Could Washington see a November election with no statewide ballot measures? Possibly

We are now one third of the way through 2017, and polit­i­cal­ly speak­ing, it’s already turn­ing out to be a very unusu­al year, thanks to the con­tin­ued, destruc­tive ascen­dan­cy of Don­ald Trump. As Seat­tle Times colum­nist Dan­ny West­neat explains in today’s edi­tion of his semi­week­ly col­umn, all pol­i­tics seem­ing­ly now revolves around Trump, which was par­tic­u­lar­ly true this past week with the polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed dis­missal of FBI Direc­tor James Comey.

That’s not to say that Trump per­me­ates every dis­cus­sion about every issue, just that it feels that way. Life is now imi­tat­ing art; the dai­ly hap­pen­ings in the White House could pass for scenes from Net­flix’s House of Cards or ABC’s Scandal.

In the wake of last year’s elec­tions, Amer­i­ca’s rat­ings-dri­ven big media con­tin­ue to cov­er and ana­lyze Trump’s every move, now hav­ing the excuse that Trump is the pres­i­dent of the coun­try, so every­thing he does is arguably “news­wor­thy”.

(Since Trump now dom­i­nates media cov­er­age, the only escape is to shut off one’s screens and unplug… some­thing I strong­ly rec­om­mend to every read­er of this blog. The weath­er is warm­ing up, and our pub­lic lands are beck­on­ing to us. I high­ly rec­om­mend plan­ning at least a few back­pack­ing trips for this sum­mer. Even if all you can man­age are some day hikes, you won’t regret spend­ing time in our region’s beau­ti­ful sub­alpine mead­ows, tem­per­ate rain­forests, or sandy beaches.)

The unusu­al polit­i­cal land­scape has pro­duced equal­ly unusu­al side effects. As Dan­ny West­neat dis­cov­ered, it looks like 2017 might be the first year in decades that Wash­ing­ton winds up with a Novem­ber bal­lot with no statewide mea­sures on it. Mean­ing, no ini­tia­tives, no ref­er­en­da, no con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments. Nothing.

Not­ed West­neat:

Peren­ni­al ini­tia­tive push­er Tim Eyman has a prop­er­ty-tax-cut­ting mea­sure, but it appears stalled with very lit­tle mon­ey. Anoth­er mea­sure, Ini­tia­tive 1552, the bath­room bill to man­date sep­a­rate restrooms by gen­der, had only raised $87,000 by the end of April. Both cam­paigns have until July to turn in more than 300,000 sig­na­tures. But at this late date it would like­ly take a sud­den infu­sion of major cash, upward of half a mil­lion dol­lars or more, for that to happen.

“We are going to be Eyman-free for the sec­ond year in a row,” crowed Andrew Vil­leneuve, 30, a Red­mond-based activist who has been oppos­ing Eyman’s anti-tax and anti-tran­sit efforts for 15 years (yes, since he was 15 years old).

Vil­leneuve, who as direc­tor of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute also tracks lefty caus­es, said there’s a strange void right now in state pol­i­tics. The over­whelm­ing spec­ta­cle and ongo­ing shock of the Trump pres­i­den­cy has dis­tract­ed everybody.

“There just isn’t any­thing pro­gres­sive in the works,” he said. “There’s a desire to take advan­tage of the anti-Trump momen­tum out there, but it’s direct­ed more toward 2018.”

As I men­tioned to West­neat dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion last week, anoth­er rea­son why there’s noth­ing pro­gres­sive in the works for 2017 is that we just had a bumper crop of pro­gres­sive ini­tia­tives on the bal­lot last year.

Vot­ers approved ini­tia­tives to increase the min­i­mum wage and require paid leave (I‑1433, which recent­ly sur­vived a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge), pro­vide for extreme risk pro­tec­tion orders (I‑1491), put Wash­ing­ton State on record in sup­port of a fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment declar­ing that cor­po­ra­tions aren’t peo­ple and mon­ey isn’t speech (I‑735), and exempt some infor­ma­tion about in-home care­givers from being har­vest­ed by right wing stink tanks (I‑1501).

Vot­ers in Puget Sound also approved Sound Tran­sit 3, which Repub­li­cans like Dino Rossi and Steve O’Ban are absolute­ly obsessed with under­min­ing. (They’d rather attack Sound Tran­sit than do the jobs they were elect­ed to do — sad!)

Con­sid­er­ing what’s hap­pen­ing at the fed­er­al lev­el though, this is a year when there real­ly should be pro­gres­sive ideas on the bal­lot in Wash­ing­ton. Pro­gres­sivism, after all, is about for­ward move­ment, and the only way to achieve pro­gres­sive change is to stay on offense. But run­ning suc­cess­ful statewide ini­tia­tives isn’t easy. It takes a lot of resources and a lot of orga­niz­ing. It requires focus.

And it’s tough to focus right now, with all the uncer­tain­ty in the air.

Mean­while, as men­tioned, the oth­er side is try­ing to reach the bal­lot, but is hav­ing grave dif­fi­cul­ty. Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry is idle, brought low by self-inflict­ed wounds. And the reli­gious right can’t seem to muster the mon­ey to force unnec­es­sary votes on the civ­il rights of oth­er Washingtonians.

So here we are, look­ing at a 2017 bal­lot that could be devoid of any bal­lot mea­sures… statewide bal­lot mea­sures, that is. There will still be local propo­si­tions to vote on in juris­dic­tions around the state. But unless the Leg­is­la­ture puts some ques­tion before the peo­ple to decide, or adopts a bud­get that trig­gers an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al Eyman advi­so­ry vote push poll, this could be the first odd-year elec­tion since 1985 that is tru­ly a local elec­tion, with no statewide bal­lot measures.