SPOKANE, Wash. — Republican candidate for Washington state governor Loren Culp stopped in Spokane Wednesday morning.
Culp is the police chief of Republic, Washington in Ferry County.
During the primary election, his surging grassroots campaign scored a big victory by outdoing 34 other challengers to Governor Jay Inslee.
“I feel very confident running against Inslee. He has messed this state up," Culp said.
Culp has hinged his campaign on the idea that people are tired of Inslee and want to replace him with someone who isn’t a politician. It’s a strategy that helped him take second in the primary. It was a distant second, with Inslee currently carrying a little over half of primary voters. It’s now up to Culp to convince voters his approach would be better for the state.
"Well, I'd do a lot of things different than Jay Inslee. I would've never shut down our economy. It's not the role of the governor to dictate what we do in our daily lives, in our businesses," Culp said.
His message on coronavirus has been that people should take it seriously, but that the government shouldn't be intervening and requiring any particular response.
"This virus is real. I'm not saying it's not,” Culp explained. “But we as free people, we know how to protect ourselves. If a business requires a mask, then I wear a mask. I've been travelling around this state meetings thousands of people every single day. I have not met anyone who's had COVID. I've not got it. I'm not saying that it's not there, not real. And we should take precautions. But that's an individual choice."
He is also in favor of schools reopening.
"Families that can afford to have a nanny or a babysitter, parents can still go to work,” Culp said. “But there's a lot of families that can't afford that kind of thing. We need school back open. We need kids to be learning. We need parents to go back to work."
Culp said the voters' decision will come down to their view on the role of the governor. He's hoping enough voters will buy his argument that the current governor has made that role too large.
"The role of the governor is to run the executive branch of the state government, not dictate every aspect of our lives," he said.