Ear­li­er this evening in NPI’s home­town of Red­mond, the League of Women Vot­ers of Seat­tle-King Coun­ty held a can­di­date forum to give res­i­dents on the East­side a chance to hear from the can­di­dates run­ning to rep­re­sent the 45th and 48th Leg­isla­tive Dis­tricts in this year’s spe­cial elec­tions for state Senate.

The forum was pre­sent­ed in a debate for­mat, with 48th LD Sen­ate can­di­dates Pat­ty Kud­er­er and Michelle Dar­nell squar­ing off first, fol­lowed by 45th LD Sen­ate can­di­dates Man­ka Dhin­gra and Jiny­oung Lee Englund.

The con­test in the 45th is con­sid­ered the mar­quee race in the state this year because its out­come will decide who con­trols the Wash­ing­ton State Senate.

If Englund wins, the Repub­li­cans will main­tain a nar­row grip on the cham­ber. But if Dhin­gra wins, the Sen­ate will flip and five years of Repub­li­can rule will be over.

As long­time read­ers of the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate are well aware, Repub­li­cans have repeat­ed­ly used their major­i­ty in the Sen­ate to bury a slew of wor­thy bills passed by the state House and backed by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. Bills like the Equal Pay Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act, which would pro­hib­it employ­ers from engag­ing in dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of gen­der or retal­i­at­ing against employ­ees who ini­ti­ate dis­cus­sions about their com­pen­sa­tion with man­age­ment or fel­low employees.

A num­ber of Repub­li­cans in the House vot­ed for this well-craft­ed equal pay leg­is­la­tion when it came up for a vote on March 8th and May 1st.

Sad­ly, in the Sen­ate, House Bill 1506 stalled out after it got to the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee. It nev­er made it to the floor for a vote.

The Equal Pay Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act is an excel­lent exam­ple of sen­si­ble leg­is­la­tion that ought to have already land­ed on Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk and been added to the Revised Code of Wash­ing­ton, but has­n’t… because Repub­li­cans run the Senate.

It was fit­ting, then, that one of the ques­tions mod­er­a­tor Natal­ie Brand asked Man­ka Dhin­gra and Jiny­oung Lee Englund in tonight’s debate was Do you sup­port equal pay leg­is­la­tion? The answers they gave could hard­ly have been more different.

MODERATOR NATALIE BRAND: Next ques­tion. Ms. Dhin­gra will start. Do you sup­port equal pay leg­is­la­tion? Why or why not?

DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE MANKA DHINGRA: Absolute­ly! I, for one, am tired of get­ting paid sev­en­ty-six cents to the dol­lar. You know, I start­ed [Chaya, an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to com­bat­ing domes­tic vio­lence] when I was twen­ty-two years old. I have been fight­ing for equi­ty and social jus­tice my entire life.

I think it is com­plete­ly ridicu­lous, actu­al­ly, that women are not paid the same as men. And it starts by mak­ing sure that we take a stand and say Enough is enough. Equal pay for equal work. Period.

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: You know, I think there’s no dis­agree­ment that women should be treat­ed equal­ly as men.  I think we as a soci­ety acknowl­edge that. And through­out my life­time as a pro­fes­sion­al, you know, I have nev­er felt dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, though at times I’ve won­dered if, Hm… I won­der if I could have nego­ti­at­ed my salary bet­ter. But I think I have been lucky in that the peo­ple that I’ve cho­sen to work for have always treat­ed me with kind­ness and with fair­ness and I’ve… if I have nego­ti­at­ed some­thing that I did with the skills and the tools that I have. And I think women should be bet­ter equipped to have those nego­ti­at­ing skills.

When it comes to this equal pay, you know, ques­tion, I — with­out a doubt — I think there are some orga­ni­za­tions that may dis­crim­i­nate against women, and those need to be called out. But as a leg­is­la­ture and as an elect­ed offi­cial, I think the right way to approach some­thing like this is the way, the same way, that our Leg­is­la­ture approached the Paid Fam­i­ly Leave Act. So Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Joe Fain actu­al­ly led the paid fam­i­ly leave bill for our state. And what he did was he was able to bring busi­ness togeth­er with unions, with com­mu­ni­ty, and have a con­ver­sa­tion about hey, where’s a good place to start. And that bill passed — again — on a bipar­ti­san basis. And I think that we as leg­is­la­tors, instead of com­ing in and telling peo­ple what to do or how to live their lives, we need to engage peo­ple on all dif­fer­ent sides, in order to get to a solu­tion that works… that works for all people.

One sim­ple ques­tion, two very dif­fer­ent answers.

From Man­ka Dhin­gra, we heard a clear and unam­bigu­ous answer: Yes! I sup­port equal pay for equal work. Peri­od! We know how she’d vote on House Bill 1506.

From Jiny­oung Englund, we heard a non-answer. Englund had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sim­ply agree with Dhin­gra and show she does­n’t always agree with the Repub­li­can Par­ty line (which she actu­al­ly attempt­ed to do at oth­er points dur­ing the debate, if only half­heart­ed­ly). But she blew that oppor­tu­ni­ty here, big time.

Englund could­n’t even bring her­self to endorse the basic con­cept of pay equi­ty. Instead, she lame­ly sug­gest­ed women should be bet­ter equipped to have nego­ti­at­ing skills. And then, incred­u­lous­ly, she sug­gest­ed the Leg­is­la­ture should approach the issue by con­ven­ing a meet­ing of the minds.… when it already has.

As men­tioned ear­li­er, leg­is­la­tion is on the table that would address unequal pay — leg­is­la­tion that over ten Repub­li­cans in the House have bro­ken ranks to sup­port. Leg­is­la­tion that even man­aged to earn a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion (albeit with amend­ments) out of a com­mit­tee con­trolled by extrem­ist Repub­li­can Michael Baum­gart­ner, who rep­re­sents sub­ur­ban Spokane.

We’re way past the point where we need to ask the ques­tion Where’s a good place to start? We’ve got a good bill ready to go. It just needs to get a vote in the Sen­ate. And it almost assured­ly will if Man­ka Dhin­gra wins.

But if Jiny­oung Englund wins, the Equal Pay Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act will like­ly get buried again. And judg­ing by what she said tonight, she won’t have a prob­lem with that.