Washington state Sen. Kevin Van De Wege, a Democrat who represents a rural district on the Olympic Peninsula, announced June 21 he will run for public lands commissioner.

Van De Wege chairs the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources and Parks Committee. He said in an interview that more timber should be harvested from state lands, including from thinning projects that cut fire danger.

The Department of Natural Resources’ top priority should be reducing wildfires and smoke, said Van De Wege, a career firefighter. “It ruins people’s summers,” he said. “I want to have an impact on that.”

Two other candidates have registered with the Public Disclosure Commission to run for lands commissioner: King County Councilman Dave Upthegrove and Sue Kuehl Pederson, a Lakewood Republican. Van De Wege is the first to make a formal announcement.

Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, a Democrat, is running for governor, one of several candidates seeking to succeed Jay Inslee, who will not run for a fourth term.

Van De Wege represents Clallam and Jefferson counties, and most of Grays Harbor County. He was a state House member for 10 years before being elected to the Senate in 2016.

The lands commissioners oversees a department that manages 5.6 million acres of forest, range, agricultural, aquatic and commercial lands.

As lands commissioner, Van De Wege said he would be protective of farming and grazing leases. “We have to provide stability for farmers,” he said.

Van De Wege said he was concerned about setting aside timberlands and marketing the standing trees to companies as a way to offset their carbon emissions somewhere else.

The revenue to rural schools, counties and other taxing districts would be far less, he said. The trees might burn up anyway, he said.

“I have concerns from the environmental-side and the fire-side and the job-side,” Van De Wege said.

Inslee’s proposal in 2022 to mandate wide riparian buffers on farmland failed to pass Van De Wege’s committee. Van De Wege said the plan probably would have been overturned in a referendum anyway.

Upthegrove was appointed to the King County Council in 2016 and is currently council chairman. He represented a portion of King County in the state House between 2001 to 2013.

He was endorsed by Washington Conservation Voters in 2016 when he made an unsuccessful run for lands commissioner. He led the charge to ban new fossil fuel facilities in King County, according to his council website.

Pederson confirmed June 21 she planned to run, though she hasn’t made an announcement. She ran against Franz in 2020 and received 43% of the vote. She is a former chairwoman of the Grays Harbor County Republican Party.