Michele Cotner doing great work for the party

Since she was recruited by Dan and Val Ogden in 2000
to run against an 18th District Republican legislator,
Michele Cotner, has provided intellectual depth and energy
to the Clark County Democratic Party.

Now she and her history professor husband, John Braun,
have put their house on the market and are bidding us
farewell as they look to move nearer his work at Linfield
College and nearer to her mother’s home on the Oregon
coast.

She isn’t leaving politics behind. She was recently appointed
chair of the platform committee of the Washington
Democratic Women and will fulfill that responsibility
until she is replaced no matter where she lives.
Cotner was graduated from the University of Washington
with a bachelor’s degree in business, then was employed
by the university while completing graduate work
for a master’s degree in public administration.

She worked in Oregon for a number of years before she
moved to Clark County in 1984 after she was hired as
Clark County’s director of administrative services.
She met Val Ogden when both were involved in the
leadership of the Vancouver YWCA.

She was political before she joined the Democratic
Party. In 1971 she doorbelled for passage of Washington’s
abortion rights initiative, and she worked in campaigns for
Jolene Unsoeld, Brian Baird and Bob Packwood.

Her legislative candidacy in 2000 and again in 2002
convinced her that she can do better work inside the party
than as a candidate. She has provided several candidates
with solid advice about their campaigns, and she has
helped the party find a new paradigm that will enable it to
seek a more progressive path to take back the future.

While she is concerned that the national party has become
too bound up in big money, she believes that Clark
County Democrats have taken the necessary steps that
other party organizations ought to be considering. “We
started reframing in 2004,” she said. “We are getting involved
in the Progressive Toastmasters, and I think we did
very good work on the new brochure published by the
Clark County Democratic Central Committee.”

She was a key member of the team that developed the
ideas and format for that publication, and she has continued
to advocate the values and messages embodied in that
effort. She urges Democrats to hold to those values as
they look for candidates to carry the party banner