'Harris' signs across red-leaning rural Washington...but not for Kamala

When William Harris decided to run for Mason County Commissioner last year, he made his last name big on his yard signs.

“The recommendation was half the sign, or even two thirds, is your name, primarily your last name,” Harris said, standing in his driveway by two of his old campaign signs. They’re now sitting in his garage, pulled off the street.

Harris, a Republican, has the 25th most common surname in America, which he shares with more than 600,000 people, including Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

A number of Republican candidates running down-ballot also have the name, like Mark Harris, Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina, and Rep. Andy Harris from Maryland, the new chair of the House Freedom Caucus.

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But in Mason County, Washington, when Vice President Kamala Harris quickly became the Democratic nominee in August, there was some confusion for the Republican county commissioner candidate.

Vice President Harris’ team picked a typeface for her campaign materials that happened to look a whole lot like the one William Harris was already using for his lawn signs.

Supporters started calling William Harris, telling him the lawn signs made passersby think they supported the other Harris. On the Reddit page for Shelton, the largest town in the county, users posted pictures of Harris’ signs in the Mason County Republicans’ office downtown, calling it “comically” unfortunate or saying it must “burn” the Republicans deep down.

But William Harris has a sense of humor about it.

“I mean, you can see the T-shirt that I'm wearing has a nice, big Harris. And I would walk up to doors, and some people would open the door, and they would say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, we're Republicans.’ And my response is, ‘So am I,’” he said. “[At] another house, a lady walked up – open arms, going, ‘Thank God, I've been waiting for you.’ And then she stopped and said, ‘Who's William?’”

Harris says it’s actually helped him connect with Democrats he hopes will vote for him. He is running on local issues, like planning for affordable housing as the county grows, and dealing with homelessness and mental illness. He does not talk about presidential politics. Trump carried Mason County with a little over 50% of the vote in 2020, improving his 2016 margins. Biden, meanwhile, got 46%.

A working-class area on the southwest edge of Puget Sound, Mason County was once the home of Democrats like Tim Sheldon, who famously caucused with the Republicans in the state Senate. Randy Neatherlin, the incumbent county commissioner Harris is hoping to unseat, is an independent who’s served on the commission for more than a decade.

“It used to be a Democrat county, and then it became more of an independent county, and in the last years, especially during Covid, it shifted to be a conservative county, and quite a bit,” Neatherlin said. For his part, Neatherlin is running on what he calls a long record of fiscal conservatism and deep roots in the community.

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Neatherlin ties the shift to the Covid business shutdowns and vaccine mandates. A prison in Shelton became a big employer in the county as timber jobs disappeared, but the state Corrections Department lost hundreds of jail guards and employees in 2021 when Gov. Inslee fired state workers who wouldn’t get vaccinated.

In 2022, the county ousted its longtime Democratic county auditor and elected a Republican who’s questioned the results of the 2020 election and led a local door-to-door effort to find voter fraud.

“There was so much anger and animosity going on with the governor that it shifted the whole population,” Neatherlin said, acknowledging that Republicans are popular enough now that he could lose reelection.

But the situation with Neatherlin’s opponent and the vice president gave Neatherlin a chuckle, he said.

William Harris has tried to be proactive about the situation. He took a stencil to his signs and spray-painted “WILLIAM” in big red letters above “Harris,” until he could replace the signs entirely.

“We have, now, a much larger blue ‘William,’ a very big red ‘Harris,’ and the American flag on it. And we stand out much more,” Harris said.

KUOW reached out to the two Harrises running for Congress in other states to see if they’d experienced mix-ups. Neither returned requests for an interview, though Rep. Andy Harris’ campaign signs say, “I’m With Andy” in big blue letters on a yellow background – and smaller, under that: “Harris for Congress.”

Washington’s William Harris wanted to keep his last name big. He’s proud of it — he traces his family ancestry all the way back to his English ancestor, Thomas, who came to America in 1640 as an indentured servant.

“So his dad was William Harris, and I sit here today with that same name, you know, quite literally, almost 400 years later,” Harris said.