Marc Doney edged out Michael Heath by 35 votes in this year’s primary for County Commissioner for District 1. Nick Timm garnered the most votes- 46.29%. Now that District 1 has chosen their top two, the election goes to the entire county. District 2 County Commissioner Andy Hover, who represents the Methow Valley, is running unopposed, so the only competitive commissioner race is District 1.
Doney will be at a meet and greet at the Coaches’ Lounge in Twisp this Sunday, Sept. 15 from 6-7 pm. A community discussion group, open to everyone, will be held at the same location 5-6 pm. The Coaches’ Lounge is located across the street from the Methow Valley Community Center.
Earlier this year, MVE published an interview with Nick Timm. There will be an update coming soon as there is a challenge that will be heard this week to Timm’s residency in District 1, a requirement for running for that office seat.
Below are Doney’s written responses to questions submitted by MVE.
For those people that may not be familiar with you, tell us about yourself and some of the things that you have been involved in.
I was raised in a low income, impoverished home and experienced many years of food stamps and government assistance with two brothers in rural Snohomish County. I learned very early in life the value of hard work and personal responsibility and I firmly believe that consistency and an unwavering work ethic will always trump excuses, government handouts, and a victim mentality. All of my life I have believed that no job was beneath me and therefore spent my early teenage and high school years picking cucumbers & berries, working on a chicken farm, cleaning park trails with the Forest Service, digging ditches for irrigation systems, working sun up to sun down on a dairy farm, and numerous other manual labor jobs that teach the value of a hard-earned dollar.
After graduating high school as an honor student with a 3.8 GPA, I continued to work for a small landscape company and got married to my wife of now 34 years at the age of 18. I then joined the Marine Corps for six years and served as an Infantry Squad Leader and CQB Team Member/Instructor before separating from service with an honorable discharge. I received numerous citations and awards while on active duty and also became a certified HRST Master, Weapons & Tactics Instructor, and made several deployments overseas including being a part of the 1stBN, 7th Marines, in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia. During my time in the Corps, Leanne and I had two children (one son and one daughter) and my wife showed some incredible resiliency and fortitude as a veritable “single mother” while I spent roughly 4 years and 4 months separated from them over the course of my six-year enlistment.
After returning to civilian life, I returned to the trades working as a drywaller, framer, landscaper, etc. and eventually opened my own general contracting company. After several years of running my own business, we moved our family to Central WA around 2003 and ended up spending approximately seven years in law enforcement finishing that career with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. While in law enforcement, I earned numerous awards and certifications and served as the class president at the Academy, became a certified Firearms Instructor, a Defensive Tactics Instructor, and was assigned to a special Traffic Enforcement Unit.
After completing my time in law enforcement, I opened my own Private Defense Investigator company and ran that for a little over seven years out of the city of Wenatchee. During that time, while I continued my investigative work, we also ended up moving to Omak in 2013 where I became the pastor of a small church at the north end of town called River of Life, and I continue to do so today.
After spending many years conducting investigatory work for criminal and civil cases (and having to work far too many sexually motivated crimes against children), I decided to cease work within the jurisprudence system altogether and I reopened a general contracting business (Ambiance Construction) that is still in operation to the present day. Recently, in March of 2024, I took on a new position with the City of Omak working directly in partnership with Omak P.D. in designing and creating a new volunteer-based crime prevention program known as Team O.N.E. (Omak Neighborhood Engagement).
Why do you want to run for Okanogan County commissioner?
I believe that every one of us has a part to play in the fate of our communities, our state, and our nation; and therefore, we should at a minimum do our civic duty, make our voices heard, and VOTE! But even more than that, I also believe that real change takes strong leadership, the kind of leadership that is unwilling to stand by and do nothing, but very willing to actively be a part of the process. And I am that kind of leader; someone who isn’t afraid to, “…get their hands dirty,” and get involved personally and do some of the heavy lifting.
My wife and I have spent the last 21 years in Central WA with the last 11 of those years being right here in the Okanogan Valley. In fact, I’m the only candidate for District #1 Commissioner who can say that they have lived for over a decade in the actual district they are running in. And I didn’t play a “shell game” with my voter registration and legal place of residency in the final hour to make it look like I am legally eligible to run in this District.
I have, and will always care about the Community I live in, which means I genuinely care about the people who are my neighbors, friends, relatives, co-workers, and fellow citizens, and in the last eleven years my wife and I have made some of the most meaningful and impactful friendships we have ever had which means the valley has now not just become home but the place we will die in. Ever since we have moved here, in collaboration with the efforts of many others within our church family and other local residents, we have continued to actively seek to improve the lives of others by providing temporary housing for the homeless through the devastating fires of the 2014/2015 fire seasons and beyond, providing pantry items and food to low-income families, providing Christmas gifts to low-income children, donating hundreds of labor hours to local projects like the homeless shelters in Okanogan or making repairs to people’s private residences, and being an active participant in other community projects and fundraisers like CareNet, Operation Christmas Child, and more.
I have had hundreds of conversations with a host of my fellow citizens about the state of this nation and the impacts we are all feeling from the changes occurring in the political realm, and that has now compelled me to run for public office to join in efforts to do everything we can to keep our nation from continuing down the road of ruin due to governmental deficiency, unconstitutional overreach, excessive taxation, and the continual erosion of our God given rights to individual freedom, personal liberty, and private property. And as I said at the outset, I’m just not willing to stand by and do nothing. I can’t. Because I really believe this is the most important election cycle of my lifetime.
And while some may call me an idealist, I actually believe that change is still possible and I’m willing to fight for it on behalf of my constituency. If I am elected at the will of the People, I will never forget that I am nothing more and nothing less than a Public Servant; a “servant” who is supposed to be a voice for those I serve. And I vow that I will always examine all official County business through a singular litmus test: “Is this action or decision actually good for the People of Okanogan County?”
What are some things that you’ve learned while campaigning?
My eyes have truly been opened, ‘cause I have learned just how “dirty” politics can actually be. From the very beginning I have purposefully run my campaign on Policies & a Platform. My opponent, on the other hand, has from the very beginning run a campaign based in, as I said, dirty politics. He and his supporters have verbally attacked my family, stolen thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of my signs, filed numerous fallacious complaints with the PDC, accused me of running an illegal business with church funds and property, attempted to disparage my law enforcement career, accused me of repeatedly beating my wife, “…black and blue,” and much more. The proverbial mudslinging, as they say, has indeed become so prevalent I feel like I need to put on veritable hip-waders nearly every time I leave the house.
And either he or his supporters have even gone so far as to create fake social media accounts just so they can attempt to disparage my business AND our church through online comments and reviews, and pretend that they have either done business with me (wherein I supposedly screwed them over), or have supposedly attended our services (wherein I am asking people to worship me and running some kind of cult). It’s been absolutely ridiculous, underhanded, and outright juvenile to say the least and speaks volumes of the kind of immature character one can expect to be brought with them into Public Office.
What are some of the strengths you see in Okanogan County and what are some issues?
The strengths I’ve seen in this County are numerous. I think our entire County is filled with a massive variety of people from all walks of life who are some of the most tenacious, hardworking, and freedom loving people I’ve ever met. They’ve literally been able to recover from the most devastating fires this state has ever experienced, and did so within one of the most impoverished counties the state possesses. And the majority of that recovery came from the blood, sweat, and tears of their own labor, efforts, money, philanthropy, and time; and NOT from some slap in-the-face rotten, worm infested apples from Governor Inslee.
One of the other strengths I see is that many, many people I know, and have personally interacted with, are willing to sit down and have substantive conversations about the kinds of deep, meaningful issues that affect the lives of all of us, even if it’s someone who may happen to disagree with them. I too am cut from that same cloth, because I’ve always believed that the goal of these kinds of conversations shouldn’t be to just be right, or to scream the loudest, or spew the most rhetoric. Rather, the goal should always be to seek to find the truth; even if the truth ends up being something you have to wrestle with, and potentially find initially disagreeable. Unfortunately, many choose to just revert to ad hominem and personal pejoratives to make themselves feel better or virtue signal and decide to remove themselves altogether from any mature, constructive dialogue and amicable solutions.
It is the truth in a matter that is actually going to be the most beneficial for anyone, including those who (like County commissioners) have to many times make tough decisions that not everyone may agree with. But also decisions that can at times (and should) require significant, contemplative review rather than any knee jerk reactionary decision seeking to just deal with the proverbial “squeakiest wheel.” Otherwise, poor, unwise, and unbeneficial decisions are made to the detriment of the Citizens and their lives.
With regard to “issues,” there appear to be many: public safety and lack of LEOs, excessive regulation and bureaucracy over farmers & ranchers, having to do more and more with less and less County revenue, excessive taxation on individuals & businesses, further loss of property & water rights, bloated state government & their unconstitutional overreach, a failing educational system, lack of affordable housing, a substantial homeless and mental illness population, the continual efforts of the State or Feds to gobble up more and more land, infrastructure issues, unfunded State and/or Federal mandates, access to affordable hydroelectric power, unemployment, small business and economic development, a lack of permanent health care workers, and the list truly seems to go on and on.
To me, the bottom line is our County is continually faced with very tough socioeconomic as well as purely fiscal issues along with a host of other things that are very difficult to solve and/or find solutions for, because we only have so many resources with which to solve them. And I don’t think that job is going to get any easier any time soon. Which just stresses even more how much we need the right kind of levelheaded leadership at the County level to make sure it gets done correctly, for the right reasons, and for the benefit for the most amount of the Citizenry as possible; not just a select few.
What would you like to work on if you are elected commissioner?
There are several things that are at the top of my list but for the sake of time I will just name a few. For starters, I look forward to working with our Sheriff in continuing efforts to increase our ability to accomplish further Public Safety and believe I have the kind of direct, firsthand knowledge and experience that is needed to get that done. And it is very humbling, and means an awful lot to me, to have his direct endorsement; so I look forward to the opportunity of being able to work with him AND the prosecutor’s office to further the safety of all life and personal property of the citizens of this County.
I am also very much interested in taking a significant stance in support of our local farmers and ranchers and being a voice for them at both the state and federal levels by keeping continual lines of communication open with our state and federal representatives and doing all that we can to make sure we stop the incredible amount of loss we are seeing within the Ag community (3,700+ farms gone in the last five years!). This is HUGELY important to me because if you control the people’s food supply, you control the people. And things like the USDA’s “Sustains” initiative, and the EPA’s recent “Clean Water Act” are not helping … they’re hurting; and they’re going to continue to bankrupt or overregulate farmers and ranchers right out of existence.
Lastly, I am also extremely interested in fighting to keep our public lands from going up in flames year after year, after year. The mismanagement of our forests for decades now appears to be a complete debacle, BUT not unfixable. And I am encouraged by some of the recent conversations that I have had with those who are in the know who state that lines of communication, available resources, better equipment, increased employee rosters, etc are all starting to help make a difference. But we need someone like myself within the BOCC who is willing to keep looking into how the hundreds of millions of dollars allocated by the state are being spent towards forest management and fire mitigation (Cf. $328 Million being released from 2021 to 2027, House bill 1168). There is NO way we can allow those funds to either fall through the cracks or be wasted in governmental inefficiency or lack of oversight.
What is your position on zoning?
I believe a sustainable development policy has to look at the existing wants and needs of a Community/County and the Citizenry’s desire to develop businesses, residential housing, agricultural endeavors, and other private or public sector projects alongside of its potential impact upon said Community/County and the environment. Which is to say, it needs to be conducted through a contemplative, balanced approach. I think the correct way to assess & evaluate all potential future development is to first obtain as accurately as possible information, data, or analysis on any potential economic, environmental, and maybe even social impact said development may or may not have.
However, careful analysis or the presumptive assumption of potentially negative impacts (especially unsubstantiated ones) should never trump the County’s ability to flourish and grow as the Citizenry need and/or desire (Cf. RCW 46.52.030, “… the public interest will be fully protected.”)
In other words, it is true that all of these factors need to be weighed against the availability of resources (e.g. water, waste management, infrastructure, etc.) and the ability of those resources (limited or unlimited) to adequately meet the potentially new needs from said projects that will draw from them; however, we already appear to have an adequate supply of governmental organizations (e.g. EPA, SEPA, MCPAs, etc), WACs, and RCWs, all currently providing oversight as it were to ensure this type of analysis occurs; but I believe even a non-regulated, commonsense approach will also show itself to be valuable in its own right.
For instance, at the very least we should not be allowing any governmental intrusion and legislative decree to cause a Community/County to have so few residential dwellings being built (i.e. single family homes, apartments, townhouse, etc.) that the gap between the number of available “living spaces” and the number of households seeking them becomes so great that it drives already steep rent and mortgage rates to climb even higher and remain virtually unreachable for the average Okanogan County resident to ever afford them.
At the end of the day, I believe that our ability to possess and maintain individual property rights (as enshrined by the Constitution itself) are absolutely foundational not only to a Citizen’s ability to prosper but are axiomatic for them to live truly free. It was the Founders themselves who purposed through the use of Common Law, State Law, and the U.S. Constitution to protect our property rights; which include, but are not limited to, our ability to acquire, use, and dispose of said property freely and unfettered. If we don’t have free and fair elections, and we are deprived of our ability to possess private property then we simply are not truly free and move from the position of being U.S. Citizens and into the position of being overregulated subjects.
Do you think it’s important to maintain the character of Okanogan County and if so, how would you do it?
While I can guess and speculate what may be meant here by the term “character,” it is impossible for me to really answer this without further clarification and a more specific definition of what the word is, and its intended context. For instance, someone might say that a part of Okanogan County’s “character” is that it is the largest County in land mass, but the Citizens themselves only own about 22-23% of that land (with only about 18% being actual usable land); that is something I would definitely not want to maintain as a part of its “character” (i.e. the further loss of private property to some governmental agency).
Whereas, if someone were to say that a part of Okanogan County’s “character” is being a more conservative and constitutionally sound County that is predominantly interested in retaining all of our God-given, constitutionally protected rights as, “…endowed by our Creator;” well then that is a part of its “character” that I would most definitely be in wholehearted support of maintaining.
How do you see the Methow Valley and what do you want to share with people here?
I believe the Methow Valley has a rich history of being one of the hard working, land loving, environmentally rich communities that I mentioned before. In short, it has a strong history going all the way back to the mining operations of the late 1800’s and yet is finding itself being confronted with a diverse future because it offers so much to so many different people from all kinds of different backgrounds, experiences, and cultures.
It probably goes without saying that the Methow Valley is experiencing a significant blending with those who may be generations long, lifelong residents, and can trace their family roots to original homesteaders; those who are new and recent transplants, and everyone else in between. And each of those groups have different desires and ideas of how they want to see the Methow develop (or not develop) as we continue to move through the 21st Century.
At the end of the day, as I stated previously with regard to zoning issues, I believe that it is the People themselves who will best be able to decide how we deal with all of the issues facing the Methow Valley (e.g. water rights & usage, residential & commercial development, forest management, etc) and NOT some bureaucratic, governmental agency sitting in an office over in Olympia. Therefore, if I am elected as one of the next County Commissioners, I will be interested in working more with the People rather than with a bureaucrat because I want to hear THEIR voice in the matter, not Olympia’s.
How do you envision working with other commissioners?
I can, and am willing to, bring an open mind to any conversation with any person from any background, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, or belief system; and am always willing to engage in the marketplace of ideas. Therefore, I envision sitting down with the other Commissioners on a normative, routine basis and joining with them in conducting business for the betterment of the Citizens of this County. And I envision having open, substantive, mature dialogue and conversations wherein we each bring our own experiences, skill set, backgrounds, and abilities to find as much common ground as possible to ensure that the Citizens we serve are being provided the best possible leadership and the best possible decision-making actions that we can provide for them.
I do not see my role as the “newcomer” being added to the BOCC as being someone who is there to simply be a “nay-sayer” just to be antagonistic or argumentative for the sake of argument. But I also do not see my role as being simply just another “yes man” for politics as usual. Rather, I see my role as being one in which I bring in some “fresh blood,” new perspectives, and hopefully an enthusiasm and renewed energy for us to return to public service as being a results-oriented and life flourishing approach to local government for ALL the citizens of Okanogan County, as well as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions and always willing to ask, “Is this actually beneficial for the Citizens living in our County?”
Is there anything that I didn’t cover that you would like to add?
I believe there is a disconnect right now between “Politicians” and the Citizenry because a lot of people don’t feel like most Public Servants view themselves anymore as just that, servants. Instead, I think a lot of people feel like government has grown to become bloated and out of control and oftentimes acts like a faceless, bureaucratic, lifeless entity that is no longer beholden to the People; and I want to fix that.
If I’m elected as the next District #1 Commissioner, I want people to feel like I am approachable and always willing to listen; literally someone who can be contacted and spoken to, not someone hiding behind a title, position, or bureaucratic wall as it were. And I believe this could be accomplished by simply making myself available on a routine basis; perhaps as easily as hosting a “Coffee with the Commish” on a regular basis (perhaps monthly) and making those meetings known in advance to the Citizens I serve so that they can come “breathe air” with me and be heard by those who were elected to represent THEM!
If you’d like more information on me and/or my positions, you can most definitely call me, email me ([email protected]), or find me on Instagram, Facebook, and the web: www.partytoelectmarcdoney.com. Thank you for this opportunity to answer these questions and correspond with the Citizens of this great County
Thanks for publishing this article!!