We’ve reconsidered our Pierce County Council District 5 endorsement
It’s very unusual for The News Tribune Editorial Board to withdraw an endorsement, especially this close to the voting deadline of Nov. 4. We’re doing that today, so we owe you an explanation.
In the race for District 5 on the Pierce County Council, neither of the two candidates managed to inspire resounding support from a majority of the board. We think we made that clear in the endorsement we published on Oct. 10, in which we endorsed Bryan Yambe.
Now, we’re withdrawing our endorsement. We’ve since learned that Yambe showed lapses in judgment while on Fife City Council, using a credit card meant for official government purposes on personal expenses. However, we aren’t switching our endorsement to his opponent Terry Wise, which we’ll explain in a moment.
After the city of Fife identified Yambe’s behavior, the credit card was suspended for six months. Yambe has since reimbursed the expenses and didn’t resume using a city-funded credit card after the suspension ended.
We want to be very clear: this doesn’t mean we condone the mudslinging and extreme statements made by the campaign and supporters of opponent Wise. They will surely spin this change, but our decision was based on an expectation that public officials make an effort to know and follow the rules about spending the public’s money.
When the editorial board first interviewed Yambe as part of our endorsement process, he was unprepared and short on details. But Yambe, who is running as a Democrat and was appointed to Pierce County Council’s District 5 in January, has a long record in local government. He has an established reputation for his skill in policy-making and building relationships.
So we gave him our endorsement, while also voicing our disappointment in his interview.
Wise, a Republican running against Yambe in this election, showed he was knowledgeable about land use and infrastructure issues in the county during the same interview. But he missed the mark on some questions that weren’t about those topics, and we favored the policy experience Yambe brought to the table.
Since then, we learned of Yambe’s previous misuse of Fife city funds. Those credit card charges were made in 2018 and 2019. Yambe now estimates that he paid the city back a little more than $1,100 through a series of paycheck reductions.
It wasn’t possible for us to confirm that dollar amount using public records from Fife in time to make a decision about our endorsement. However, the records we were able to look at gave us no reason to think the number was any higher than that.
The expenses appear to include food and travel expenses that were not reimbursable. For example, Yambe was charged a fee for changing his airline tickets for a work-related trip. The change was made for personal reasons and so Yambe should have covered the costs.
After the six-month suspension period, Yambe said he decided not to obtain another credit card for official use. In an interview, he told us that was because he wanted to be extra cautious about not repeating his mistakes.
Though Yambe said he understands and owns his mistakes, we were troubled by his past behavior. It took him more than four years and the city of Fife’s intervention for him to learn he was making these mistakes and change his behavior. That doesn’t sit right with us.
It didn’t help that Yambe also recently had to remove the name of a member of Fife’s city council from the list of endorsements on his website. There were conflicting stories over whether the council member, Doug Fagundes, had ever agreed to endorse Yambe, but we saw it as another example of sloppy work from Yambe.
Still, we didn’t decide to shift our endorsement to Wise. Some of us felt that Yambe was still, unfortunately, the better candidate. Others felt we should endorse neither. Wise earned one vote from our board in his favor during our reconsideration of the endorsement, but failed to win a majority.
Wise’s campaign and his outside supporters have portrayed Yambe’s behavior in extreme terms, suggesting he engaged in serious crimes that the city then covered up. We’re not agreeing with that by withdrawing our endorsement. We’re also not agreeing with the Wise campaign claims that Yambe is a “leftist extremist.”
We know there’s a good chance that those groups will lump our decision in with their claims about Yambe, which is unfortunate. It’s entirely possible a short quote from this very editorial will end up in an ad or text opposing Yambe, alongside some characterizations we wouldn’t agree with.
But the fact remains that service on Pierce County Council requires responsibility and accountability. We expect our leaders to be guided by integrity and values from the start, and show they are prepared for the job. This behavior, though in the past, lost Yambe the board’s support.
The News Tribune Editorial Board is: Laura Hautala, opinion editor; Stephanie Pedersen, TNT president and editor; Jim Walton, community representative; Justin Evans, community representative; Bart Hayes, community representative.