Who is Don Orange?

As he seeks a seat on the Port of Vancouver Commission, Don Orange has presented himself as a candidate with the professional, financial and personal qualifications to oversee one of the busiest ports in the country. He markets himself as an open and transparent, environmentally-conscious businessman who is unencumbered by special interests and committed to the district where he is running.

But if you scratch the surface, Don Orange is not the candidate he makes himself out to be in some crucial respects. In the first of a several part series that will explore his background and many of the underpinnings regularly cited in his run for office, Shift WA examines Orange’s residency, or his lack thereof in the port district.

This is looming as a significant factor in the contest and that’s partially because Orange has been less than forthright about where he lives.

In public records, his address is listed as 4418 Northeast 179^th Street in Vancouver. Not only is that outside of District 1, the area he is running to represent on the commission, it’s not within the port boundaries at all. Records show that this has been his address for more than 30 years.

Evidently seeking to defuse charges that he is a carpetbagger, Orange claims he is renting in District 1. He has publicly claimed to be too busy to try to begin house-hunting in the district now. In his defense, he has pledged to buy a home in the district if he wins the election, which would be a good idea since it appears he doesn’t live there right now:

Even with the apartment, it doesn’t appear that Orange spends too much time living in District 1 presently. On Wednesday at 2 pm, the Clark County Auditor will hear arguments in a case challenging Orange’s voter registration based on the fact that his house “is outside of all the districts for the Port of Vancouver, including the district in which he is now running to be a Port commissioner.”

The full complaint can be found here, and it’s worth the read as the petitioner did an exhaustive amount of research into Orange’s living situation. She stopped by his District 1 apartment more than two dozen times, at different times of the day to see if he was home and to ask him, “if he had really and truly permanently moved into that apartment and left his wife behind in their home of over 30 years.”

While he was never at his ‘home’ in District 1, she did run into a group of his neighbors who swore that Orange still lives primarily at his house outside the district. Here’s that story:

In July of 2017, I ran into a group of men eating breakfast at the pie shop on HWY 99. It was eight in the morning and no one was in the place but these gentlemen so I struck up a conversation with them. It came to light that three of them are Don Orange’s current neighbors out on 179^th St. They informed me he still resides there. One gentleman even said Donald Orange leaves every morning at 7:15 am. I asked how he knows this, and he said he sees him. When I asked him when was the last time he saw Donald Orange leave 4418 NE 179^th St, Vancouver, WA 98686, at 7:15 am, he answered “this morning.”

Whether he actually lives in the port district or not is a question for the Clark County Auditor to decide, but these facts deserve to be shared with all District 1 voters before Election Day.