Defining moments for civil society and our commissioners

Published 1:30 am Friday, February 27, 2026

DEAR READER: Each morning that the U.S. Supreme Court is in session, clerks uphold one of its oldest traditions: Quills like those used as ink pens in days of yore are placed on the attorneys’ tables.

Former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton had his quills framed — 14 souvenirs of the cases he argued before the high court as our attorney general.

“Which one is for the Boldt Decision?” I needled him one day when I was working on his biography.

“I can’t remember,” he said with a smile and a wince.

Gorton’s challenge to the landmark tribal fishing rights decision was one of only three Supreme Court cases he lost. Chief Justice Warren Burger earlier had observed that Gorton made “the best arguments before the Supreme Court of any attorney general in America.”

But in the summer of 1979, Burger and five other justices handed Gorton a stinging rebuke. The intent of the treaties signed in the 1850s was “unambiguous,” the 6-3 majority held, affirming Federal Judge George H. Boldt’s decision that the treaty tribes were entitled to up to 50 percent of the catch in their “usual and accustomed places.”

Though “obviously disappointed,” Gorton said the state, as promised when he addressed the high court, would comply with the outcome.

Five years later, when Judge Boldt died, Gorton offered condolences to the judge’s family, friends and colleagues. Any attorney who had argued a case in Boldt’s courtroom knew he was “one of a kind,” Gorton said. The judge had “served what he considered our best interests …with the great love for the law that makes ours the civil society it is.”

SADLY, NONE OF the virtues of a civil society were on display in President Trump’s tantrum over the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision that he exceeded his authority in levying tariffs. Apparently never told “No” as a child, the president was “absolutely ashamed” that two of the justices he appointed to the high court actually believe Congress is a co-equal branch of government.

Justices Barrett and Gorsuch are “an embarrassment to their families,” the president said, because they sided with Chief Justice Roberts (also a Republican-appointee) and the court’s three liberals, whom he excoriated as a “disgrace to our nation.” Further, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and other opponents of his tariff-of-the-week agenda, including rock-ribbed Republican farmers, mom-and-pop importers, and port officials, are “obnoxious, ignorant and loud … sleazebags,” the president declared.

So much for civility and the rule of law.

Meantime, the president marked the death of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a lion of the Civil Rights movement, telling a Black History Month observance that the protégé of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a “force of nature like few others before him — a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and street smarts.”

The president did not note that the Rev. Jackson risked his life to advance voting rights. Nor did the president seize the moment to apologize for the White House social media post depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, a racist trope as old as Jim Crow.

To borrow his own words, the president should be absolutely ashamed such a thing occurred on his watch. Imagine the justifiable firestorm from the right had the Obamas depicted Donald and Melania in such a degrading manner.

Aren’t we better than all this?

HERE ON THE HARBOR, the bad news that County Commissioner Vickie Raines is resigning, effective March 31, was offset by the announcement a day later that she will become the chief executive officer of Community Integrated Health Services, a behavioral health agency that serves five Southwest Washington counties. In her 26 years of public service, from the Cosmopolis Council to the Courthouse, Raines has had a front row seat to gauge the devastating impact of mill closures and timber harvest cutbacks.

There’s not enough room today to enumerate all of Vickie Raines’ achievements as a mayor and county commissioner. They reach way beyond her Third District, including sewage treatment and drainage projects; common-sense land-use planning; criminal justice and economic development initiatives; her tireless work as chair of the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority and her diplomatic skills championing the crucial North Shore Levee flood control project stalemated by the Trump Administration’s shocking betrayal of the county the president carried three times.

Raines emphasized, “Not one of these accomplishments was possible by me alone. These were collaborative projects, requiring the creation and nurturing of partnerships among tribal nations, municipalities, agricultural interests, state and federal leaders, and most importantly to me, our staff. We set aside partisanship and personal priorities to advance what was good for Grays Harbor.”

AT THE MEETING where she announced the timing of her resignation, Raines appealed to her fellow commissioners, Rick Hole and Georgia Miller, to name an interim appointee with a track record for bipartisanship — the hallmark of her 11 years as a moderate, “no party preference” commissioner. Clearly, in electing Raines three times, the voters were endorsing her commitment to representing her district with zero regard for political party fealty.

It is now unclear, however, whether Hole and Miller — two Republicans — are entitled to fill a seat formerly held by a commissioner elected as nonpartisan. Raines tried to clarify the law with a bill that died earlier this month in the Legislature. The existing ambiguous statute remains in force.

“The crux of the issue,” according to the Municipal Research and Services Center, “is that the constitutional provision regarding filling a partisan vacancy and the state law allowing for non-partisan candidacies arguably conflict. Washington’s Constitution requires that partisan county vacancies be filled from a list of three nominees supplied by the county central committee of the same political party as the departing officer. When the predecessor expresses ‘no party preference’ (a status allowed under the Top-Two system), there is no corresponding party central committee, and state law does not address how to proceed.”

So, stay tuned. The county prosecutor may need to seek a formal opinion from the attorney general to resolve the issue.

GEORGIA MILLER, meantime, won election handily in 2024. But Rick Hole prevailed that same year by only 436 votes over Brian Blake, a centrist Democrat with an impressive bipartisan record as a state legislator in league with Lynn Kessler, Jim Hargrove, Sid Snyder and Brian Hatfield. These “roadkill” Democrats stood for people over party, forging alliances on both sides of the political aisle to the great benefit of Grays Harbor.

I find it difficult to grasp why our county offices are partisan. I want a commissioner, assessor, sheriff and auditor who represent me, the taxpayer — not a Trump, Biden or political party platform.

If it falls to them to appoint Raines’ interim successor, our two first-term county commissioners will have an opportunity to demonstrate their own fair-minded dedication to bipartisan public service. Are they real Republicans, fundamentally dedicated to principle over party, or MAGA foot soldiers?

If they were to install a MAGA candidate to give him or her the advantage of incumbency, albeit brief, going into the fall elections, we will know the answer.

John C. Hughes was chief historian for the Office of the Secretary of State for 17 years after retiring as editor and publisher of The Daily World in 2008.