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SNOHOMISH, Wash., January 20, 2022 Steven Skelton, a Snohomish-based Republican, is planning to run for State Representative representing Washingtons 39th legislative district, challenging Republican incumbent Carolyn Eslick for the Position 2 seat.

On the matters that are really important war, debt, and the infringements of rights there is no reasonable difference between the Democrat and the Republican parties, and therefore our best hope as a nation to defend liberty is the remake of the Republican party as the party of liberty and freedom to oppose the Democrats as the party of force and of government, Skelton told the Lynnwood Times.

The focus of his platform is education reform, supporting backpack funding for K-12 education. Backpack funding grants students funds that follow them to whichever school they are enrolled in, rather than giving a set dollar amount to a school based upon the enrollment in a given district.

It funds the student rather than the system. The schools are failing miserably. Lets put the money in the parents backpacks and let the parents decide where to send their kids to school, and lets let different schools open up around the country serving different needs, Skelton told the Lynnwood Times.

Along with his focus on education, Skelton believes in supporting and protecting private business and property, freedom of speech, and minimizing taxes.

Skelton ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Washingtons 1st Congressional District in 2020 and lost in the primary on August 4, 2020, to Democrat Suzan DelBene. After witnessing Governor Inslees response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which Skelton believed to be unconstitutional, he decided to focus on his home state of Washington rather than the federal government.

Prior to COVID, I really saw the federal government as the center of the irresponsible governments. They were the ones printing the money, they were the ones acting outside of their constitutional mandates. But post-COVID, my eyes have moved from D.C. to home, Skelton told the Lynnwood Times.

Skelton was born in Aberdeen and was raised on Mercer Island. In 1984 his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he lived for 28 years. When his father passed in 2012, Skelton returned to Washington with his wife and kids, living in Lake Stevens for one year before moving to Snohomish where he has lived for the past seven years. He runs his own consulting company in Everett, Steven Skelton Consulting, dealing with attorneys in competitive industries working with client acquisition; one of his clients is his wife who owns her own law firm, Skelton Law.

His interest in politics blossomed in 2012 after seeing Gary Johnson and Judge Jim Gray speak at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL). During the lecture, Gray looked out into the audience and laid out the reasons students involved in sales and law should consider running for office as a Libertarian.

I was persuadedIt was focus-changing for me. I left that day telling myself Id do it, Skelton said. I see bad things coming, and its time for people to stand up for liberty, Skelton said.

Skelton has done a number of things to support his community including a free clothing store through his church and running the Snohomish Longhouse, a community kitchen that ran from 2013 to 2019 providing free meals for Snohomish residents in need.

In addition to free meals, Skelton and his team offered free showers and laundry machines. They did not ask for proof of income but instead provided their services without judgment to whoever needed them.

Libertarians are some of the most generous people I know because we understand you cannot tax and spend your way out of social problems, Skelton, who considered himself a Libertarian until recently, told the Lynnwood Times.

Although Steven Skelton identifies as a religious man, attending Central Faith Church in Snohomish where he plays bass in the band every Sunday, he believes religion and politics should be separate issues.

Im not the Christian-right Republican. I have no interest in using the force of government to instill my moral values upon anyone else. I want people to be free as they want to be to live their lives as they wish to live them, Skelton told the Lynnwood Times.

Steven Skelton maintains a strong social media presence, creating a stir on platforms like Facebook where he posts on local news outlet pages to further what he calls liberty-minded comments. He has over 1,000 followers and over 1,000 likes.

On September 17 Skelton asked his followers on Facebook if he should run with prefers Republican party or prefers Libertarian party. Although he considers himself far-distanced from the Republican party ideologically, the reason for this consideration relates back to Anthony Welti, who ran for Washington Commissioner of Insurance in 2020 as a Libertarian.

Welti was a longtime insurance worker, working in banks and insurance agencies across Washington before leaving his career to raise money and campaign for Insurance Commissioner. He raised $100,000 for his campaign. On the last day before the ballots were finalized, Chirayu Avinash Patel signed up as Republican. Patel received 644,446 votes and Welti received 324,921. Skelton believes the reason was simply due to Welti having Libertarian written beside his name.

Thats when I realized that a Libertarian may be able to win a city council position in Arlington. But a Libertarian probably cant win a statewide position, Skelton told the Lynnwood Times.

Lawyer and politician Justin Amash broke history in 2020 by becoming the first Libertarian to sit in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. In 2016 Gary Johnson, the same Libertarian who inspired Skeltons political interest, held the most successful Libertarian presidential to date receiving 3.28% of the vote (about 4.5 million).

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Steven Skelton aims to rebrand Republicanism and unseat Rep. Carolyn Eslick - Lynnwood Times

Its not every day that a politician with Kevin Mannixs rsum jumps into a race for the Oregon House.

But Mannix, a Republican, announced Thursday that hed seek the Salem-area House District 21 seat long held by state Rep. Brian Clem, a Democrat. County commissioners appointed Rep. Chris Hoy (D-Salem) to replace Clem, who served for eight terms before resigning late last year.

Mannix, a lawyer, represented Salem in the Oregon House from 1989 to 1996 as a Democrat. (Call that Act 1 of his political journey.)

A prolific author of legislation, Mannix, 72, also put many measures on the ballot, most notably 1994s Measure 11, which instituted mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes and has been at the center of Oregons criminal justice debate ever since (that was Act 2). Reformers have chipped away at Measure 11 but have never found the support or political will to repeal it.

In 1997, Mannix switched his party registration to Republican, a relatively rare move for an Oregon elected official. After a stint in the Oregon Senate, he won reelection to the House in 1998, joining what was then a GOP majority.

Mannix ran for attorney general in 2000, losing to Democrat Hardy Myers 50% to 45%. He did even better in the governors race in 2002: Democrat Ted Kulongoski won with 49%; Mannix got 46% and Libertarian Tom Cox took 5%, earning more votes than Kulongoskis margin of victory.

Mannix became the chair of the Oregon GOP and would run again for governor, falling short in the 2006 primary, and for the 5th Congressional District in 2008, also losing in the primary. (Call that Act 3.)

A frequent presence in the Capitol since his last run, Mannix never fully left politics. In 2020, he sued unsuccessfully to block Gov. Kate Browns executive orders closing schools, churches and businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, hes looking for a fourth act. In a statement announcing his desire to return to the legislative chamber where he started his political career more than 30 years ago, Mannix nodded to the increase in crime that has accompanied the pandemic and, in the early 1990s, fueled the passage of Measure 11.

I am running to return to the Oregon House because I have witnessed the erosion of public safety by the Legislature and the lack of support for victims of crime in Oregon, Mannix said. Oregoniansespecially crime victimsneed a trusted advocate serving them.

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Former Lawmaker, Ballot Measure Author and Almost-Governor Kevin Mannix Will Run for the House - Willamette Week

Letters to editor| Northwest Florida Daily News

Once again USA Today Network Pensacola journalist Jim Littlewrote a piece in your Jan. 13 edition that you chose to put on your front page instead of your Opinion section. It is not news because it is nothing more than innuendo, insinuation, and wishful thinking masquerading as a legitimate news story attacking U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Little bylined two similar pieces that you published last May using the same tactics. This time Mr. Little cited CNN and NBC News as sources who observed an ex-girlfriend (unidentified) entering the Federal Courthouse in Orlando, leading to a bunch of speculative bad things that could, might, perhaps, maybe happen to Gaetz if this woman testified before a federal grand jury, but offered no evidence that she actually did.

CNN and NBC (and its affiliates) have a long history of loathing Republicans and are on record of stating they will continue to try to hurt Gaetz specifically through their reporting capabilities.

Unless and until Gaetz is formerly charged with some sort of misdemeanor or felony, the speculative stories should be put in their proper place as only opinions. As a Libertarian, I cherish our constitutional right to a free press that is unbiased in its reporting and I am dismayed that you and your USA Today Network bosses are violating this principle.

R.W. Worth, Santa Rosa Beach

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LETTER: Articles on Rep. Matt Gaetz should have run in Opinion section - The Northwest Florida Daily News

Entangled North Atlantic right whale known as Snow Cone gives birth to calf

The 17-year-old mom has been subject to numerous disentanglement attempts, but the stubborn rope remains stuck. Her first calf was killed by a boat

Georgia DNR/taken under NOAA permit 20556

When Nantucket Residents Against Turbines held a press conference in front of the Statehouse in Boston last August to announce it was suing the federal government for permitting a wind farm south of the island, media outlets noted the presence of David Stevenson, a former Trump transition team member and the director of energy and environment for a libertarian think tank.

They are seemingly oddallies: A group that has the stated goal of saving the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales from the impact of offshore wind farms standing shoulder-to-shoulder with someone who hadappeared before state legislaturesadvocating for the Trump administration's proposal to renew Atlantic offshore oil and gas drilling.

In November, the Nantucket group, known by the acronym ACKRAT, helpedannounce the formation of the Save Right Whales Coalition with the stated goal of stopping offshore wind farms. One of the groups in the coalition was led by pro-nuclear power activist Michael Shellenberger and his California-based group Environmental Progress. Shellenberger believes nuclear power is the only abundant, reliable and inexpensive energy source.

They are not part of our organization, Amy DiSibio, an ACKRAT board member, said of Environmental Progress and Stevensons group, the Caesar Rodney Institute.

There have been some coalitions formed where people interested in whales have some interests that go beyond the whales but our lawsuit is purely environmental and focused on the whale, she said in an interview last week.

ACKRAT'ssuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston claims the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Managementthe lead agency in permitting VineyardWind 1, the 62-turbine offshore wind farm 14 miles south of Nantucket and the first utility-scale project in the country failedalong with other federal agenciesto do an adequate environmental review of its impact on the marine environment, particularly its affect on right whales.

DiSibio said Stevenson and the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute, helped with publicity, advice and some money. Stevenson also recently founded the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, which is fundraising to create a permanent wind energy exclusion zone along the East Coast out to 33 miles.

Its a familiar tactic, said Michael Gerrard, a Columbia Law School professor of environmental law and the director of the Center for Climate Change Law.

We have a long history of industry opposition to environmental regulation and to clean energy projects. The lawyers bringing these cases always want to find the plaintiffs who are the most sympathetic and have standing to sue, Gerrard said. For that reason, its desirable to find groups like fishermen to be the face of the litigation.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, for instance, counted fishermen and wealthy waterfront landowners as supporters in multiple lawsuits against the Cape Wind project, and had backing from fossil fuel interests in William Koch, owner of Oxbow CarbonLLCand a member of the alliance'sboard of directors. He also owned a home in Osterville on Nantucket Sound.

Cape Windhad unsuccessfully proposed to build the nations first offshore wind farm with a 130-turbine project in Nantucket Sound. In 2017 it surrendered its federal lease on the project.

A recent lawsuit against Vineyard Wind, with similar claims tothe ACKRAT suit of violations of the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Actand the National Environmental Policy Act, was filed on behalf of six fishing groups from ports from Long Island to New Bedford by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Greenpeace, the Texas Observer and other sources cite Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and Chevron, coal companies and other fossil fuel companies and interests as foundation donors. In 2015, the foundation launched its Fueling Freedom Project to oppose the Obama administrations Clean Energy Plan with a mission to redefine the public conversation around fossil fuels, and especially their positive role in society.

The goal may not be to win a lawsuit.

There certainly have been numerous suits against wind and solar projects that have torpedoed them, not because of favorable court decisions, but because of delay and uncertainty, Gerrard said. It is often enough to derail a project. It can make people financing the project nervous and sometimes deadlines for tax subsidies are missed.

Gerrard pointed to the American Bird Conservancy, which has routinely spoken out against land-based and offshore wind projects on the basis that turbine blades kill birds.

In an October 2021 article on the nonprofit, the magazine Gristallegedthe conservancy was accepting money from fossil fuel interests and inflating claims of potential and existing mortality from wind turbines. In response,Mike Parr, the conservancys president, told the magazine thata significant portion of the American economy is derived from oil wealth and that most philanthropic ventures have some oil investment.

The conservancy allied itself with the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in opposing Cape Wind, saying in a comment letter to the federal Environmental Protection Agency that the science was poor and studies showed that loons will likely abandon the area for years to come, and there may be significant impacts to endangered Roseate Terns. But in 2016, the Massachusetts Audubon Society concluded that after five years of review and three years of ornithological fieldwork, it found no discernible impact from the turbines.

And while they claim an interest in saving right whales, none of the groups involved in litigation have any history of activism, funding or research on their behalf.

For decades, the New England Aquarium and its Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life have been researching and advocating for ways to save North Atlantic right whales, who number around 366 individuals, from extinction. Senior scientist Jessica Redfern said shes not familiar with any of these groups as right whale advocates and knows of no grassroots efforts out of Nantucket to save right whales.

We havent been involved with or approached by any of those groups, she said.

While ACKRAT claims it will be the wind farms that will drive right whales into extinction, Redfern said the greatest threats to their continued existence come from collision with vessels and entanglement in fishing gear, particularly lobster pot buoy lines.

If youre really concerned about the fate of right whales, thats your focus, Redfern said. Another big factor is climate change and one of the ways we can minimize that is adopting clean energy (policies) and offshore wind is a great source of that.

Climate change is the greatest overall threat to all marine species, particularly in the Northeast where the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than nearly any other marine water body on Earth. Researchers believe that temperature increases have affected the distribution of the copepod species calanus finmarchicus, the right whales preferred prey. These zooplankton prefer cooler, subarctic waters and right whales have largely deserted their traditional feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine in recent years and ventured offshore andinto cooler Canadian waters in search of food.

Unfortunately, that put them in the path of heavier lobster gear that requires stronger lines to withstand the currents and depths of fishing far from shore. Until recently, Canadian waters saw relatively few right whales and Canada didnt have the regulations now common in the U.S. requiring gear that whales could more easily break or shed, or procedures to detect and shut down areas to fishing and vessel traffic where the whales were congregating.

The result has been 34 dead right whales due to entanglement or vessel strikes since 2017, with another 16 with injuries serious enough to be deemed life-threatening, according to NOAA. This in the face of research showing that less than one right whale a year can die from human causes if they are to avoid extinction.

Redfern is in charge of the Anderson Cabot program that monitors and maps human impacts on whales including ship strikes, chronic noise, entanglementand minimizing impacts of wind energy. While initial survey work used to establish wind energy lease areas showed little right whale activity there, recent aerial and ship survey work has documented their presence year-round south of Nantucket and in the lease area.

Its something that has caused concern among whale researchers and conservation groups about the impact of wind farms on right whales.

A 2021 study by researchers from Anderson Cabot, NOAA and Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown found that, on average, a quarter of the right whale population including half the remaining breeding femaleswas using an area south of Nantucket and occasionally portions of the state wind energy lease areas. Researchers believed that with a median residency time of 13 days it was likely to be a transition area and not a major feeding or breeding ground.

Two years ago, Vineyard Wind signed an agreement with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federationand the Conservation Law Foundation that included seasonal restrictions on pile driving employed during the construction phase and a ban from January to April when right whales were more likely to be present. The agreement also called for increased monitoring by ship and aerial surveys as well as stationed observers on vessels, acoustic monitoring, restrictions on sound surveying, underwater noise reduction measures, reporting requirements and vessel speed restrictions.

The agreement could be revisited if the proposed plan didnt reduce impacts to close to zero. Vineyard Wind said findings from the 2021 study would be incorporated into its mitigation plan.

Redfern agreed with the study's conclusion that there was little science demonstrating the effects of wind farm construction and operation on right whales. Because wind energy has not been developed in our EEZ (ExclusiveEconomic Zone, the so-called 200-mile territorial limit claimed by the U.S.), theres still a lot that were going to learn as development occurs, Redfern said.

In 2019, a workshop convened by the Anderson Cabot Center and the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling developed a framework for studying the effects of offshore wind development on marine mammals and turtles. They postulated there was a high likelihood of short-term effects of displacement, and behavior disruption, but that it was also relatively easy to test for those impacts. A change in distribution whales and turtles either avoiding or being attracted to wind farm areas was considered a long-term impact of high probability that was also relatively easy to evaluate.

Along with other researchers, Redfern feltthe construction and operation of the nations first offshore industrial sized wind farm, Vineyard Wind 1, would provide researchers with the test area and research opportunities that could inform mitigation on succeeding projects.

I do think well learn a lot from Vineyard Wind as a model for development along the East Coast, she said.

Follow Doug Fraser on Twitter:@dougfrasercct

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Nuclear and fossil fuel advocates, wind foes among backers of right whale protection suits - Cape Cod Times

Two high-profile defections from the Oklahoma Republican Party last year don't appear to have hurt GOP voter registration.

The number of registered Republicans in Oklahoma increased by 114,013 in the last two years, according to the State Election Board's annual voter registration report.

The number of registered Democrats decreased by 41,533duringthe same time period.

More: Oklahoma schools Superintendent Hofmeister to challenge Stitt for governor as a Democrat

The number of registeredindependents is up48,977 and the Libertarian Party gained nearly 7,000 new voters.

Of registered voters in Oklahoma, 50.6% are Republicans, 31.4% are Democrats, 17.2% are independents and less than 1% are Libertarians.

The latest voter registration numbers show the Republican Party, which became Oklahoma'smajority party in 2020, remains thedominant political force in the state.

Last year, state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, a longtime Republican, renounced the party and registered as a Democrat to challenge Gov. Kevin Stitt in this year's gubernatorial election. Gubernatorial candidate and former state Sen. Ervin Yen, once a registered Democrat,left the Republican Party to become anindependent.

All told, Oklahoma has 128,267 more registered voters than it did two years ago for a total of 2,218,374 people registered to vote.

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Gap widens in Oklahoma between number of Republicans and Democrats - Oklahoman.com