To Endorse or Not to Endorse?

That is the question I’ve been mulling over in the matter of Vincent Buys.

Buys is a first-term representative in the Washington State House from the 42nd district who also happens to be my landlord. Here, after much deliberation, is what I’ve decided:

Buys gets my vote and my support, though any contributions to his campaign will have to be in-kind.

I’m voting for Buys for three reasons:

1) His opponent is a lunatic. Matt Krogh is an Occupy-style left wing activist whose regulatory agenda would set Whatcom County back to roughly the stone age. His idea of good paying jobs are good paying government jobs or heavily unionized and regulated jobs, the kind that have no realistic long-term prospects of even holding their own in the world economy.

A vote for Krogh is a vote for fines, red tape and structural unemployment. No thanks.

2) Buys is bold. This doesn’t come through often enough in his measured speeches, but just look at his career thus far. In his first run for office, he took on a well-entrenched incumbent, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and beat her. In Olympia, he has stood against an awful lot of foolish legislation and done his damnedest to drum up support for needed regulatory reforms.

If the Republicans take the Washington State House again, which is a good possibility, Buys will be pressing the new coalition will all he’s got to rein in spending, bring the budget back into real balance with no accounting gimmicks and force necessary reforms on our insular state agencies.

3) Buys is a good guy. This isn’t a great reason in itself to vote for a candidate, but it’s nice to know the guy you’re backing isn’t likely to embarrass you. Note that I don’t mean good in the backslapping “good ol’ boy” sense of the word. I mean that he cares about doing the right thing, sometimes at great personal cost.

Buys was nowhere to be found during the recount fracas after the last election because he was down in Haiti drilling wells for an orphanage. There was ample reason for him to stick around, but he decided to leave that up to our political system and our laws — and Providence, frankly. While all that got sorted out, he got on a plane to do some good for impoverished children who will never be in a position to cast a ballot in his direction.