The Whitworthian: A Look at Kevin Parker
Kevin Parker: From Academic Probation to a Potential Seat in the State Legislature
October 21, 2008
With a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, ‘96 alumnus Kevin Parker has been campaigning around the clock. He has gone door to door, talking with countless Spokane residents, crossing off lists of the thousands of homes he’s visited.
Parker is running for the Washington State House of Representatives for the 6th District of Spokane. Parker (R) faces off against incumbent Don Barlow (D) for the district in November.
The precinct stretches from the South Hill area downtown to North Spokane past Whitworth University.
Parker’s three main issues he’s campaigning for are equal accessibility of education, lowering taxes on families and businesses and receiving more resources from the State Transportation Funding for Spokane.
Ballots were mailed out Oct. 15 to 17 for the Spokane November General Elections. Ballots for the 6th Legislative District were mailed Oct. 16., and all ballots need to be postmarked no later than Nov. 4.
Street politics: from one door to another
Knocking on over an unprecedented 20,000 homes, Parker has led an aggressive campaign strategy by making a point to lead a bottom-up style campaign.
“Kevin has raised the statewide bar for door-to-door knocking,” said Spencer Hutchins, campaign manager and recent Gonzaga University graduate.
It’s a number Barlow and many past candidates have not been able to meet, Hutchins said.
Parker has been door knocking non-stop for the past seven and a half months, only missing five days out of those months. He started this overall campaign over a year ago.
Most people only see the glamorous side of politics that’s shown on TV or written in the media, Parker said. But the majority of politics is doing grassroots work and is centered around people, he said.
A typical work day this time of year for Parker lasts 12 to 16 hours, seven days a week. Hours have especially increased since ballots dropped last week. But Parker doesn’t seem to mind.
Since starting with a mere $100 when he began his campaign in 2007, Parker’s campaign managed to raise $177,797 as of Oct. 16, an amount that has surpassed incumbent Barlow’s, according to the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission.
“We’re one of the leading state leg fundraising campaigns in the state,” Parker said in an e-mail.
The amount of money the campaign has been able to raise is in part from the attention the campaign received from their grassroots approach, Parker said.
There is a reason why Parker has been putting so many hours in as elections near.
For those following the state politics, the 6th District in Washington State is one to look out for for. The district broke political history in the past several years.
The district held a long standing of Republican House dominance leading all the way back to 1938, until Barlow broke the streak two years ago, according to the Spokesman-Review.
Parker is one of several state republicans who could reclaim two of the House seats, according to politickerwa.com.
Despite the long hours he has been working going from home to home, Parker has experienced many powerful stories out of the thousands of people he has interacted with on their front porch.
“The human condition is touching and compelling,” Parker said. “I’ve left doorsteps in tears or being thankful for meeting and listening to people’s stories.”
During his campaign trail, Parker came across people in the working poor and people in jeopardy of losing their homes.
The powerful aspect of our grassroots campaign is that when someone opens their door, you see a glimpse of their life, he said.
“One individual in the town of Mead said that no candidate has [ever shown] up on his doorstep in the 21 years he has lived there,” Parker said in an e-mail.
The run for the 6th District is his first attempt to run for Congress, but Parker comes with experience across the board.
A diverse belt of experience
Parker serves for a score of nonprofit businesses. He sits as a YMCA and Boys & Girls Club Board Member and committee member to several other organizations.
Parker also worked on staff and volunteered for U.S. representatives in the past. He served in the Bend, Ore. city budget committee, was appointed for the Commission of Children and Families and was county director for a U.S. Presidential campaign.
Parker is the President of GTG Ventures, which owns the Dutch Brothers Coffee Franchise in Spokane. Prior to the coffee franchise, he owned a financial services firm and before being a business owner, Parker served as the area director for Young Life in Colorado for five years and also was involved in real estate in his 20s.
After graduating Whitworth with a B.S. in Political Science, he later earned an M.B.A. at George Fox University. Parker eventually went to Harvard, where he received a certificate of 21st Century Leadership from the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Executive Leadership Program.
Originally from Salem, Ore., Parker first sparked interested in public service after talking with then Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt, one of his friends’ fathers.
Parker said he decided to run for the 2008 legislature two years ago after some political leaders asked to consider it as a possibility several years ago.
However, Parker hasn’t always done so well.
The transformation
Parker stood at a 1.5 GPA at the beginning of his senior year of high school.
“I was a party kid,” Parker said.
It wasn’t until Parker became a Christian at a Young Life camp later his senior year in high school that he said his path changed. Parker turned things around by the end of high school, earning a 3.8 GPA for his senior year.
When looking at colleges, Young Life leader and Whitworth alumnus Trey Malicoat told him about Whitworth, which Parker later applied to.
Because of a low cumulative GPA, Parker was reluctantly accepted by Whitworth. Not only was Parker the last student to be accepted for the academic year, but he also entered his freshman year at Whitworth on academic probation.
During college, Parker said he fell in love with academics, especially the Classical literature.
Communication Studies professor Ron Pyle first met Parker at Camp Spalding shortly before the start of his freshman year, where other students on academic probation gathered.
“He is a great example of the kind of transformation that can happen at Whitworth,” Pyle said. “[Aside from his academic transformation], I also saw him grow as a person, relationally and spiritually.”
By his senior year, Parker ended up as a student assistant in the President’s/Development Office, assisting Bill Robinson and others.
Dale Soden, then executive assistant to the president, met Parker in a class he taught. They still keep in contact today.
“I think it’s always great to watch one of your students enter into politics; it’s a tough world out there and takes a tremendous amount of courage to run for public office,” Soden said in an e-mail. “He genuinely cares about the community in which he lives. He is articulate and passionate – two important qualities for any leader.”
Parker said Whitworth taught him the idea of servant leadership illustrated by Jesus. The love of Jesus equals love for people, he said.
Yong Kim
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