County Property Group Gets New Leader -- Darryl Lord Will Head Rights Alliance

A radical member of the local libertarian movement has taken the helm of the Snohomish County Property Rights Alliance.

The executive director of the alliance for the past several years, Darrell Harting, formally retired at the alliance's May meeting and is off to Nevada, where he has mining claims.

In his place, at least for now, is Darryl Lord, an Everett man best known for bringing a hangman's noose to a Snohomish County Council growth-management hearing last fall.

Lord also is head of the Freedom Forum Supper Club, which has ties to the alliance. Both groups contend that the U.S. Constitution does not authorize modern-day taxation or regulation by government.

The alliance, which claims a mailing list of several thousand people, is a magnet for groups throughout the county frustrated by government regulations. Its members played a key role in 1993 in the electoral defeat of two county councilmen and their replacement with representatives sympathetic to their views. Alliance members also are active in the movement to carve a new county, named Freedom, out of north Snohomish County.

The alliance's board of directors plans to meet later this month to discuss long-term leadership options, said board member Ed Husmann of Sultan.

"The Property Rights Alliance and Darrell Harting have been synonymous, and now nobody can replace Darrell Harting," Husmann said. "So the Property Rights Alliance may take on a different form; we may not have an executive director."

Meanwhile, Husmann said, Lord is acting executive director.

But at the last alliance meeting, Harting symbolically turned over his job to Lord, said Doug Smith, a lawyer who represented property-rights advocates in a recent case before the state Supreme Court.

Smith said Harting first told the alliance of his retirement plans last fall.

Yesterday, Lord said he'd taken Harting's place. "He retired, and I stepped in. It's pretty simple, really."

But Lord declined further comment, citing his distrust of the press.

In November, Lord said he brought the noose to the County Council hearing to illustrate his formal comments to the council.

"This is a symbol of what the Constitution once stood for," he said during a break at the meeting. "It's a symbol of how we may retain our liberty. . . . It represents how we may eventually clear all the tyrants out of office."

He also handed out cards at that meeting. On one side was a drawing of a hangman's noose, with the slogan, "TREASON = DEATH." The other side read, "ECO FASCISTS GO HOME!" and "Fascism: the strict regulation and control of private property and industry in the name of national interests."

Lord's noose received news-media attention because somebody allegedly used it during the hearing to threaten Ellen Gray, a leader of the Pilchuck Audubon Society who's a leader in the local environmental-protection movement.

Gray said a man held up the noose and said, "This is a message for you." Moments later, she said, another man approached her and said: "If we can't beat you at the ballot box, we'll beat you with a bullet. . . . We have a militia with 10,000 people."

Lord later said that he didn't speak to Gray that night. Somebody borrowed the noose from him, he said.