OLYMPIA, Wash.—A capacity crowd gathered in the main dining room of Joshua’s Restaurant Tuesday to salute Rep. Steve Tharinger, who is retiring after 25 years as a Clallam County Commissioner and State Legislator in Olympia.
It was primary election day—Tuesday, Aug. 4—and Tharinger joked that he is trying to adjust to his name not being on the ballot for the first time since 1985. The breakfast was sponsored by the Port Angeles Business Association (PABA). PABA Director Andrew May greeted Tharinger, hailing his decade of service as Chair of the Washington State Capital Budget Committee. Tharinger pushed through legislation providing billions of dollars in benefits for the entire State of Washington and “millions upon millions, upon millions of dollars back to our district,” May said.
Tharinger is, by nature, a modest person, likely to understate his own contributions and exaggerate the service of others. Yet he said he travels throughout Legislative District 24 that he represents and across the state and sees many structures he helped build, knowing that they will last for many years to come.
During the Q&A, one Port Angeles businessman challenged Tharinger about candidates on the Democratic slate who identify themselves as “Democratic Socialists.” I was waiting for Tharinger to echo Donald Trump in heaping scorn on socialists. But he shook his head. “If you heard my opening, you know I don’t like labels,” Tharinger replied. “Are more funds for our schools socialism? Is more money for health care socialism? We should judge proposals by their impact on people’s lives, not attach labels to them.”
Another questioner said budget deficits are growing, that the legislature approves funding for benefit programs without the tax revenues to cover these costs. Tharinger acknowledged that yes, the demand for funds to help cover the costs of affordable housing, education and healthcare keeps rising, while tax revenues lag behind. People embrace these added services and benefits as necessities and protest when they are taken away.
Tharinger cited the Millionaire Tax, expected to generate as much as $4 billion, as one source to replace cutbacks inflicted under Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful” budget measure. Tharinger called it the “Big Bull” budget bill. He reminded the crowd that the Legislature has approved more than $1 billion to build affordable housing complexes. The private contractor took the money, but the projects have not been completed, and the people are waiting for delivery of the houses.
The crowd, which included more than a dozen members of the Democratic Party, including Clallam Democratic Party Chairwoman Ellen Menshew, gave Tharinger a warm ovation. I counted five members of my family present, all of us strong supporters of Steve Tharinger. For many years he was a neighbor living right across the Dungeness River from us. Now he lives in Port Townsend.
I shook Tharinger’s hand and recalled a time Joyce and I were shopping at Costco and ran into him. I had just watched an episode of Frontline with an interview with Norman Ornstein, one of the main talking heads of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Ornstein’s subject was his recent book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With The Politics of Extremism.
Standing in the Costco aisle that day, I told Tharinger I was stunned by Ornstein’s blistering attack on Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, doubly unexpected because AEI is a highly conservative think tank. He was nodding as I gushed enthusiasm for Ornstein’s brilliant analysis of the menace to democracy posed by the MAGA extremists.
“Yes,” Tharinger replied when I had calmed down, “I didn’t see that episode of Frontline. But I have read Ornstein’s book, and it is very, very impressive.”
I told him at the breakfast salute for him this morning that I was stunned by his reply to me back in 2013. “You! A politician who reads books!” He threw back his head and laughed.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views expressed here are those of the author.
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