzer, thank you for highlighting the upcoming hiring event here in Forks on October 1st!
If you're interested, I highly encourage you to attend or reach out using the contact info in the article.
For anyone considering making the move to the West End, here is a great resource with more information about our community: https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/WA/Forks-Demographics.html?utm_source=gemini
Thanks, Jeff, for another good article bringing up so many topics we all see daily. I have watched this county for more than fifty years through the eyes of my family, and I have lived here long enough to know exactly what it used to be: safe, respectful, and community minded. What is happening now is not a minor shift — it is a collapse. And it is devastating to witness.
The tone of public behavior has become openly hostile. The vulgar signs, the screaming, the foul language shouted in front of children — this is not “activism.” It is indecency. It is adults modeling cruelty and rage for the next generation. Anyone who has lived here long enough knows this is not who we were. This is not how neighbors treated each other. And it is absolutely not how responsible adults behave in public spaces. I have never seen such anger and vileness anywhere I have lived before.
I am appalled by the way "national narratives" continue to be their rallying point are being forced onto our local community. People shout slogans but refuse to look at actual crime statistics. They cherry pick whatever fits their ideology and ignore everything else. They do not want truth; they want outrage. And they weaponize that outrage against anyone who disagrees. The hypocrisy is staggering. Have any of these people gone on ride-a-longs, been a first responder, walked in the shoes of police officer, had a gun pointed at them, been shot at, been assaulted. My guess would be no. They are just lemmings who cling on to anything against civility. And somehow, they make themselves a “victim”, the perpetual “victim”. Sickening.
Meanwhile, crime is no longer something you hear about — it is something you live with. The police scanner says it all. And on my small county road alone, I have seen hand to hand drug deals, found baggies of narcotics in the street, had mail stolen, and dealt with drug impaired strangers pounding on my door. We have had search warrants, foot pursuits, and repeated law enforcement activity. This is not “fear.” This is reality. I moved here to retire in peace, not to watch my neighborhood turn into a corridor for drug traffic and crime.
And now we are losing good families. A neighbor — a small business owner, the kind of person who strengthens a community — is leaving the state because of what is being taught in our schools, including policies that allow boys into girls’ bathrooms. And that is not the only family I know, there have been quite a few others that have packed up and left. When families like that decide they’ve had enough, it should be a wake up call for every leader in this county. Perhaps, the “leaders” in this county are cheering for this as well minded folks are leaving and be replaced with the likes of the LWV …etc.
Instead, we see the same small circle of people sitting on board after board, recycling the same ideas, pushing more grant money, and raising property taxes as if that is a long term solution. It is not. It is financial mismanagement dressed up as progress. And to the average resident here, most don’t know of grants and the funding which flows into this county and those in charge, I think, rely on that lack of knowledge in folks. The conflicts of interest, the lack of transparency, and the insular decision making are unacceptable. A handful of individuals should not be steering the entire county while the rest of us deal with the consequences.
I have even begun to question whether I should stay. This was supposed to be my landing place for the rest of my life. It is heartbreaking to reconsider that.
But I also know this: the majority of people in this county are good, decent, respectful, and tired of being drowned out by a loud minority that thrives on anger and chaos. We are not vulgar. We are not hateful. We are not destructive. We simply want our community back.
Hope alone will not fix this. We must speak up. We must encourage every non voter we know to vote. We must make our voices louder than the small group that has dominated the conversation with hostility and negativity. Not through rage, not through protests, but through unity, determination, and civic participation. It takes a lot of work and it takes a village. And this is our chance to steer this county back and save it.
This county is worth saving. And it will be saved only if the good people who built it — and who still care deeply about it — stand together and demand change.