Pinky Vargas, Sharon Shewmake, and Justin Boneau hope to make history in 42nd District

Washington’s 42nd Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict spans a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of Wash­ing­ton’s State’s bor­der neigh­bor­hoods, tak­ing in many rur­al What­com Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ties as well as a por­tion of the City of Bellingham.

While Belling­ham is the home of West­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty (WWU) and con­sid­ered to be a bas­tion of pro­gres­sivism, the 42nd Dis­trict is rep­re­sent­ed entire­ly by Repub­li­cans in the Leg­is­la­ture and has been for many years.

The 42nd’s cur­rent State Sen­a­tor is for­mer Trump cam­paign chair and regime cheer­leader Doug Erick­sen (a favorite pal of Tim Eyman’s), while its two State Rep­re­sen­ta­tives are Luanne Van Wer­ven (Posi­tion 1) and Vin­cent Buys (Posi­tion 2).

How­ev­er, in the recent August Top Two Elec­tion, the tri­o’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nents each col­lec­tive­ly received more votes than they did — a his­toric accom­plish­ment.

For State Sen­ate, the two Democ­rats on the bal­lot secured 54.01% of the vote, with Belling­ham City Coun­cilmem­ber Pinky Var­gas advanc­ing to the Gen­er­al Elec­tion bal­lot. Fel­low chal­lenger Tim Ballew II has endorsed her for the general.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Justin Boneau was able to lock down 50.68% of the vote for Posi­tion 1, with incum­bent Van Wer­ven and anoth­er Repub­li­can cumu­la­tive­ly earn­ing 49.32% of the vote. And final­ly, Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Sharon Shew­make secured 52.21% of the vote against incum­bent Repub­li­can Vin­cent Buys.

Like many dis­tricts across Wash­ing­ton, as well as the coun­try, the 42nd is plagued with afford­abil­i­ty prob­lems. The cost of liv­ing is increas­ing, with wages remain­ing stag­nant. From hous­ing and health­care, to child­care and edu­ca­tion, the 42nd Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict is grap­pling with many issues.

The dis­trict is in need of strong, results-ori­ent­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Olympia.

Var­gas is one of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s top prospects, and is cam­paign­ing ener­get­i­cal­ly on a host of issues, includ­ing car­ing for our com­mon home, the Earth. She spent yes­ter­day door­belling the Lum­mi Nation, unde­terred by the rain.

Her oppo­nent, Erick­sen, is per­haps the biggest friend that Big Oil has in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture. Oil com­pa­nies are among Erick­sen’s top donors, and when Erick­sen was the Chair of the Sen­ate Ener­gy, Envi­ron­ment and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mit­tee (a posi­tion he lost fol­low­ing Man­ka Dhin­gra’s spe­cial elec­tion win last year in the 45th Dis­trict), he actu­al­ly tried to advance leg­is­la­tion to pro­hib­it poli­cies to clean up our air and water.

Gun safe­ty is anoth­er one of Var­gas’ priorities.

“There have been three school shoot­ing threats this week in What­com Coun­ty,” she lament­ed in a post last week. “Two at Fer­n­dale High School, and one at Nook­sack Val­ley High School. We need respon­si­ble gun safe­ty laws. That’s why I am sup­port­ing I‑1639, for safe schools and safe communities.”

And although the Leg­is­la­ture did make his­toric progress ear­li­er this year on pay equi­ty, Var­gas says there’s more than needs to be done.

“Women deserve equal pay for equal work,” she declared.

“Although the Equal Pay Oppor­tu­ni­ty Act was passed, the pay gap still exists. At the State Sen­ate, I will advo­cate for women, and stand up for them. Every time. We must con­tin­ue to push for equal pay for equal work laws, so that women and men earn the same pay if they do the same job.”

Sharon Shew­make, the Demo­c­rat hop­ing to unseat Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Buys, is a pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at West­ern and looks at invest­ing in social ser­vices for the dis­trict as a win-win for the state and its residents.

“I nev­er thought I’d run for office,” Shew­make explained. “But look­ing at how our state was mak­ing pol­i­cy deci­sions alarmed me.”

“Econ­o­mists and oth­er social sci­en­tists have worked out real­ly great ways of achiev­ing these goals […] We need to be using these tools that have real­ly good evi­dence, and peo­ple have lit­er­al­ly won Nobel Prizes for study­ing and devel­op­ing, and make lives bet­ter for Wash­ing­ton State residents.”

Shew­make described the need to make sure fund­ing is dis­trib­uted equi­tably — not just to the more pop­u­lat­ed and afflu­ent schools in Belling­ham, but also out to the many rur­al parts of the dis­trict so teach­ers are moti­vat­ed to take jobs there.

She also hopes to bring more afford­able high­er edu­ca­tion to the dis­trict, poten­tial­ly through free tuition for the first two years of com­mu­ni­ty col­lege or tech­ni­cal school. (This is an idea many Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors want to pursue.)

She cit­ed a mod­el the State of Ten­nessee has used as proof that pro­vid­ing cer­tain types of tuition free school as a pos­i­tive invest­ment in the com­mu­ni­ty. The state has a pro­gram where the first two years of com­mu­ni­ty col­lege and tech­ni­cal school are free. Since the Ten­nessee pro­gram was intro­duced, there has been a 60% increase in stu­dents who com­plet­ed degree and cer­tifi­cate pro­grams. Fif­teen oth­er states have adopt­ed sim­i­lar pro­grams dri­ven by Tennessee’s results.

“It doesn’t cost as much as you think,” Shew­make told NPI. “Edu­ca­tion is one of the best invest­ments we can make in our society.”

Justin Boneau, the Demo­c­rat hope­ful vying to unseat Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Van Wer­ven, wor­ries about the cost of child­care in the dis­trict. “We actu­al­ly have the most expen­sive child­care in the state here,” he explained.

He explained how the major­i­ty of the fam­i­lies in the dis­trict sur­vive on dual incomes and the lack of child­care options either makes the cou­ples split shifts if their sched­ules allow, or pay the expen­sive amount for child­care in the area.

Accord­ing to a recent Belling­ham Her­ald arti­cle, the num­ber of licensed child care providers dropped 25% in What­com Coun­ty in the four years lead­ing up to 2016. The arti­cle cit­ed hard and con­fus­ing bar­ri­ers to enter into the child­care facil­i­ty indus­try, includ­ing opaque reg­u­la­tions and com­pli­ance with the state’s min­i­mum wage and ben­e­fits require­ments (which are impor­tant and nec­es­sary to pro­tect work­ers, but which could be bet­ter explained to prospec­tive entrepreneurs.)

Boneau said he became aware of the issue when there were high prices and long wait­lists when try­ing to get his four-year-old child into care. “I’m of the mind that we as a state should have a com­pre­hen­sive, one-through-five-year-old child­care sys­tem that’s uni­ver­sal and avail­able to all Wash­ing­ton State res­i­dents,” he said.

Shew­make and Boneau agree that the dis­trict also needs less bar­ri­ers pre­vent­ing enroll­ment of chil­dren in child­care and preschool programs.

Shew­make offered an eco­nom­ic analy­sis of the issue, stat­ing that the state should invest in preschool for every child whose par­ents want to send them.

“There are high qual­i­ty stud­ies where they fol­lowed kids who went to preschool ver­sus kids who didn’t, and the dif­fer­ence was the flip of a coin,” she said.

One study fol­lowed kids for about forty years and found that for every one dol­lar invest­ed, we get about six to nine dol­lars’ worth of ben­e­fits back.

“About half of those kids who went to preschool did not need as many social ser­vices lat­er on in their life, includ­ing incar­cer­a­tion,” said Shew­make. “These dif­fer­ences per­sist through­out the rest of the kid’s edu­ca­tion and the evi­dence shows how not receiv­ing that ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion can poten­tial­ly neg­a­tive­ly impact the rest of their lives, and I think that is unacceptable.”

Besides access to edu­ca­tion, both can­di­dates believe the hous­ing cri­sis is one of the district’s biggest issue. Ever increas­ing prices of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes — cou­pled with stag­nant wages — have put home own­er­ship out of reach for many families.

Boneau explained that the coun­ty had a health assess­ment done that showed that near­ly 60% of What­com Coun­ty house­holds are bur­dened by the cost of hous­ing, mean­ing they spend over 30% of their income on hous­ing alone.

“My rent has gone up three times in two years,” said Boneau. “And I know that I’m not alone in this.” He said of the many vot­ers he’s talked to dur­ing the cam­paign, many of them under­stand and feel the bur­den of this par­tic­u­lar issue.

“I would like to see seri­ous increas­es in our Wash­ing­ton Hous­ing Trust Fund,” Boneau said. “We need to bring that back to pre-reces­sion lev­els and then dou­ble that to have a big invest­ment in social hous­ing.” And he argues end­ing a ban on rent reg­u­la­tion at the state lev­el would give tools back to local munic­i­pal­i­ties to let them best decide how to deal with their hyper­local hous­ing crisis.

Shew­make also agrees that the state should ful­ly fund the Hous­ing Trust Fund.

She believes the hous­ing cri­sis is prin­ci­pal­ly a sup­ply prob­lem, and that there is only so much we can do at the state level.

“It has to be local deci­sions, but I’d like to find ways for us to build denser, more afford­able hous­ing in tran­sit-ori­ent­ed areas,” Shew­make said, not­ing she lives in a Belling­ham neigh­bor­hood where her fam­i­ly is able to use pub­lic tran­sit and bikes to go most places, a life expe­ri­ence which has informed her views on the subject.

She added that there are ways to build more build­ings while pre­serv­ing the char­ac­ter of neigh­bor­hoods in the district.

“It’s real­ly a local con­ver­sa­tion we need to be hav­ing,” she said.

“I’d also say that health­care is anoth­er big thing that affects house­holds here in the 42nd,” Boneau told NPI. He believes that vot­ers in the dis­trict would rather have a sin­gle-pay­er sys­tem instead of deal­ing with insur­ance companies.

“There [are] a cou­ple ver­sions of a sin­gle-pay­er health sys­tem cur­rent­ly in state Leg­is­la­ture, and that is some­thing that would be high on my leg­isla­tive priorities.”

Shew­make points out that the U.S. spends more per capi­ta than any oth­er coun­try on health­care and gets worse results. She believes pric­ing for med­ical pro­ce­dures should be trans­par­ent and that the for-prof­it mod­el in insur­ance com­pa­nies is not work­ing. “I’d like to see that reformed,” she said.

She is open-mind­ed about the way for­ward, whether it’s Medicare For All, or whether it’s a non­prof­it insur­ance sys­tem, or a pub­lic option. Any reform plan that expands cov­er­age would be an improve­ment on our cur­rent, inef­fec­tive sys­tem, and it would save fam­i­lies mon­ey in the end.

“I think it’s a real­ly excit­ing year,” said Shewmake.

She believes that Democ­rats have a good chance of flip­ping the dis­trict blue and pro­vid­ing much more effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion to its residents.

Boneau agreed, say­ing even inde­pen­dents and Repub­li­can vot­ers have been recep­tive to his pro­gres­sive mes­sage. “These are big issues that affect all What­com Coun­ty house­holds no mat­ter where you’re at ide­o­log­i­cal­ly,” he said.

Bal­lots for Wash­ing­ton’s gen­er­al elec­tion were recent­ly mailed to all in-state res­i­dents. They are due back no lat­er than Novem­ber 6th at 8 PM. Bal­lots being returned through the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice must be post­marked no lat­er than that day. There is no cost to return a bal­lot through the Postal Ser­vice, as all return bal­lot envelopes this year have pre­paid postage.

Please vote and encour­age fam­i­ly and friends to vote.