Wheat Growers pondering how to increase political influence
Washington Ag Today June 6, 2011 The Washington Association of Wheat Growers is grappling with how it can increase support for the wheat industry in an a state legislature whose members are increasingly urban. The association has never endorsed political candidates in the past and president Ben Barstow is hesitant to go down that road. Barstow: “There’s too many mine fields out there when you get into supporting individual candidates. If you support a candidate running against an incumbent and your candidate loses. Then you have just made the incumbent mad that you have to work with for the next legislative session. I don‘t think we can afford to that. But we do as an organization, we are going to have to grapple with this and decide if we are going to go down that road and become more directly politically active, to shift from our traditional educational role with the state legislature to one that ore actively supports people who have historically supported us.” Forming a wheat-pac or political action committee is another possibility. Barstow: “We have talked about doing that and maybe that is what some of us will do, for a separate political action committee. Barstow points out there used to be 19 legislative districts in eastern Washington. There are now 11. He says that may decline with redistricting and is a trend that is likely to continue. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net. ? ? ?
