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Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Committee to advertise for third candidate
DAVENPORT — Only two of the four candidates that applied for the District No. 1 Lincoln County Commissioner seat vacated by Mark Stedman’s retirement at the end of 2022 were deemed to be true Republicans by the Lincoln County Republican Central Committee, and a third candidate must be found before the commissioners can make an appointment.
The Central Committee conducted interviews with the four candidates last weekend and found that, in their eyes, just two met the requirements to be a Republican candidate for the seat.
“We found two Republicans out of the group,” chair Mary Blechschmidt said. “It’s just our assessment based on our conversation with them.”
As a partisan elected position, the process for replacing a vacated commissioner seat is for the local Republican party to select three candidates from its pool of applicants to submit to the remaining commissioners. The commissioners can then choose a candidate directly or conduct further interviews before making the appointment.
Blechschmidt said she sent an email to the two rejected candidates informing them of the chair’s decision and detailing that they wouldn’t be forwarded to the commissioners for consideration.
Current Harrington city councilmember Stephen Hardy confirmed that he was a candidate for the seat and was rejected by the Central Committee after they made the decision he wasn’t a Republican, but declined further comment on the record for the time being.
Two of the applicants are believed to be former Lincoln County employees, but those two employees didn’t return calls for comment or confirmation by press time. The names will be disclosed in future newspapers once confirmation is made.
Blechschmidt declined to confirm that those two former employees indeed applied for the job, or whether one of them was the second candidate turned away. She also declined to disclose the fourth applicant’s name, whom The Record-Times doesn’t know the identity of.
“I don’t want to hurt any feelings and to influence any potential candidates,” Blechschmidt reasoned.
The Central Committee will advertise for a third candidate for a two-week period, to start. A potential appointment could occur at the commissioner’s Jan. 17 meeting, “if it’s possible, sure,” Blechschmidt said.
Drew Lawson is the editor of the Davenport Times. He is a graduate of Eastern Washington University.
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