Goldendale Businesswoman Enters Race for 14th District

Gina McCabe, a Republican from Goldendale, will officially kick off her campaign for state representative Thursday. She is the third Republican to enter the race to succeed Rep. Charles Ross, who is not running for re-election but is instead running for Yakima County auditor. McCabe joins Yakima developer Ben Shoval, and Adam Yoest of Yakima in the race. No Democrat has yet to enter the field.

McCabe, a from a fourth-generation Klickitat County family, was born, educated and raised in the Goldendale area. She attended Clark College in Vancouver, Wash., and completed her political science degree at the University of Washington, followed by two years at Concord University School of Law. For the past 20 years she has been the CEO, general manager and a certified hotel administrator for the Gold Award Quality Inn & Suites Hotel. She has been the owner-operator of several small businesses, including a fitness club and a dance studio for community children, and a high school varsity coach. She also serves on the national Choice Hotels Owners’ Council Board, as well as Choice Hotels International Regional Advisory Board.

“I know that the voters in this legislative district are interested in what makes a candidate tick, and how he or she may feel about certain issues, and that’s good”, says McCabe. “ But I believe that the most important thing is to be a good listener and to ask the right questions in order to fully understand what your constituents want. It’s not my agenda -- it’s theirs that I want to go to Olympia to fight for.”