Dreon can help get things done in county

Editor,

I am a new precinct committee officer (PCO) in Yelm’s rural Four Corners North, and this week I did my first Get Out The Vote canvassing in dirt-road Democrat country.

Luckily I was not alone. Thurston County Commissioner District 2 candidate Rachel Dreon joined to knock on doors.

You can read highlights from Rachel’s campaign website, and they are impressive, but getting to spend time with her, the message of “compassionate leadership, informative policy and collaboration” made so much more sense. We drove down gravel driveway after gravel driveway, knocked on doors and had conversations with residents, which is where I saw Rachel’s life experiences shine.

“I understand the county has priorities, but I want you to know my community is a priority,” said one resident as they described never seeing a road worker in the 20 years they lived on their road. Rachel shared a story of advocating with neighbors, working through layers of bureaucracy on getting the answer on how to get a light installed on a dark street. You could see the gears turn in their head, and Rachel’s story of citizen leadership inspiring the resident to take action for their own rural road repairs.

“What keeps me up at night is my elderly rural neighbor, that is trying to navigate social services. I have a graduate degree, and I can barely figure out who they should call, let alone what office to go to,” said another resident, which I could see hit a nerve with Rachel.

Rachel has been an all-star at finding community solutions to social service needs. She saw a need for recovery housing, so she moved out of her house, converted it into recovery housing and is now renting a small apartment.

She saw a need to build more community for people in recovery, so she started softball teams for people in recovery. Rachel is a hard worker with creative solutions, and her career managing multi-million dollar budgets for a public sector agency and working to find solutions to get people into careers in the field of behavioral health shows it.

Those are a few of the experiences she carries, but what was on her mind tonight was a young adult whom she has known since he was young, and she spotted him now living on the streets. Rachel grew up in the area, raised her kids here as a single mother and has a strong sense of responsibility for her community. Over the last week, she has found the youth shelter, spent time with them and now is working with them to find work.

Rachel Dreon is the hard-working, community-oriented, creative-thinking candidate for Thurston County commissioner we need for the complex challenges of our time. Ballots will start hitting mailboxes in the next week, and federal, state and local candidates will hinge on dirt-road Democrats getting out the vote!

Warren Neth

Yelm