Cheer up, Seattle Times: There will be plenty of exciting in-state political drama in 2024

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s deci­sion last week to exit the pres­i­den­tial race and instead seek a third term as Wash­ing­ton’s chief exec­u­tive in 2020 has not been well received by the state’s news­pa­per of record, The Seat­tle Times.

To date, the Times has pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al and a col­umn by Dan­ny West­neat bemoan­ing the state’s “peck­ing order pol­i­tics” and argu­ing that Wash­ing­ton would “ben­e­fit from a slate of new lead­ers”. In oth­er words, the news­pa­per would like to see a slew of Democ­rats run against each oth­er for high­er office next year.

“Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee should recon­sid­er seek­ing a third term as gov­er­nor after drop­ping his pres­i­den­tial bid. Wash­ing­ton vot­ers deserve the oppor­tu­ni­ty to choose from a vari­ety of new polit­i­cal can­di­dates who have patient­ly wait­ed in the wings for his deci­sion,” the Times edi­to­ri­al­ized on August 23rd.

“So Jay Inslee is going instead for a third term as gov­er­nor, which means Dow Con­stan­tine is prob­a­bly head­ed for a fourth term as King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive and Bob Fer­gu­son for a third term as attor­ney gen­er­al, which in turn means state Rep. Drew Hansen will stay on for a sixth term in the state House and M. Lore­na González will stay on the Seat­tle City Coun­cil and Hilary Franz will stay … zzzzzz,” agreed West­neat in an August 24th col­umn.

What’s wrong, y’all? Tired of watch­ing Sur­vivor: White House?

If so, I can’t blame you, but still… isn’t the dra­ma in the oth­er Wash­ing­ton enough? I mean, just last week the man pre­tend­ing to be our Pres­i­dent can­celed a trip to our North Atlantic Treaty Orga­ni­za­tion (NATO) ally Den­mark after being rebuffed on his desire to buy Green­land, referred to him­self as “the Cho­sen One”, and repeat­ed an ador­ing admir­er’s ref­er­ence to him­self as the “King of Israel”.

Every day, Indi­vid­ual Num­ber One tweets out a steady stream of insults and put downs and signs off on reck­less, irre­spon­si­ble schemes from his min­ions intend­ed to open the flood­gates to fur­ther pol­lu­tion of our plan­et, fur­ther con­cen­tra­tion of wealth in the hands of the already rich, and fur­ther chaos in glob­al markets.

Keep­ing up with Trump’s var­i­ous cam­paigns of destruc­tion (his assault on our envi­ron­ment, his attacks on immi­grants, his racist fear­mon­ger­ing against com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, his under­min­ing of farm­ers and Amer­i­can busi­ness­es that export prod­ucts abroad) is exhaust­ing. Why would any­one be hun­gry for polit­i­cal dra­ma in this Wash­ing­ton when we have such an excess of it on the oth­er coast?

Our coun­try is metaphor­i­cal­ly on fire right now.

For­tu­nate­ly, there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to douse the flames next year.

To me, that’s what the 2020 elec­tion is and should be about: sav­ing the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca from doom and ruin at the hands of a nar­cis­sis­tic, neo­fas­cist sociopath. Dis­lodg­ing an incum­bent Pres­i­dent isn’t a sim­ple or triv­ial task.

Here in the Pacif­ic North­west, we’ve already got depend­able lead­er­ship. Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son have been a great team.

Again and again they’ve stood up for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, not just resist­ing the hor­ri­ble excess­es of the Trump regime, but active­ly fight­ing to get Trump’s ille­gal and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al actions stopped in the courts.

Inslee and Fer­gu­son are often joined at press con­fer­ences by King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine and Lands Com­mis­sion­er Hilary Franz, two oth­er high pro­file Democ­rats who have made no secret of their guber­na­to­r­i­al ambitions.

It is evi­dent that these peo­ple all gen­uine­ly like and respect each oth­er. They share many of the same qual­i­ties: they are results-ori­ent­ed, for exam­ple, and opti­mistic about what can be accom­plished through hard work and perseverance.

No gov­er­nor has run for or secured a third term in Wash­ing­ton since 1972, but Inslee has a sol­id case to make that he should remain the state’s chief executive.

This year, under Inslee, Wash­ing­ton was ranked the num­ber one state in the coun­try by U.S. News and World Report. Not the num­ber one state for busi­ness, a title the state has pre­vi­ous­ly achieved, but the num­ber one state over­all.

What’s more, Moody’s just bestowed upon Wash­ing­ton a ster­ling Triple AAA cred­it rat­ing, rec­og­niz­ing Wash­ing­ton’s fis­cal strength and great potential.

And a new study was just pub­lished find­ing that Wash­ing­ton is one of the best states to grow old, with the eighth high­est life expectan­cy in the U.S.

The lead­er­ship we’ve already got has a proven track record of get­ting results. The 2018 and 2019 leg­isla­tive ses­sions pro­duced waves of new laws that will improve lives and strength­en our com­mu­ni­ties. The Leg­is­la­ture has tack­led health­care and behav­io­r­i­al health, edu­ca­tion, access to democ­ra­cy, pol­lu­tion and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, net neu­tral­i­ty, social jus­tice, equal pay, and repro­duc­tive rights.

Many of the bills that have been signed into law could have land­ed on Inslee’s desk soon­er, had there been a pro­gres­sive major­i­ty run­ning the Sen­ate in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. Unlike his pre­de­ces­sor Chris Gre­goire, Inslee did not have coop­er­a­tive leg­isla­tive majori­ties in both cham­bers for his first term or even all of his sec­ond. But there’s a good chance he will if he secures a third term.

West­neat won­dered in his col­umn if Inslee’s heart is still in the job.

I think it is. I think Jay Inslee real­ly enjoys being Wash­ing­ton’s gov­er­nor and could get a lot done for this state if he were to be reelect­ed to a third term.

He will have to earn it: vot­ers tend to pun­ish com­pla­cen­cy when least expect­ed to, so Inslee will need to hus­tle if he wants to cruise to a third term.

The gov­er­nor should make vis­it­ing Wash­ing­ton’s rur­al com­mu­ni­ties a top pri­or­i­ty in his 2020 cam­paign. He should show up in places like New­port (Pend Oreille Coun­ty), Day­ton (Colum­bia Coun­ty), or Cath­lamet (Wahki­akum County).

Inslee owes vot­ers a new strate­gic plan for build­ing a more inclu­sive econ­o­my. Places far away from the tech boom tak­ing place in King Coun­ty (like farm­ers in Chelan Coun­ty) need to hear from Wash­ing­ton’s gov­er­nor and know that he has a plan to improve their eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and well-being.

If the gov­er­nor runs a thought­ful, mean­ing­ful reelec­tion cam­paign, there’s no rea­son to believe Wash­ing­to­ni­ans won’t renew his man­date for anoth­er four years.

This may not be to the lik­ing of The Seat­tle Times’ edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers, colum­nists, or even reporters. Cheer up, y’all: there’s always anoth­er elec­tion on deck. You’ll get your excit­ing in-state polit­i­cal dra­ma soon enough. Those chutes and lad­ders will get deployed. Not in 2020, per­haps, but 2024 will be here before we know it.

In the mean­time, we have a lot of fires to put out. Some metaphor­i­cal. And some lit­er­al. South of the equa­tor, in Brazil, South Amer­i­ca’s largest coun­try, much of the incred­i­bly diverse Ama­zon rain­for­est is cur­rent­ly on fire. This is a cat­a­stroph­ic eco­log­i­cal emer­gency that demands our attention.

We could cer­tain­ly use a few more edi­to­ri­als and columns on that subject.