Last night, NARAL Pro-Choice Wash­ing­ton held a can­di­date forum in Red­mond to give can­di­dates run­ning for the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture in the 45th Dis­trict an oppor­tu­ni­ty to share their views on wom­en’s health and repro­duc­tive rights.

The six can­di­dates seek­ing to rep­re­sent the dis­trict in the 2015–2016 Leg­is­la­ture were all invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, only the Democ­rats (Matt Isen­how­er, Lar­ry Springer, and Roger Good­man) showed up.

Top­ics dis­cussed includ­ed the fall­out from the Supreme Court’s Hob­by Lob­by rul­ing, the Sen­ate’s repeat­ed fail­ure to pass the Repro­duc­tive Par­i­ty Act, and con­se­quences for wom­en’s health result­ing from public/private hos­pi­tal merg­ers or part­ner­ships. But the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates also com­ment­ed on the absence of their Repub­li­can oppo­nents, who were rep­re­sent­ed by emp­ty chairs.

(Full dis­clo­sure: I am an offi­cer of the 45th Dis­trict Democ­rats, which is work­ing to elect Matt Isen­how­er, Lar­ry Springer, and Roger Goodman).

“It real­ly speaks vol­umes that my oppo­nent is not here,” Isen­how­er told the audi­ence. “Again and again in the media, unfor­tu­nate­ly, peo­ple refer to him as pro-choice. But my ques­tion would be, if he is pro-choice, why is he not here? Why did he not fill out the ques­tion­naire for NARAL? Why has he not gone for endorse­ment for both NARAL and Planned Par­ent­hood? Those things, those actions, speak a lot loud­er than any words I can say.”

State Sen­ate can­di­date Matt Isen­how­er lis­tens as State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lar­ry Springer speaks. Isen­how­er’s oppo­nent, Repub­li­can Andy Hill, blew off NAR­AL’s forum for 45th leg­isla­tive dis­trict can­di­dates. (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Isen­how­er could have been more spe­cif­ic and said, Again and again in the Seat­tle Times, unfor­tu­nate­ly, edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers have referred to him as pro-choice — for it is Frank Blethen’s edi­to­r­i­al page that keeps cred­it­ing Hill as hav­ing that stance.

Take the Times’ unsigned endorse­ment of Andy Hill, pub­lished ear­li­er this year:

Hill rep­re­sents his social­ly lib­er­al dis­trict, sup­port­ing abor­tion rights, gay mar­riage and the state allow­ing stu­dents with­out legal res­i­den­cy sta­tus access to finan­cial aid.

Or this blog post from edi­to­r­i­al writer Thanh Tan last week:

But by try­ing to take out mod­er­ate, pro-choice Repub­li­cans such as incum­bent Andy Hill for not being more assertive or rabid about sup­port­ing abor­tion rights, they risk affect­ing issues that go way beyond wom­en’s health.

Or this col­umn by edi­to­r­i­al writer Lynne Varn­er from 2012:

Pro-choice groups need mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans, a grow­ing group local­ly that includes not just Lit­zow but state Sens. Joe Fain of Auburn and Andy Hill of Red­mond. Law­mak­ers may think twice next time about buck­ing their par­ty to join a team that might bite them next election.

Actu­al­ly, his­to­ry has shown that when advo­cates of wom­en’s health back Repub­li­cans, they get burned. Steve Lit­zow, Andy Hill, and Rod­ney Tom were in a posi­tion to bring up the Repro­duc­tive Par­i­ty Act in the Sen­ate dur­ing each of the two ses­sions their cau­cus has con­trolled the floor. They failed to deliver.

The leg­is­la­tion could have passed with what Tom likes to call a “philo­soph­i­cal major­i­ty”, pos­si­bly even with­out Hill. But it was nev­er brought to the floor for a vote. (It did, of course, pass in the Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-con­trolled state House.)

There is no evi­dence that Andy Hill sup­ports repro­duc­tive rights, includ­ing a wom­an’s right to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy. Hill does not even adver­tise him­self as pro-choice or pro-lib­er­ty. Instead, he has allowed (and per­haps encour­aged) The Seat­tle Times to do that for him, while avoid­ing the issue on the cam­paign trail, pre­sum­ably so as to avoid offend­ing his base. Hill is try­ing to have it both ways.

I’ll add that there is no such thing as a mod­er­ate Repub­li­can, or a mod­er­ate Demo­c­rat, for that mat­ter. The mass media loves the label mod­er­ate, but it’s use­less. It does­n’t stand for any­thing. Progressive/liberal and con­ser­v­a­tive refer to a sys­tem of val­ues, prin­ci­ples, and pol­i­cy direc­tions. Mod­er­ate does­n’t. There is no mod­er­ate world­view. There is no con­sis­ten­cy to what so-called mod­er­ates believe.

Most of the time, when some­one says mod­er­ate, they mean bicon­cep­tu­al. Bicon­cep­tu­als are indi­vid­u­als or groups that use the pro­gres­sive val­ues sys­tem in cer­tain areas of their polit­i­cal think­ing, and the con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues sys­tem in oth­ers. I can’t stress this enough: Bicon­cep­tu­als are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly different.

And most peo­ple are, to some degree, biconceptuals.

Bicon­cep­tu­al­ism helps explains the phe­nom­e­non of strange bed­fel­lows, which is when unusu­al coali­tions form to achieve a com­mon goal (for instance, reform­ing the NSA or pre­vent­ing an expan­sion of gambling).

Frank Blethen and his edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers would have us believe Andy Hill is par­tial­ly pro­gres­sive. They can cred­i­bly argue Hill sup­ports mar­riage equal­i­ty, because Hill did vote yes on the bill that brought the free­dom to mar­ry to Wash­ing­ton. But again, there is no evi­dence that Hill sup­ports repro­duc­tive rights.

As Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lar­ry Springer explained when it was his turn to speak:

[Andy Hill] is in his lead­er­ship. He is one of the high­est-rank­ing Repub­li­cans in the Senate.

He’s the Chair of the Ways & Means Com­mit­tee. He has — I believe — a respon­si­bil­i­ty to rep­re­sent his dis­trict, and to say to his lead­er­ship: We need to do this. This needs to come to the floor for a vote.

Springer added:

I have nev­er, ever heard Andy Hill say “I’m pro-choice.” He waf­fles; he walks around that con­stant­ly. In fact, we had to… [look­ing at seat­mate Roger Good­man] You and I had to bail him out at the town hall meet­ing in Sam­mamish three years ago because the ques­tions were relent­less. And he just would­n’t answer, would­n’t answer… and it was clog­ging up the meet­ing, so we said, okay, time to move on.

UPDATE, Octo­ber 20th, 2014: After this post was pub­lished, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lar­ry Springer reached out to NPI to let us know that the town hall sto­ry he shared at the NARAL forum stemmed from ques­tions con­cern­ing Andy’s posi­tion on mar­riage equal­i­ty, not repro­duc­tive rights. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Springer checked with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Roger Good­man, and that was Roger’s rec­ol­lec­tion as well.

At the time, Andy had not tak­en a posi­tion on the issue and the Leg­is­la­ture had not vot­ed on Ed Mur­ray and Jamie Ped­er­sen’s his­toric bill.

We regret any con­fu­sion (as does Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Springer) and appre­ci­ate the clar­i­fi­ca­tion. If any­thing, this addi­tion­al con­text indi­cates that Andy has a his­to­ry of being eva­sive and duck­ing tough ques­tions on mul­ti­ple issues.

Now, back to the orig­i­nal post…

Springer’s oppo­nent Bren­dan Wood­ward also skipped the forum, as did Good­man’s oppo­nent, Joel Hussey. How­ev­er, they are at least not using a major dai­ly news­pa­per to sug­gest they hold a posi­tion they don’t real­ly hold.

It’s too bad the Repub­li­cans chose not to attend. Had they par­tic­i­pat­ed, they might have learned some­thing. They would have had to field tough ques­tions, sure, but that’s what real lead­ers have to do.

As I said ear­li­er, a num­ber of impor­tant top­ics were cov­ered, includ­ing the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the Hob­by Lob­by deci­sion. The can­di­dates even delved into top­ics them­selves with­out being prompt­ed. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Springer, for instance, brought up the impor­tance of med­ical­ly accu­rate sex edu­ca­tion in his open­ing remarks.

These issues aren’t going away, and the incom­ing Leg­is­la­ture would be mak­ing a seri­ous mis­take if it does not address them in the 2015 session.