I got a closer look at a few of our candidates for city council this week. What an unpleasant and demoralizing experience it was.

For the past few months, The Reporter has been running a regular series of Q and A sessions with the candidates in both Issaquah and Sammamish. It was my idea at the beginning of the election season that this would be a way to uncover what sort of councilors these people would make, not to mention what sort of people these councilors would make.

For our last session before the election, I wanted to bring the candidates out of their comfort zones a little — every question to that point had been about very specific planning and governance issues — and I hoped to get closer to the core of the candidates as citizens and as humans, and present that to my readers.

So I asked them their thoughts on Referendum 71, and whether or not lesbian and gay couples and seniors in committed relationships should have the same rights and protections as heterosexual couples.

I expected a reaction. What I didn’t expect was the indignant, arrogant responses I received from some candidates, primarily in Sammamish. I had, wrongly, invested them with more character.

Several candidates e-mailed me to clearly express the idea that residents of Sammamish who believe their rights as humans are violated by laws denying them the same protections and privileges as heterosexual couples are really nothing to do with them, as would-be civic leaders.

Believe it or not folks, there are gay and lesbian people in Issaquah and Sammamish too, and they vote, and I am sure they would be interested to know what you think of this critical piece of legislation. Referendum 71 is a statewide issue and is being decided by exactly the same people these candidates are appealing to for votes, right here.

The reactions to this question varied, from “You’ve got to be joking, I’m not answering this,” to the several brief, dismissive, petulant answers that can be found here.

To be honest, I wasn’t interested in what “team” they were on so much as their ability to think about it, to talk about it, and offer some insight into this most human of issues.

I applaud those candidates who, although aware that local councils will not play a direct role in the development of such legislation, are also aware of their roles as community leaders, and are not afraid to reveal something about themselves that adds dimension, and character, to their campaign photographs.

I was hugely disappointed that other candidates were so eager to shirk the challenge of answering a difficult and important question that would do much to paint a clearer picture of themselves as real people, as citizens, not just managers, accountants, or real estate agents. Mayor and candidate Don Gerend initially gave me a very dismissive and petulant answer, but later presented something more considered. I asked him, “if in your 10 years as an elected leader of this community, no journalist has ever asked you a question that requires you to examine your personal values and morals, what exactly has been going on?” John James decided the question was beneath him, and didn’t bother to respond at all.

I was astonished that several candidates felt it so outrageous that a newspaper editor would want to know their feelings on an issue that is massively important to some of their constituents, and, at the very least, an important one for the direction of the state.

Councilors make decisions every week that demand exploration of their morals and values, not just their ability to understand property law and city code. For example, in Sammamish, the development of the Town Center and the city will include making decisions on the provision of social services, access to medical care for the under-insured, counseling, support services, crisis support, drug and alcohol abuse programs. The SMP process was a constant enquiry of their environmental and conservation values. So is the fiery debate at Beaver Lake Park. In Issaquah, the city is grappling with the importance of providing a Family Resource Center for low income families. All of these matters, which have, or will, come before council will all be influenced by the morals and personal values of the councilors. I, for one, am very interested to know what sort of people they are, and I am striving to present that to our readers.

I told the candidates I did not believe for one minute those who argued statements about family and personal values aren’t part of a campaign, when all too often they are accompanied by wives/husbands/children at public events, and their mailouts includes photos of them with their families.

Perhaps it is a generational thing, but I firmly believe the morals and values of candidates has everything to do with how they might govern at a local level, at any level.

As councilors regularly remind us, one third of the population of Sammamish is under the age of 18. By examining the seriousness with which they considered their answers on page 2, it is clear which candidates represent a generation increasingly concerned with human rights issues such as Referendum 71. The others have decided what is important to local residents and what is not, and clearly identified themselves as candidates of limited character.