Former councilman launches write-in bid to be Gig Harbor mayor. Ballots are here.

Only days from the Nov. 2 election, Ken Malich, a four-term former Gig Harbor City Council member, has announced a write-in campaign for mayor.

“I don’t expect to win, but I think there should be some kind of a race,” he said in an interview Friday.

Tracie Markley, a first-term council member, has so far been unopposed. Kit Kuhn, the incumbent mayor, is not seeking re-election.

“Well, that livens things up a bit,” Markley told The Gateway Friday. “I’m not sure exactly what his motivation is, but I’m not letting it throw me off. I’ve been working really hard to prepare to be the best mayor I can be, and I haven’t time to be distracted.”

Malich said he decided to run because people were asking him to.

“A lot of people were prodding me to run, so I went over and registered, and was accepted as a write-in candidate,” Malich said. “I’ve always loved this town. I grew up here and I continue to want to play a part in it.”

With a little more than a week to go before the general election, Malich is too late to get into the official voters’ guide. Many voters have already received their mail-in ballots. He has no yard signs, no real campaign, and his announcement was “mostly copied from my previous City Council campaign,” he said.

“But it will be fun,” he told The Gateway. “I asked my wife, and she said, ‘Go ahead and do it.’”

Other people, including Councilmember Jeni Woock, also encouraged him to get in the race, he said.

“I think Ken has the experience to be a very good Gig Harbor mayor,” Woock told The Gateway in an email. But, she added, “no one was more surprised than I when he told me he had filed.”

Malich, 75, is a former commercial fisherman who retired from the Bremerton Naval Shipyard after 20 years as a mechanic and mechanical engineer. A 1964 graduate of Peninsula High School, he has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington.

In his career on the council, Malich said he was instrumental in securing the purchase of what would later become Ancich Park. He was also a stickler for public participation; he often scolded his council colleagues for making decisions with what he saw as too little public input. He was part of the council majority that voted in the 2018 moratorium on residential development.

“Many people invested their hearts in preserving the character of Gig Harbor. Why gut it?” he asked in his 2014 Voters’ Pamphlet statement. He went on to say that city codes should force “quality over quantity, community over sprawl and historic eclectic housing over tract” developments.

He did not run for election in 2017, standing aside in favor of Robyn Denson, who won his former seat.

The waterfront is still his priority, he said Friday. He promised to work for transient moorage and a city fuel dock.

“It is essential to complete the Ancich dock for the commercial fishing industry and the upland park for our entire community, including human-powered boating and kayaks,” he wrote in his Oct. 22 campaign announcement.

Malich was part of a local committee that brought Coatian prime minister Zoran Milanovič to Gig Harbor for an official visit in 2014. Like many in Gig Harbor, Malich is of Croatian heritage. He is still on a Rotary committee working on a sister city relationship with the Croatian island of Brač.

Markley served briefly with Malich when their terms overlapped by a few months at the end of 2019.

“I sat next to him on the council, in fact,” she said. “I think Ken is a very nice man, very polite and respectful, and we’ve never had any problems or issues between us.”

Markley said she has been job-shadowing the mayor and city administrator to learn the ropes.

“Ever since I learned I was running unopposed, I have been working really, really hard learning the job, working with the acting city administrator and the mayor,” she said. “I want to be as prepared as possible for seamless transition.”

After the trauma of the pandemic and an employee survey in December that found the city to be a “troubled workplace environment,” her main goal is stability, she said. “That’s what our city is craving and needing right now — stability, transparency and community,” Markley said.

For his part, Malich said he has nothing against Markley, whom he called “a nice gal,” and he expects her to win.

He’s thought about running for mayor before, Malich said, but always hesitated because: “That’s a heck of a busy job, and I like to play golf and travel a bit.”

Officially, the office is a part-time job.

“If I happened to get elected, I would go out and hire the best administrator I could find,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be just a figurehead, but I wouldn’t want to be there every single day, like Kit has done, either.”

This story was originally published October 22, 2021 at 2:08 PM.