By Pepper Fisher
Quilcene – The race for State Senate for the 24th District continues to grow with the Tuesday morning announcement that Marcia Kelbon of Quilcene has entered the race as a Republican.
Kelbon describes herself as a long-term resident of the Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas and is a chemical engineer, attorney, former US Navy civilian engineer, former biopharmaceutical executive, and current Quilcene Fire Commissioner.
Kelbon and her husband moved to western Washington in 1982. She says it was much easier back then for young people to afford to go to college, purchase a home, raise a young family, and give them a good education in public schools. She says she was able to form a start-up business and grow it in a more supportive business environment. Doing those things, she says, has become much more difficult for today’s young people, and she’d like to work to improve that.
“Affording housing, having a job that pays enough to afford that house, those are tough. And the people that feel it the most are working families. With our tax structure, with the cap and trade carbon tax that adds not just fuel costs but to everything that gets transported by truck. So, it makes it very expensive to live here and to raise a family. Layer onto that the long-term care tax that working people have to pay, and hints that we might have a broad income tax, based on progress to date at the legislature. Those are all troubling and making it harder to succeed.”
Kelbon is, so far, the only opponent to current Democrat Mike Chapman for the senate seat that will be vacated by Kevin Van De Wege. She is the first to say that she and Chapman do not disagree on all issues, and gives him credit for not supporting all of the police reform bills that came through the legislature, but she thinks the reforms need to be dialed back even further.
That said, she says she and Chapman part ways on some important issues.
“With respect to affordability of living here, very different. I mean, Mike Chapman voted for the cap and trade program that has led to these fuel taxes and other expenses. And even his colleague, Senator Van De Wege, voted against that. He voted for the long-term care tax. He voted against the capital gains tax, which is relevant, I think, here on the peninsula, primarily because it’s a harbinger of an income tax that people are trying to get more broadly. He voted against it, yet he’s quoted as saying that he supports it. So, that’s troubling there. He has supported restrictions on parental rights that I find troubling. So, definitely some differences there.”
Kelbon lives with her husband of 43 years and a boxer dog on a tree farm in Quilcene. Two of their three adult children live on the Olympic Peninsula, as does a beloved granddaughter.
You can learn more about Marcia Kelbon by visiting electmarciakelbon.com.