I continue to read with interest every week the advertisements in the paper put out by Sen. Pam Roach where she claims that the East Coast Washington Post called her the most effective legislator in Olympia.

In fact, our own local paper The Seattle Weekly called her the least effective legislator in the entire state and The Seattle Times endorsed Rep. Cathy Dahlquist over Sen. Pam Roach.

I’m not sure how you can be effective when you’re sanctioned by your own party and also banned from the Republican caucus for a period of time. All this because you have mistreated your own staff and verbally abused Republican staff. Now, in the latest case, according to the Tacoma News Tribune and the Seattle Times, she recruited a fake “Democrat” to help her beat Rep. Cathy Dahlquist in the August primary. Lynda Messner is no Democrat and in fact may even be too far right to be considered a Republican. She claims that our president is not an American citizen and equates him with Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. That doesn’t sound like a Democrat to me and I certainly haven’t ever heard my Democratic friends speak about the president that way.

It appears Sen. Pam Roach will do anything to stay in power after almost a quarter of a century in office and this latest scandal is proof of that. The paper said that filing a fake candidate isn’t a crime but it certainly demonstrates an arrogance of power on Sen. Roach’s part. It’s time that the Democrats know that they don’t have a Democrat on the ballot and that they should not be casting a vote for Lynda Messner. It’s time for the game playing to stop. It’s time we vote in Rep. Cathy Dahlquist and it’s time for Sen. Pam Roach to go.

Ailene Armstrong

Enumclaw