Riveters Collective 2018 Endorsement Process and Information
- Riveters Collective has Washington Nonprofit Corporation status, which allows electoral activity, including endorsements.
- RC Member Jae Heidenreich volunteered to be the Endorsements Committee Chair.
- RC recruited endorsement committee members by an open call to members through Facebook and email.
- RC excluded anyone from the committee who had already begun working on a campaign, is a candidate for a local office, or has a formal leadership role in a major political party. For this reason, RC board members Lisa McShane and Stephen Jackson were excluded from the Endorsement Committee, and abstained from involvement in the process. Michael Peñuelas began working on Tim Ballew’s campaign halfway through the endorsement process and excluded himself from participating in the 42nd district senate race endorsement work. Elizabeth Hartsoch and Eowyn Savela supported the committee’s work, but did not serve on the committee. Elizabeth actively worked on the campaigns of Tim Ballew and Carol Frazey, and excluded herself from assisting the committee’s work on the 42nd district senate race and the county council race.
- Eleven people responded to the call, met the criteria, completed the application and were appointed to the endorsement committee. Three of the eleven committee members, also serve on the RC board: Lisa Van Doren, Michael Peñuelas, and Towhee Wean. The other committee members were: Jae Heidenreich, Arlene Feld, Julie Batten (who had to resign from the committee early for personal reasons), Debbi Anderson-Frey, Galen Herz, Amy Rydel, Mehar Singh, and Maggie Davis-Bower.
- Endorsement committee members formed sub-groups to work on the six different positions.
- Recognizing that the RC leadership team and endorsement committee are not sufficiently representative of the larger community–and more importantly the more marginalized and vulnerable members of the community–and recognizing that many local progressive groups are prohibited from making candidate endorsements, RC solicited feedback from groups representing diverse interests. We received and incorporated input from Recreation Northwest, Susan Marks, Whatcom Peace & Justice Center, the Lummi Nation, Racial Justice Coalition, Gender Diversity, Bellingham Tenants Union, and NAMI Whatcom.
- The Endorsement Committee built questionnaires based on responses from community groups and RC’s platform.
- The RC board invited the following candidates to participate in our endorsement process:
- All progressive candidates who filed to run for 40th district representative, 42nd district representative, 42nd district senator, and Whatcom County prosecutor.
- All candidates who filed to run for Whatcom County council (except Eric Bostrom, due to his hateful and discriminatory public statements and actions).
- Final questionnaires were shared on the RC website and in the facebook group.
- Declared candidates were sent RC endorsement questionnaires on May 10th and others were sent at the end of filing week. Questionnaires were due May 25th.
- The endorsement committee developed a rubric to rate how well each candidate’s questionnaire responses aligned with the RC platform.
- The endorsement committee developed candidate interview questions and rubrics.
- Eleven candidates submitted materials to the endorsement committee by the May 25th deadline.
- The endorsement committee interviewed candidates June 4-7. The interviews were recorded on video and will be made available to the public, along with the questionnaire responses.
- Each endorsement committee member scored candidate written and interview responses.
- Following extensive conversation, the endorsement committee recommended endorsements to the RC Board on June 10th.
- The RC Board used the recommendation of the endorsement committee to vote on the final endorsements.