Big-money election battle unfolds in an unlikely place

SEQUIM, Clallam County — One of the most expensive campaigns in Washington this fall, dollars per vote, isn't one you'll see on TV.

Here on the Olympic Peninsula, Clallam County voters will decide Tuesday whether to slap a 0.5 percent excise tax on each real-estate sale to raise money to help protect rapidly disappearing farmland. Realtors, fearful the tax could spread if it takes root here, are pulling out all the stops to defeat it.

Their campaign committee, Stop Taxing the American Dream, has raised nearly $144,000 to fight the measure, labeled Proposition 1. The Washington Association of Realtors in Olympia has contributed $75,000, the National Association of Realtors in Chicago, $50,000, and peninsula Realtors associations, $15,000.

Clallam County has fewer than 44,000 registered voters. The anti-Proposition 1 campaign's treasury amounts to $3.28 for each potential vote — more than any of the big, statewide initiative campaigns or high-profile Seattle-area races.

This isn't the state's most expensive campaign: Dentists and their allies are spending even more per voter trying to persuade Bellingham to fluoridate its water. Still, for the peninsula, electioneering of this magnitude is out of the ordinary.

Stop Taxing the American Dream has bused in real-estate people from other counties to doorbell. It has hired the nation's largest Republican polling firm to track local opinion, and a Florida phone bank to call voters.

"It's not very common to have that much outside money focused on what is a small, rural community," says Dan Stengel, who teaches political science at Peninsula College in Port Angeles.

Proposition 1's supporters have raised about $45,000, a lot by previous peninsula standards. They say they expected Realtors to fight them, but not with guns this big.

"We don't need to have these guys coming in here from outside and telling us how to solve our problems," grumbles Nash Huber, a Dungeness organic farmer and leading backer of the measure.

Mike McAleer, the Sequim Realtor who heads the opposition committee, says his industry is fighting the tax because it would hit low-income people hardest and discourage home ownership. He also acknowledges the campaign in Clallam County is part of something bigger.

Opposition to any and all taxes on real-estate sales is a pillar of the Realtors' political agenda. Washington's existing excise taxes — 1.78 percent in most of the state — already are among the nation's highest, they note.

They're gearing up to battle a bill in the Legislature next year, sponsored by Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, that would allow cities, counties and school districts to impose new excise taxes on sellers to help pay for roads, schools and affordable housing.

"They're sending a message from Clallam: 'Don't touch this,' " Clibborn says.

Only in San Juan

For 15 years, a state law has allowed counties to impose an additional excise tax on real-estate buyers, with voter approval, specifically to protect farmland and other "conservation areas." Largely because of Realtor opposition, only tiny San Juan County has approved such a tax.

Six other Puget Sound counties, including King and Snohomish, put proposals on the ballot in 1990. All lost. Snohomish County made another unsuccessful attempt in 1998. Until this year, no county had tried since.

Clallam County farmland-preservation backers collected 4,200 signatures on petitions during the summer to help persuade county commissioners to put the tax on the ballot. It would generate about $2.7 million a year for 10 years to purchase development rights to farmland from willing sellers.

The buyer of a $205,000 home — the median price in the county — would pay a one-time tax of $1,025.

Bob Caldwell, a retired federal agricultural economist who is running the campaign to pass Proposition 1, says the tax is an example of "the problem funding the solution," like taxing cigarette sales to help pay health-care costs.

The Sequim Prairie once was one of the state's premier dairying areas, and it led Western Washington in alfalfa hay production.

Then retirees discovered the area's scenery and mild weather. Most of the old farms have been subdivided and are now covered with houses, lawns and golf courses.

It's important that Clallam County agriculture survive, says Huber, whose 400-acre farm is one of the largest organic vegetable operations in Western Washington.

"We can do things with food here that you can't do anywhere else on planet Earth," he says. "We don't freeze out here. ... We have the ability to ship produce 12 months of the year."

McAleer says he doesn't quarrel with Proposition 1's end, only its means. "It's a tax on a minority that's not organized," he says, referring to homebuyers. "They're an easy target if they're not defended."

Equity-rich Californians or Seattleites resettling in Sequim would have little trouble paying the tax, he admits, but buyers from outside Clallam County account for less than one-third of the county's real-estate sales. For a first-time or lower-income buyer struggling to scrape together a 3 percent down payment on a $200,000 home, finding another $1,000 to pay the excise tax could be a deal-breaker, he says.

"If it [farmland preservation] is going to benefit everybody," McAleer says, "then everybody should pay."

No alternatives?

"We don't know why Clallam County can't protect farmland some other way," says Angela Song, the Washington Association of Realtors' assistant political director.

Proposition 1 backers say they've tried all the alternatives. Zoning has been ineffective, they say: The right to develop is "grandfathered" on much of the land designated for agriculture. A property-tax increase to help preserve farmland was rejected by county voters 10 years ago.

Proposition 1 has been debated in community forums and on op-ed pages. Caldwell, the head of the campaign to pass it, maintains the measure could help keep property taxes down because government must spend more providing services to subdivisions than to farms.

McAleer says the county's plan for spending the money is too vague to satisfy state law. A legal challenge is a possibility if the tax passes, he says.

Both sides say the vote could go either way. They are filling newspaper pages and radio airwaves with ads, and voters' mailboxes with flyers. Yard signs abound.

Stengel, the Peninsula College political scientist, questions whether all the campaigning has moved average Clallam County voters. Preserving farmland isn't their most pressing concern, he says; on the other hand, most wouldn't pay the tax.

"Most people don't perceive an immediate threat from this, or an immediate benefit," he says.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com