By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Republic Police Chief Loren Culp is running for the office of Washington State governor. (Photo from Tumbled Bones Photography)
The outspoken rural Washington State police chief who essentially launched the Second Amendment “sanctuary” movement against a gun control measure adopted last November has announced he is running for governor in 2020.
Republic Police Chief Loren Culp’s candidacy was first reported in Ammoland.
The 58-year-old small town lawman made a big impression on Evergreen State citizens who have decided to fight back against years of Democrat rule in the legislature and executive branch. Washington has not had a Republican governor since the early 1980s.
Culp told TGM that he will make an official announcement Saturday, July 27 during a rally at the Republic city park. But the story is already getting media attention and plenty of reaction on social media.
Culp, a Washington native, Army veteran and former private businessman, is running as a Republican. He has questioned the constitutionality of Initiative 1639, which was passed in only about a dozen of the state’s 39 counties. Virtually all rural counties rejected the measure, but the strong Democrat votes in the Puget Sound region pushed it over the top. It is now being challenged in federal court by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association.
Culp emerged from the North-Central Washington highlands last November after Initiative 1639 was passed by just under 60 percent of the vote. The gun control measure makes it illegal for anyone under age 21 to purchase a so-called “semiautomatic assault rifle,” and further defines the essentially non-existent firearm to mean virtually every self-loading rifle ever manufactured, including popular .22-caliber rimfire sporting rifles used by generations of youngsters and young adults.
Republic is the county seat of Ferry County, where voters rejected the gun control initiative. After Culp publicly announced he would not enforce it, some 20 county sheriffs around the state also said their departments would not actively enforce the law because of its questionable constitutionality.
Both Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson have appealed to lawmen to enforce the law. They both supported the initiative in 2018. Both are Democrats.
According to the Ammoland story, Culp isn’t the only pro-rights candidate to declare for public office, at least partly inspired by opposition to I-1639.
Down in Southwest Washington’s Clark County, two grassroots candidates are running for spots on the Battle Ground City Council. That community is a suburb of Vancouver, and the Vancouver Columbian identified them as Shauna Walters and Josh VanGelder.
“If I’m elected,” VanGelder told The Columbian, “I will stand with the people’s vote and the Constitution and do everything I can to repeal I-1639.”
A spokesman for the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group based in Seattle, suggested that their candidacies are “sort of a fringe thing that people are pushing for…It’s a lot of hot air.:”
