Personally i like the Five Star adds telling everyone to spend 20$ more a week locally. Does the owner of 3 of the 4 major dealerships in Aberdeen even live in Grays Harbor?

Rich Hartman lives in Montesano and is/was on the School Board. Perfect? Nope. But, he's one of the good guys.

Sure. I probably spend 90% of my money locally and am satisfied with the prices I pay. I save the gas driving out of town which, right there, lowers my cost and means that if I pay a tad more for the items, I'm still usually ahead. Since I hate shopping, and the idea of going out of town to shop is a huge waste of time and a miserable way to spend my time, this makes it even more important for me to shop in town, even if I do pay a bit more. My time and enjoyment factor is worth a few bucks.

I do think shopping locally is important. I vividly recall a conversation I had a couple years back with a very frustrated, local business owner. One of the things his store provides is custom items (awards, trophies, etc.). While he has NEVER had any of the local schools purchase items from him, they ALWAYS hit him up for donations for fundraisers. He still always donates but it really rubs him wrong that they don't even contact him to bid on jobs. I think that's just wrong.

When you consider all the groups in the area that expect businesses to donate for the umpteen-million dinner/auctions/raffles...and, in my experience, these businesses are usually very generous in providing items for these things...it is sad that many don't give these generous business owners their shopping dollars, imho.

Not to mention that if we want our friends and neighbors to have jobs, we have to support local businesses.

But, of course, there is a limit to how much extra I am willing to pay for something. And that is when I usually shop via internet. I'd rather pay for shipping than spend time on that dreaded out-of-town shopping trip.

Was. Lost his seat in '06. His opponent used pretty ugly tactics with a certain DW as his campaign chair. Fancy that.

Lost his seat last fall-- in 2007.

?Dave Wilkins was Hartman's opponent's campaign chair? I didn't know that. (What else does DW stand for, since I assume you don't mean Daily World?)

I'm pretty sure it was '06. He attended an election night party we were at. While the party celebrated wins, he, unfortunately, wasn't one of them.

Of course, since turning 50, I have to qualify everything by saying "as best I can remember".

No, not Wilkins. You may PM me if you're curious.

WalMart must be one of the larger employers in Grays Harbor?

We shop at Jay's Veggie Stand, Swanson's, usually the little Ace Hardware/True Value in Hoquiam, the Paisley Penguin in Aberdeen (BOOKS!! OMG BOOKS!!), the Marketplace, and occasionally Sears/Penney's in the mall.
Larger grocery trips are to the Olympia Food Co-op, the requisite trip to Costco once every couple of months, and the Olympia Farmers Market.

Home Depot is a rare trip, if the local Ace doesn't have something.
I do shop online, mostly for clothes. It's really hard for someone of my size/taste to find things on the Harbor, or even in Olympia.

The Monte School Board elections in question were in '07.

"...as best I can remember..." Yeah, that's the ticket. It just dawned on me whom the DW associated with dubious campaign tactics would be. I thought he had left the area.