A letter I sent to the Reflector:

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I’m seeing a great many canned letters from and for Jon Russell in his orchestrated letter to the editor campaign, letters giving the illusion that he has broad support from around the district; letters that oddly happen to be roughly the same length with verbiage hot off his web site.

The problem is this: Russell is a Washougal City Councilman. During Russell’s tenure, Washougal has been a disaster at the city government level, a disaster Russell obviously wants to bail out on before it’s fixed. That this guy couldn’t even stand up to Sellers tells me he’s incapable of standing “against” either federal mandates OR Frank Chopp.

First, he signs off on an unbondable city finance director who cost $48,000 to fire. Then, he signs off on Stacy Sellers’ and Jeff Bivens’ expense report from Vegas. Then, $100,000 in city money mysteriously vaporizes. Then Russell, ever the career politician, launches an abysmal failure of a congressional campaign, and now, with his term limits shtick, he’s telling us that under his plan, we wouldn’t have Joe Zarelli, Ed Orcutt, Don Benton or, while they were in the House, Marc Boldt or Tom Mielke allowed to run for office to represent us.

Last May, he lied to the 18th District PCOs at a meeting I was at, telling them he had raised $10,000 when the number was closer to $5,500, and referring to his nurse practitioner wife as a “physician,” period. Combine that with the thousands he earned from the Vancouver Port Levy as he tried to help them ram a horrific tax increase down the throats of the people a while back… and the true Jon Russell emerges.

Russell, who ran for city council while also running for Congress, has a duty to the people of Washougal to straighten out the mess that HE is in large part responsible for before he bails on them and climbs another rung on his political career ladder. I, for one, want to be able to think for myself. I don’t need an incompetent career politician like Russell, who’s entire resume’ is political, to come out here from some other state a few years ago and tell me who I can, or cannot vote for. Which is just one of the many reasons why I won’t be voting for Russell.
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