Here's a brilliant idea: Schedule an interview with a longtime newspaper guy, then have no idea what you plan to talk about. Have no plan at all, in fact. It's not like he'll call you on it!

Oops ...

I'd never heard of Ken Balsley when I was assigned this interview, but that was my fault, not his. He's been doing everything he can to get his name out there. If you grew up in this area, you know him from his commentaries on KGY AM 1240. Or you might read his blog, Ken's Corner, at kenbalsley.com. Or perhaps you live in Lacey, where he's all but ubiquitous. Ken Balsley is a very big fish in a growing pond. And yes, if you voted in our Best of Olympia poll, he thinks you, Gentle Reader, are full of shit.

Oh, we'll get to that, I promise.

Call him Ken

In the meantime, meet Ken Balsley. "Call me Ken," he says. We meet at the Shari's on College Street, which seems to be in Lacey but isn't. When the city was incorporated in December 1966, the city of Olympia made sure to claim most of the businesses near Martin Way and Interstate 5. It wasn't the last time these sister cities fought like sisters, and Balsley has had a front-row seat.

He's 68. He was born in Iowa, but his family moved to Tumwater when he was two. "I graduated from Olympia High because we didn't have a high school in Tumwater at the time," he explains.

He spent almost six years in the Army, including service as an Airborne Ranger. "I made 39 jumps, though I never finished Ranger School. I broke my wrist three weeks into it." Even so, he says, "I did see combat. I'm in the history books! 1962, September: James Meredith was enrolled as the first black at the University of Mississippi. They sent the 101st Airborne to put down the riots." Balsley never met Meredith, but he got his two front teeth knocked out during the disturbance. Only a week later, Balsley sat in a plane and waited to be sent to Cuba until an agreement with Khrushchev resolved the missile crisis.

"December of 1966, I got out and went to work for the state," he says. "Seven years I counseled delinquent boys." It was a job he accepted only because it paid slightly better than the job he'd been offered as a Tumwater cop. He entered the first class at The Evergreen State College when it opened in 1971. "The opening ceremony: Nixon had just invaded Cambodia, so a lot of kids wanted to postpone. They wanted to protest. We were convinced to just wear black armbands instead." U.S. participation in the Cambodian campaign began with Operation Rockcrusher in May 1970.

"Ted Bundy was actively involved in this town for a long time," Balsley continues. "He worked for the Senate Republicans. He was a staffer, and he was very well known in this town. We lost two students out at Evergreen. They just disappeared." Evergreen student Donna Gail Manson, 19, was a known victim, plus an unidentified female was found buried south of Olympia. Bundy told investigators he killed a hitchhiker near Tumwater who was never identified. "When it was found out that he was a serial killer - because he was a charming guy - that's when we realized there was evil in this world. Nobody locked their doors (before that). Everybody hugged each other. We lost our innocence. It was really an interesting time to be around," Balsley says.

He met his old friend Dick Pust, a fellow Olympia graduate, while working for the Lacey Arts and Dance Festival in 1974. "At the time, there were a lot of rock festivals around the country, and people were concerned. There were rumors that Hell's Angels were coming up from California. There were riot police in riot gear at Saint Martin's." He and Pust created the Miss Thurston County Pageant, which lasted until 2009.

"I am probably unique for a Greener," he grins. "I was the first Greener in the world to be a Rotarian, ‘cause I joined in ‘74. I was the first president of the Rotary Club, probably the first guy to have long hair and a beard in the Rotary Club. I was the president of the Lacey Chamber of Commerce. The alternative voice for Thurston County is a Greener!"

He graduated from Evergreen with a degree in communications and went to work for a local newspaper. "I was the image of the newspaper," he says. That lasted seven years. "I'd sit in the office and say, ‘This is gonna be a three-cigarette story.' I won several writing and reporting awards, a couple of national awards. When I got fired from there, I started my own paper. I became the editor of the Lacey Leader." Thus was born an unpredictable, yet irresistible, public voice.

Ken makes it big

"Between 23 newspapers in town," Balsley says, "I probably wrote Ken's Corner for half of them. I've been doing that for 26 years. I went to work for a couple of radio stations. I've been doing commentary on KGY for 13 years. They had me buy my own time initially, but hired me on after about six months."

Between media jobs, Balsley worked for the Department of Transportation, where, he says, "I was on the job for a week and got sued for $247 million. I just couldn't take it anymore, and I got offered a job doing public relations for Evergreen College. I started my own PR business in '86. I had several people come to me and say I ought to start my own newspaper." He started a four-page newsletter, Ken's Corner & the Real News, instead. "Within two months I signed up 135 paid subscribers. The height of my career is right now. I've got between 480 and 490 paid subscribers. I like to tell people what I think, and I get paid for it."

So what does he like to write about? "I rail against the Big Five," he answers, by which, as readers of Ken's Corner well know, he means Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media, Big Religion and Big Government. His website warns, "When one of them gains too much power and begins to overwhelm the others, then we have problems." Despite 20 years as a Democratic Precinct Committeeman, he feels the party moved left of him. He's an independent these days, but going rogue focused his efforts as a middle class community activist. In an Olympia poll, he laughs, "I was named the favorite liberal and the favorite conservative, which is fine with me."

We spend an hour talking about his political beliefs. I ask him when and why he parted ways with the Democrats. "I can tell you specifically. It was when pubic employee unions began to take over the Democratic Party, when (it) became the party of government employees who didn't give one shit about the working stiff. Public employee unions are the worst thing that ever happened to the taxpayer. When private companies are striking, I have an alternative: to shop somewhere else. (With) public employees, I've got no alternative. They're only striking for more money and better benefits that cost me money. Teacher unions, they're the worst; firefighters, police, all of 'em. We've created our own aristocracy, and it's government employees." It's a hot-button issue courtesy of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, but Balsley says, "I've been fighting it for 10 years. I'm in a government town. I'm the only one who seems to be yammering about it."

He's pro-gay marriage and pro-legalization of marijuana, yet sides with Jeff Kingsbury in the Joe Hyer arrest story. "(Hyer)'s a civil employee. He has to follow the rules. Do I sound conservative to you? I'm not a social conservative. I am an alternative viewpoint in Thurston County. I don't think I'm conservative, but I'm an alternative." And before you ask - because I already did - "I've got nothing off the record, by the way."

Still not paying attention? "Evergreen is a feminist college," he says at one point. "They teach feminist theory out there. It's absolutely true, the white male is ‘the devil,' and you have to subscribe to that if you're going to thrive. It's an accepted form of prejudice." He shrugs, "If they've got to make somebody the devil, it's fine with me."

"Social upheaval," he muses, "will happen very shortly when women start making more money than men, when women have to start marrying down (with) men who are less educated than they are, who make less money than they do. We're a global society in a global economy. When women are dominating here, but in other countries they're still down, that'll be trouble."

Hearting Lacey

Balsley's son, Brad, is the drummer for C Average, voted Olympia's "Best Comeback Band" in the Volcano's recent Best of Olympia issue. Balsley's stepson runs Jezebels Bar & Grill. Yet Balsley says he doesn't really "give a shit" about Olympia. It's Lacey where he planted his flag, and in our last 30 minutes together, Balsley and I found the hook for this story.

He waves the "Best of Olympia" edition of the Weekly Volcano, not angrily but insistently. "There's an article in here that says the best thing about Lacey is ‘nothing.' My point is they're full of shit. They don't know Lacey. Half of these (winning) businesses are in Lacey, but there's nothing good about Lacey?

"What I really consider myself is a community activist (campaigning for people) to love and respect Lacey. I'm a guy who cares about Lacey, (but) there was nothing distinctive about Lacey. There was no reason for this community to exist, except that it didn't want to be Olympia. This town was started because we were opening a shopping center, and none of the banks in Olympia would finance it. The business interests here formed their own city. It took us two tries. A lot of the businesses in downtown Olympia moved out here, and Olympia died until the new mall opened on the West Side. There was bad blood and animosity between the two cities for a long time.

SMELL THE FLOWERS: Balsley says Lacey understands the importance of business. Photography by Patrick Snapp

"If I was gonna get advertisers and subscribers, I had to find a reason to have Lacey exist as a community. I decided on the Rotary. I joined Rotary and got all the community leaders into the Rotary Club. I had a 50 cent tie from Goodwill and a corduroy coat, and that was all I had. I sponsored 92 members into the Lacey Rotary Club over the years.

"Lacey is finally coming into its own. It's now only 5,000 people behind Olympia in population. We've developed our own separate identity, and I think I had a lot to do with that. Lacey was business-oriented. I‘ve been pushing that for 30 years. We have a pro-business city government that understands business is necessary for a city to survive. Olympia doesn't. We have a permitting process that allows businesses to have certainty. They know if they apply, and they do these things, at the end they'll have their permit. Businesses hate to do business in Olympia because there's no certainty. Business likes to do business in Lacey. It's not easy, but it's certain.

"When Cabela's decided to open here, Lacey welcomed it with open arms. We had a public meeting, and half a dozen liberals from Olympia came down and said we don't want a business that sells guns. We said, ‘We don't live in Olympia. What are you doing here?'

"We've got the best city manager you can ever have, a fiscal conservative. He's made Lacey a fiscally conservative community. We got a senior center, a community center, a library, a new city hall, without ever raising taxes. We've done that by being frugal with money.

"It wasn't until the last 10 or 15 years that Lacey developed its own sense of community, and it had to do with the military. Fort Lewis is only three miles down the road. Retired military began to find Lacey as a great place to retire. Then the officers started moving in here; then military families started moving in. We understand how significant the military is to the economics of this community, and we go out of our way. We have a Military Family Support Day that we put on every year, thousands of military families a year. A lot of military families got free baby clothes because when they came back from deployment, they all had babies. We are a pro-military-family community.

"If I'm anything," Balsley finishes, "I'm a pro-Lacey guy who took a community that was looking for a reason to exist and has spent 40 years of his life trying to give this community a sense of community identification. The problem is we don't have a sense of community identification. We're working on it. We're doing better. My thing is I have to get these people to understand that they're full of shit."

And by "these people," Oly voters, Ken Balsley means you.