Norma Turner wants Jake Seegers to settle 2020 before she will trust him with county roads, budgets, and parks. A longtime League of Women Voters leader spent her letter attacking a local challenger over a national question instead of defending Mike French’s record. If the League still claims to be nonpartisan, this is the moment members should ask whether the organization is serving voters or spreading misinformation.
A 50-year League résumé, and a letter that isn’t about Clallam
Norma Turner has spent more than five decades in the League of Women Voters, including multiple terms as president of a group that still markets itself as “nonpartisan.” Her Sept. 19 letter in the Peninsula Daily News is not an analysis of Clallam County government. It is a loyalty test.
She attended a candidate debate and faulted coverage for omitting answers to one question:
“Did Biden win the 2020 election?”
Mike French said yes. Jake Seegers called the question divisive and declined a yes-or-no answer. Turner’s letter then quoted Seegers’ written questionnaire answer: Candidates who give a simple yes or no risk alienating half the county when unity is needed to get things done.
She asked, “Unity around what? Misinformation?” and concluded that if he will not give “the actual answer,” voters cannot trust what he says is reality. She added that he declared nearly a year ago, yet when asked at a forum what his proposals would cost, he didn't even give a ballpark figure. “Is this a candidate who will be accountable?”
What Turner actually asked at the Calico Cat Club — and what both men said
That last charge is worth checking against the recording she was in the room for.
At the Calico Cat Club debate, Turner asked both men for dollar figures on “all the things you promise” — affordable housing for everyone who needs it, job training, immediate treatment, “all the stuff we’ve heard tonight.”
French spoke first. He called it a tough question, then described strategy rather than a total price tag: the county adopted a sales tax for affordable housing that brings in about $1.5 million a year as seed money for federal and state awards; 36 units coming online this month; 24 hoped for next year; a 60- or 70-unit senior project in a few years “if they can figure out that funding stack.” He said the local number does not have to be huge if the strategy multiplies it. Then he admitted, “I know it’s not exactly the answer, but that’s my attempt.”
Seegers answered next by saying he would “answer partially for my opponent.” His critique was not a spreadsheet of every wish list. It was a record:
From 2018 to 2024, county revenues rose about 54%
During that same time, the Bellevue Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 27.6%
Grants jumped 125%
Law enforcement lagged inflation
The road fund declined
The pattern, he said, is always more — more grants, more tax, more government, more money to NGOs. He would not invent an exact number for an open-ended list of promises.
Jake Seegers’ ballpark figure was different:
Do it inside the existing budget
Stop raising taxes on people already carrying the load
Treat public safety as the fiscal lever. Law and justice, he said, is about $33 million. Cut the costs tied to crime, homelessness, and substance abuse by 20 percent, and that is more than $6 million — enough, in his telling, to balance the budget and fund priorities without another tax hike.
Turner’s letter flattened that exchange into:
“He did not give even a ballpark figure.”
French also did not give a ballpark figure. He offered a housing tax stream and hoped grants would stack. Seegers offered growth-versus-inflation numbers and a 20 percent reduction target on a $33 million public-safety line. One answer assumes the solution is a larger funding stack. The other assumes the county already grew faster than inflation and still has a spending problem. Voters can prefer either theory. What they cannot honestly say is that only one man was asked for numbers and only one man failed.
Why 2020 is a screening device, not a job description
A county commissioner does not certify presidential elections or retry 2020 in the county’s district court. Asking every local candidate to relitigate a six-year-old national contest is not civic hygiene. It is a screening device. If the test is “will you say the sentence our side requires,” then the League is no longer measuring fitness for the Board of Commissioners. It is measuring membership in a political congregation.
Turner’s letter spends almost no space on why French deserves another term. It does not walk voters through the lagging Recompete grant’s results, multi-year budget strain, or the Shore Memorial Pool District — a board on which French serves while the State Auditor documented weak controls and a fraud investigation into credit-card and related spending.
Those are local files. They involve money, oversight, and public trust in this county. A 2020 talking point is easier to defend than them.
PDC filings show Turner putting $1,000 into French’s campaign. If the incumbent’s record is the argument, write that argument. Using a League elder’s byline to police a 2020 sound bite — and misrepresent the answer about costs that she herself asked for — is not accountability. It is a dodge.
Seegers declined the 2020 yes-or-no because a county race is not cable news. His voters want taxes, public-trust land, public safety, and whether spending works. Refusing the LWV ritual is not denying reality. It is refusing to be sorted.
The Rudersdorf video: a president, a lecture, and a one-way standard
The same pattern showed up in a recent video circulated under Erik Brihagen’s name but featuring Martha Rudersdorf — a prominent local League activist, Indivisible member, and retired Sequim teacher.
She opened with a “toxic president,” then said that same spirit of disrespect, lying, name-calling, and vitriol has reached Clallam elections. She treated Seegers’ recent apology as too little, too late, and praised French for saying leaders should calm rhetoric and bring people together.
Hold that standard up to the record the other side actually produced.
Lying. Rudersdorf’s Indivisible invited Seegers to answer its questionnaire, then published only French’s answers and presented Seegers’ responses as if they were the opposite of what he wrote. If “lying” is the charge, start with groups that solicit answers and then refuse to present them straight.
Name-calling. On the eve of Seegers’ first debate at Clallam County Democrats’ headquarters, the party’s official Facebook presence labeled him “Fake Jake.” That is not a voter in a comments section. That is an institutional tone-setter before the first joint appearance.
On the topic of name-calling, Rudersdorf’s husband, Dave LeRoux, just published a letter to the editor which insinuates Seegers is a Christian nationalist.
Vitriol. Replacing slashed, stolen, and spray-painted signs has cost the Seegers campaign about $1,000, plus boycott threats against businesses that host them. Slashed signs, blood-smeared anti-Seegers messages, and a Charlie Kirk comparison are not “robust debate.”
Recently, Seegers did something incumbents and activists in this race have not matched: he took the heat onto himself. He did not claim every ugly post came from the other side. He said the race turned toxic months ago, that both supporters and opponents had used name-calling, threats, and foul language — and that he had participated by staying silent until a friend called him on it. Then he asked the community to join him in setting a standard: attack policies, not people; don’t post anything you wouldn’t say to a friend; keep competing hard on public safety, affordability, and spending.
Rudersdorf treats the apology as a problem. It isn’t. Seegers drew a line between policy and personal attack, refused to smear French as a person, and asked the county to argue facts. That is adulthood. Calling it too late gives the LWV game away: French saying “rhetoric is bad” counts as leadership; Seegers asking people to stay on the issues does not. If that statement still isn’t good enough for the League, the standard was never civility. The only outcome that would have satisfied the lecture is Seegers losing.
Property destruction, missing local files, and the fading League brand
French’s own past comment on property destruction sits awkwardly next to lectures about civic tone. He has been quoted saying property destruction is “not only fine,” and is “usually the only way we’ve ever seen actual change happen.”
A commissioner who has normalized destruction as a tool of change is a weak messenger when the other campaign’s signs are being destroyed. Accountability, if it means anything, runs both directions.
The $118,000 safe-parking program is the kind of file a “nonpartisan” League should be worried about: county money sent by Commissioner French to a Sequim church, then paid out to OlyCAP, an NGO on whose board French serves. If League voices want to lecture about accountability, start there. A 2020 quiz is easier, but voters can tell the difference.
What has worn thin in Clallam County is the performance of neutrality. The League of Women Voters built a reputation on candidate forums, voter guides, and the idea that process matters more than team. A local chapter that treats a presidential-election catechism as the gateway to county office, while its most prominent members donate, endorse, and narrate for one Democrat-aligned incumbent, is not hiding its politics. It is advertising them.
Groupthink is comfortable. County government is not a congregation.
Groupthink never calls itself groupthink. It calls itself moral certainty: the answer is settled, and the offense is refusing to recite it. That may be comfortable, but it is a lousy way to choose a county commissioner.
Jake Seegers is running as an independent against an incumbent with a record voters can inspect without a 2020 decoder ring. At the forum that Turner attended, Seegers didn't price a wish list because he doesn't accept it. He said the county already outran inflation, backfilled with grants, and shorted core services — and that a 20 percent cut in the downstream cost of crime and addiction on a $33 million justice budget is the fiscal path that does not require another tax. French said strategy and seed money. Turner only heard what she wanted to.
If League members still believe their organization is for voters rather than for a faction, the respectful move is simple: drop the national litmus test, put French’s local file on the table next to Seegers’ budget argument, and let Clallam County decide which one is actually accountable.
The question was: "Did Biden win the 2020 election?"
The theme of the conversation was: "Quality of Life in Clallam County."
In my opinion, the beauty of the Calico Cat Club town halls and candidate conversations is that anyone can ask a question and questions aren't curated.
But there were a few guidelines that the questioners and candidates were informed of: relate it to the theme, no "gotcha" questions, ask questions to both candidates, candidates are free to decline to respond, and there should be respect for everyone.
At the end of the evening, there were a few folks still in line who didn't have the opportunity to ask their questions because time ran out. It's a shame that one questioner chose to use up time w/ this gotcha question, which one of the candidates appropriately (and in accordance to the stated guidelines) declined to answer because it was irrelevant to the topics of the evening.
Her complaint printed in the paper is that the candidate followed the guidelines (and she didn't)?
The party of fraud and swindles. The party of the Nick Shirley Act for catching them in a fraud and swindle. The party of the Communist bare hook. The party of flubber and magic beans...The party of pleading the 5th. The party of pardon's for political witch hunting their opponents... The party that has no chance to get my vote.