| Field | Detail | Source |
|---|
| Full Name | Peter Van Nortwick | T1 |
| Residence | Vancouver, Clark County, WA (PDC committee address 14014 NE 7th Pl, Vancouver, WA 98685). County biography states he moved to Clark County in 1996. | T1 |
| Party | Republican. Party preference is listed on the ballot for this partisan county office and appears on the official Clark County results for each of his elections. | T1 |
| Education | | T2 |
| Employment | | T1 |
1 Election History
| Year | Race | Result |
|---|
| 2026 | | Pending. Incumbent seeking a fifth term. Two candidates filed, Peter Van Nortwick and Tyler Thoune. Primary August 4, 2026; general November 3, 2026. With only two candidates filed, both advance from the primary to the general election. |
| 2022 | | Won. General election November 8, 2022: Van Nortwick 130,512 votes (98.01%), write-ins 2,647 (1.99%). Ran effectively unopposed. |
| 2018 | | Won. General election November 6, 2018: Van Nortwick (Republican) 94,579 votes (59.8%) defeated Darren Wertz (Republican) 63,590 votes (40.2%) in a same-party general election following the top-two primary. |
| 2014 | | Won. General election November 4, 2014: Van Nortwick (Republican) 69,260 votes (61.01%) defeated Darren S. Wertz (No Party Preference) 44,261 votes (38.99%). |
| 2010 | | Won (first elected). General election November 2, 2010: Van Nortwick (Republican) 73,286 votes (52.33%) defeated Janet Seekins (Democrat) 66,771 votes (47.67%). |
2 Political Positions
| Topic | Position | Source |
|---|
| Property Tax and Assessment | | T2 |
3 Campaign Finance (PDC T1 Data)
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|
| Filing Entity | PDC candidate committee FRIENDS OF PETER VAN NORTWICK (filer_id "VANNP 687", committee id 41835), Clark County, candidacy declared 2026-05-04, registered 2026-05-08. Filed under the PDC mini reporting option, which applies to candidates who expect limited fundraising and spending and are therefore not required to file itemized contribution or expenditure reports. As of the access date the PDC datasets show no itemized contributions and no itemized expenditures for the 2026 cycle (has_reports: false). Treasurer Peter Van Nortwick. Election date 2026-11-03. Source: WA PDC SODA API (data.wa.gov dataset 3h9x-7bvm), as_of 2026-07-04. | T1 |
4 Notable Public Statements
Local news coverage on Clark County property taxes (2026-01-03)
5 Vulnerability Assessment
1 sourced findings. All sourced at T1 (Official Record) or T2 (Multi-Source Media) per clearthemud provenance model. No T3/T4 claims included.
Finding 5.1: State auditor found the assessor's office violated state law in a 2013 tax reduction that benefited the parents of an office employee MODERATE
- What happened
- A December 2015 Washington State Auditor's Office accountability audit found that the Clark County Assessor's Office, under Peter Van Nortwick, violated state law when it granted an $83,078 reduction in assessed value in 2013 to William and Genevieve Traub for land south of Ridgefield. The Traubs are the parents of Willy Traub, the levy manager in the assessor's office. Van Nortwick treated the change as a correction of a "manifest error," which state law limits to factual errors that do not require appraisal judgment. The auditor concluded the correction was instead made "using appraisal judgment" and therefore did not qualify, granting the Traubs tax relief they were not entitled to, with the shortfall shifted to other property owners the following year. The county faced no monetary penalty; the auditor directed the office to comply with the manifest-error statute going forward.
- Source tier
- T1
- Political impact
- Moderate
- Defense
- Van Nortwick maintained that the property was genuinely misassessed because of an error in a valuation table and that correcting it was proper. The dispute turned on a technical statutory line between a "manifest error" correction and a revaluation requiring appraisal judgment, not on a finding that Van Nortwick personally profited. The audit imposed no penalty and required only prospective compliance, and the employee relationship was familial to a staff member rather than a direct interest of the assessor.
- https://www.columbian.com/news/2015/dec/03/state-report-clark-county-assessors-office-violated-law/
- https://sao.wa.gov/reports-data/audit-reports
6 Source Verification
- Data Sources
- WA SOS, WA PDC, local media, public records
- Collection Date
- 2026-07-04
- Highest Tier
- T1 (Official Record)
- Methodology
- OSINT deep-dive using exclusively public-record sources. All findings at T1 or T2. No T3/T4 claims included.