Republican Pedro Celis confirms he’ll challenge Suzan DelBene for U.S. House

With less than nine­ty days to go until the fil­ing dead­line arrives, the Repub­li­can Par­ty has final­ly found a chal­lenger for U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene: Pedro Celis, a fifty-four year old for­mer soft­ware engi­neer who resides in Red­mond. Celis worked for Microsoft for more than a decade and is now a mem­ber of the board of Plaza Bank, a local finan­cial insti­tu­tion that serves the Lati­no community.

Seat­tle Times polit­i­cal reporter Jim Brun­ner spoke to Celis ear­li­er today ahead of his offi­cial cam­paign kick­off tomor­row to get a sense of what Celis will be run­ning on.

Celis pre­dictably crit­i­cized Del­Bene’s sup­port of the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act, no doubt hav­ing been told by the Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee (NRCC) that this should be his major theme. And he also con­demned Del­Bene for sup­port­ing an increase in the min­i­mum wage, to $10.10 an hour.

I can’t imag­ine that Celis isn’t aware that Wash­ing­ton State has the high­est min­i­mum wage of any state in the coun­ty and that vot­ers here have wel­comed oppor­tu­ni­ties to increase the min­i­mum wage, most recent­ly last year in SeaTac.

In fact, the rea­son that our state’s min­i­mum wage is the high­est of any state in the Union is that we start­ed index­ing it to the Con­sumer Price Index in 2001.

A few weeks after Celis began work­ing at Microsoft (he start­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1998, accord­ing to his LinkedIn pro­file) vot­ers resound­ing­ly and over­whelm­ing­ly approved Ini­tia­tive 688 by a mar­gin of near­ly two-to-one — 66.1% to 33.9%.

I‑688 increased the min­i­mum wage from $4.90 to $5.70 in 1999, and then to $6.50 in 2000, pro­vid­ing that it be indexed to the CPI there­after. (It’s now $9.32 an hour). It ranks as one of the most pop­u­lar ini­tia­tives in Wash­ing­ton State history.

Celis is cer­tain­ly enti­tled to his opin­ion, but rais­ing the min­i­mum wage has been good for Wash­ing­ton fam­i­lies and our eco­nom­ic security.

Pri­or to I‑688’s pas­sage, lob­by­ists for numer­ous trade asso­ci­a­tions pre­dict­ed that bad things would hap­pen if it became law. Here is how the Seat­tle Times’ Jim Lynch char­ac­ter­ized their oppo­si­tion at the time:

Wash­ing­ton busi­ness groups call the Novem­ber bal­lot mea­sure a fright­en­ing prospect that could stick the state with unrea­son­ably high wages and put it at a com­pet­i­tive disadvantage.

“Scary,” says Russ Good­man, spokesman for the Wash­ing­ton Restau­rant Association.

Scary? Try suc­cess­ful.  I‑688 has now been the law of the land for over fif­teen years, and it has con­tributed to the eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty of thou­sands of Wash­ing­ton fam­i­lies. Late­ly, our state has repeat­ed­ly been ranked as one of the best states to do busi­ness, and our high min­i­mum wage actu­al­ly helps our competitiveness.

What Celis does­n’t seem to appre­ci­ate is that when work­ers (who are the real prof­it cre­ators!) are paid a high­er wage, they need less pub­lic assis­tance and can con­tribute to the eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty of their neighbors.

If Celis and his cam­paign team think that run­ning against the min­i­mum wage will help him appeal to vot­ers, they are sore­ly mis­tak­en. Dino Rossi tried that in 2008 in his rematch with Chris Gre­goire, and it con­tributed to the fail­ure of his campaign.

Giv­en that Celis was a sup­port­er of the Wash­ing­ton State DREAM Act, signed into law today by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, I’d be curi­ous to know what his posi­tion is on com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform. Brun­ner’s sto­ry does­n’t dis­cuss that issue, although that does­n’t mean Brun­ner did­n’t ask Celis about it dur­ing their interview.

Celis’ cam­paign has reg­is­tered sev­er­al domains to be used in con­junc­tion with the cam­paign, includ­ing pedrocelis.com, which a WHOIS search shows is cur­rent­ly held by the Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee’s senior dig­i­tal strate­gist Christo­pher Han­ks. Han­ks also is the reg­is­trant for celisforcongress.com.

Del­Bene’s cam­paign did not mince words when asked for com­ment. Speak­ing on behalf of the cam­paign, Sound­view Strate­gies’ Sandeep Kaushik told Brun­ner, “If you like the way the Repub­li­can Con­gress has forced the irre­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment shut­down, advo­cates for pri­va­tiz­ing Social Secu­ri­ty and launched a war on women, and want more of the same, then Celis is your candidate.”