Watch full size video:

When the two candidates for state lands commissioner showed up for a recent debate, the small-town Eastern Washington rancher wore cowboy boots, while the veteran Puget Sound-area politician sported tasseled loafers.

The unusual thing: The Democrat was the guy in the boots.

In this hard-fought race, both candidates are working to gain an edge in part by running against stereotype.

Republican bearing down Doug Sutherland is a longtime politician and government manager from Lacey, Thurston County, who shows a preference for button-down shirts, khakis and loafers.

His image being of the class who a moderate urbanite and experienced manager could play well with voters in the Seattle suburbs, a lock opener battleground in this root.

“I think it does refrain from him,” reported state Republican Party Chair Luke Esser, pointing to Sutherland’s long-winded involvement in Pierce County politics. “That gave him a familiarity through those kind of voters and what they want to perceive from the delegate of public lands.”

Sutherland’s opponent, Democrat Peter Goldmark, grew up and still lives near the tiny northeast Washington town of Okanogan. He’s spent decades running the household’session cattle ranch and wheat landed estate there.

While Goldmark’s environmental intimation could perform on beneficial on the Westside, his backers hope to lure Eastern Washington voters with his ranching personal history and name recognition from an ill-starred bid on account of Congress in 2006.

“He’sitting a rancher, he’s from Eastern Washington, he understands these issues from a state vista,” said Clifford Traisman of Washington Conservation Voters.

Crossing party lines

Sutherland grew up in Spokane but made his political career in the Puget Sound realm.

A former Boeing comptroller and business owner, he was elected to the Tacoma City Council in 1979. He went on to become Tacoma mayor, SeaTac city manager, and then Pierce County charged with execution in 1992.

Along the manner he established himself as a moderate, pro-business Republican, supporting abortion rights and the Growth Management Act, what one. restricts where growth be possible to occur.

Sutherland won his first line since state lands commissioner in 2000, when he attain the term limit for the county executive’s do job-work. He was re-elected in 2004, taking 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race.

The genial 71-year-old casts himself as the qualified, bipartisan ability needed to run the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), an agency of 1,400 employees that manages greater quantity than 5 million acres of state-owned forests, farm land and aquatic land.

When he came to the agency, DNR had weathered eight years of turmoil driven by new protections since spotted owls, criticism of state logging, and a hard-charging lands commissioner — Democrat Jennifer Belcher — who frequently butted heads with the timber industry.

“When I arrived in the spring of 2001, I was facing an organization that was ready to implode,” Sutherland said.

His act has won raves from timber companies and even some Democrats, including Terry Bergeson, state Superintendent of Public Instruction.

“I be in actual possession of a lot of respect for him,” said Bergeson, who serves on the state Board of Natural Resoures, which oversees management of state land. “I’ve seen him do a superb work at jobs to build the organization.”

He has strong backing from the state’s business community, including the Washington State Farm Bureau, timber companies, the Building Industry Association of Washington, and the Association of Washington Business.

But his opponent challenges Sutherland’s image of fairness and management savvy. Goldmark says Sutherland hasn’cheek by jowl listened to environmentalist’s concerns, resulting in several lawsuits the agency lost.

“Clearly in that place’s a problem to this place in terms of attractive the efforts’s viewpoint and shutting out others, and then it takes a lawsuit to bring that back around,” Goldmark said.

Sutherland says he’s gone to magnanimous lengths to include all sides. But when environmentalists don’t like the result, they go to court for “a second bite at the apple.”

Goldmark also points to an naturally liable to befall in which a young woman working at DNR complained of inappropriate touching and remarks by Sutherland.

The woman said Sutherland ran his hand down her back and touched her waist at a public meeting, then remarked a portion like “could be favored with felt … up front.”

Sutherland apologized to her after an internal investigation found he had violated department rules, but that the incident didn’t rise to the level of illegal harassment. However, he disputes that he ever made the remark, and says the material contiguity was just his attempt to be kindly disposed.

The woman quit soon in imitation of. There is no evidence of other harassment complaints against Sutherland.

Sutherland’s supporters shoot back that while Goldmark is tut-tutting near this example, he campaigned with former Gov. Mike Lowry in Goldmark’s 2006 congressional race. Lowry in 1995 agreed to pay a previous aide $97,000 to settle her sexual-harassment complaint.

Candidate experience

Most of Peter Goldmark’s life has been spent outside the express’sitting political orbit.

He earned a doctorate in corpuscular biology at the University of California at Berkeley, then went to work as a research ally at a Harvard laboratory studying how nerve cells connect with the heart.

When he returned to the family’s Okanogan ranch in 1972 for his honeymoon, he stayed. Thirty-six years later, Goldmark still oversees the 8,000-acre wheat cultivate and cattle ranch.

Taking a page from a playbook added commonly used through Republicans, the 62-year-old labels Sutherland a “career politician.” Goldmark touts his business testimonials as a source of real-world experience. And he points to his ranching to ease concerns he’sitting a pawn of Seattle-area environmentalists.

But his substantiate comes more from environmentalists than major business interests. He’sitting backed by Washington Conservation Voters and big-name Democrats, including all the Democrats in the congressional delegation.

His critics question whether Goldmark is prepared to run a big state agency. And they charge he has inflated experience to overcome that.

Goldmark frequently talks of his season as head of the state’s Agriculture Department during the Lowry administration in 1993.

“I have important experience managing a state agency,” he said at a fresh debate.

What he mentions less often is that he resigned after five months, saying it was too earnestly to juggle the job with raising a young parents and children. Likewise, in 2006 he started his congressional campaign against Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, dropped out citing the distress to run his ranch, then re-entered the race.

His opponent also notes that twice in the ultimate four years Goldmark was a month not long ago gainful his disposition taxes, as farther on evidence that Goldmark isn’familiarily organized enough to outcry a specify agency.

“I’d say he’sitting probably a good husbandman. But quite frankly managing a large, complex organization, whether it be a city or a county or this constitution here is a very unaccommodating thing to do,” Sutherland said.

Goldmark tries to flip that inexperience into an advantage.

“You don’t indispensably want someone camped out in an important office for a long-spun round of years of time because they lose touch through the issues and the people,” he said.

Today, Goldmark says his children are grown, he has a ranch manager, and he’s ready for a full-time government station. He says the late tax payments were a paperwork oversight he corrected as soon as he learned of it.

He likewise talks of his service on the Okanogan School District Board and the topical planning commission, and his nine years put on the Washington State University Board of Regents.

Bill Marler, a prominent Seattle attorney, served on the board of regents when Goldmark was board president. Goldmark oversaw the search for a new president, which led to the 2000 hiring of V. Lane Rawlins, who sequestered in 2006.

“When Peter was president, there was none question that Peter was in a leadership role,” Marler said. “He’s a thinker. I always used to worry him that he exhausted a lot of time forward his combine and tractor, so he had a lot of time out there to think with regard to how things should be.”

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com