James Watkins

James Watkins
Candidate for
Washington State Auditor
Party	Republican
Education
Master's	George Washington University
Personal
Profession	Business Development Consultant/Manager, Microsoft
Websites
Campaign website

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James Watkins was a 2012 Republican candidate for Washington State Auditor in the 2012 elections.

Watkins currently works for Microsoft as a Manager and Business Development Consultant. He previously worked as a troubleshooter for the Federal Deposit insurance Corporation (FDIC) from 1991-1995.

Elections

2012

Auditor

See also: Washington down ballot state executive elections, 2012

See also: Washington's 1st congressional district elections, 2012

Watkins ran in the 2012 election for the U.S. House, representing Washington's 1st District. In January 2012, Watkins withdrew from the Congressional race and endorsed John Koster.

Watkins ran for Washington State Auditor in 2012. He faced Democrats Troy Kelley, Mark Miloscia and Craig Pridemore in the blanket primary on August 7. Watkins and Kelley advanced to the general election. Kelley defeated Watkins in the general election on November 6, 2012.

Washington State Auditor General Election, 2012
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Democratic	Troy Kelley	52.9%	1,512,620
	Republican	James Watkins	47.1%	1,344,137
Total Votes				2,856,757
Election Results via Washington Secretary of State.

Primary

Washington Auditor, Primary, 2012
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Republican	James Watkins	46.1%	584,444
	Democratic	Troy Kelley	23%	291,335
	Democratic	Craig Pridemore	21.2%	268,220
	Democratic	Mark Miloscia	9.8%	123,936
Total Votes				1,267,935
Election Results Via: Washington Secretary of State

Endorsements

• Tea Party Patriots
• The Spokane Spokesman-Review
• Human Life PAC
• The Yakima Herald:
• The Vancouver Columbian
• The Tacoma News Tribune:
• The Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal
• The Wall Walla Union-Bulletin:
• The Tri-City Herald:
• The Longview Daily News:
• Washington State Wire:
• Publicola:
• Human Life PAC :
• Pastor's Picks:
• The Seattle Times(Primary only) (Primary only)

2010

On November 2, 2010, Jay Inslee (D) won re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating James Watkins (R).

U.S. House of Representatives General Election, Washington, Congressional District 1, 2010
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Democratic	Jay Inslee Incumbent	57.7%	172,642
	Republican	James Watkins	42.3%	126,737
Total Votes				299,379

2010 Campaign Themes

• Public Education

Watkins advocated for education dollars to stay in Washington State: "For the same 13 thousand dollars that we're spending for kids [in public schools], you could send that kid to a very nice private school and get very different results than you get from our public schools. The problem that we have with federal education right now is that when they send a dollar back to the states, first of all, we send them a $1.20 before they send us back a dollar. The second thing is that that dollar comes back with all sorts of mandates."

• Disclose Act

Watkins opposed the Disclose Act.

• Healthcare Reform

Watkins ran on issues such as "repealing and replacing, or defunding, the Affordable Care Act."

• Immigration Reform

He believed in strengthening immigration laws, saying "Arizona's immigration law is very modest".

• Global Warming

He stated that he did not believe you could tie human activity to global warming. He voiced support of environmental stewardship.

• Size and Complexity of Government

Watkins said "Our current tax system is 70,000 pages of government intrusion and government selection of winners and losers in the economy. We absolutely need to reform our tax system to make it less expensive to comply and to ensure that all of us who are trying to do an honest job on our taxes are not criminals because we didn't know what was on page 58,612 . . . I totally support the idea of a fair tax or flat tax where we can make it much more easy and predictable to pay taxes." . He wanted to "limit bills to a specific number of pages, 150 pages is my proposal . . . we can't have these big omnibus bills where we have 2700 pages of health care that nobody's read and they throw in 400 page amendments at the last minute that nobody has a chance to read before they vote."

Campaign donors

2012

Watkins lost the election to the position of Washington State Auditor in 2012. During that election cycle, Watkins raised a total of $122,769.

Washington State Auditor 2012 election - Campaign Contributions
Top contributors to James Watkins's campaign in 2012
James H. Watkins	$29,973
Washington State Republican Party	$11,179
Benton County Republican Party	$4,000
Rufus Lumry	$3,600
Patricia Lumry	$3,600
Total Raised in 2012	$122,769
Source:Follow the Money

External links

Suggest a link

• James Watkins campaign website
• Facebook campaign page
• James Watkins on Twitter
• James Watkins on LinkedIn
• James Watkins on Flickr
• Project Vote Smart biography
• Campaign contributions: 2012