Why it makes sense that Jay Inslee will likely seek a third term as Governor of Washington

Tomor­row, after return­ing to the Ever­green State from the east coast, Jay Inslee is expect­ed to announce that he will seek a third term as Wash­ing­ton’s Gov­er­nor next year, hav­ing pulled the plug on his cli­mate-focused pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

If Inslee makes his 2020 guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign offi­cial, he will be the first incum­bent chief exec­u­tive in almost fifty years to seek a third term.

Wash­ing­ton’s last three term gov­er­nor was Repub­li­can Daniel J. Evans, a true Cas­ca­di­an liv­ing leg­end if ever there was one. Evans head­ed the state’s exec­u­tive depart­ment for twelve years, for 1965 to 1977. Work­ing with the Leg­is­la­ture, Evans twice secured House and Sen­ate pas­sage of a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would have explic­it­ly per­mit­ted Wash­ing­ton to levy an income tax.

Vot­ers reject­ed both pro­pos­als despite remain­ing fond of Evans. He went on to serve as Sen­a­tor Hen­ry M. “Scoop” Jack­son’s suc­ces­sor in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate for six years. Appoint­ed to the post by his suc­ces­sor, Gov­er­nor John Spell­man, he was retained by the vot­ers in a 1983 spe­cial elec­tion, defeat­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent Mike Lowry, who would lat­er go on to serve as Gov­er­nor in the 1990s.

Jay Inslee is now hop­ing to repli­cate Evans’ feat of win­ning three suc­ces­sive guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions. To pull it off, he’ll have to uni­fy the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in sup­port of his can­di­da­cy (which ought not to be too dif­fi­cult) and dis­patch who­ev­er ends up being his Repub­li­can rival — which he was able to do in 2012 when he defeat­ed Rob McKen­na and again in 2016 when he beat Bill Bryant.

Peo­ple close to Inslee have told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press that he’s seek­ing a third term. Offi­cial con­fir­ma­tion is expect­ed tomor­row; Inslee him­self told MSNBC’s Rachel Mad­dow he will make a state­ment tomor­row about his next steps, upon hav­ing returned to Wash­ing­ton from New York.

Inslee has already reached out to the three Demo­c­ra­t­ic elect­ed lead­ers who have been open­ly mulling guber­na­to­r­i­al bids for 2020 to give them each a heads up about his plans: King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz, and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Ferguson.

Both Con­stan­tine and Franz con­firmed to The Seat­tle Times that Inslee had spo­ken with them; the news­pa­per was unable to reach Fer­gu­son. Appro­pri­ate­ly, nei­ther Con­stan­tine nor Franz would com­ment about what Inslee’s plans are.

But it’s pret­ty evi­dent that Inslee is going for a third term.

And it’s a sen­si­ble, defen­si­ble move for a host of reasons.

Inslee has the poten­tial to accom­plish much more as Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State if he secures anoth­er four years because he could regain time that was lost due to sev­er­al years of leg­isla­tive grid­lock pro­duced by divid­ed government.

Leg­isla­tive­ly speak­ing, Inslee’s first term was pret­ty much sab­o­taged by the treach­ery of turn­coat Rod­ney Tom, who engi­neered a Repub­li­can takeover of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate in the weeks fol­low­ing Inslee’s first guber­na­to­r­i­al vic­to­ry.

Vot­ers had elect­ed a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate in addi­tion to Inslee; but Tom con­spired with fel­low turn­coat Tim Shel­don to deliv­er the cham­ber into Repub­li­can hands.

In exchange, Tom got a nice cor­ner office and the title of Major­i­ty Leader.

Shel­don, mean­while, was slat­ed to become Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore, but Democ­rats foiled that plan by back­ing the incred­i­bly obnox­ious Pam Roach for the posi­tion instead, as a means of pun­ish­ing Shel­don for his treach­ery.

Fol­low­ing Tom and Shel­don’s coup, Repub­li­cans remained in con­trol of the Sen­ate for five years, using their major­i­ty to turn the cham­ber into a grave­yard of progress. Their stran­gle­hold was bro­ken in 2017 when Demo­c­ra­t­ic phe­nom­e­non Man­ka Dhin­gra (a mem­ber of the board of NPI’s sib­ling, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion) won a spe­cial elec­tion in the 45th Dis­trict, turn­ing the cham­ber blue.

Dhin­gra’s vic­to­ry final­ly gave Inslee the slim Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate major­i­ty he ought to have start­ed out his gov­er­nor­ship with — one year into his sec­ond term.

The result was a resound­ing series of leg­isla­tive vic­to­ries for pro­gres­sive ideas.

Last year, in the 2018 midterms, vot­ers expand­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate major­i­ty from twen­ty-five seats to twen­ty-eight, while enlarg­ing the par­ty’s House major­i­ty from fifty to fifty-sev­en. Those wins paved the way for a 2019 leg­isla­tive ses­sion full of cli­mate action and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice wins cham­pi­oned by Inslee.

Hav­ing now expe­ri­enced what it’s like to work with coop­er­a­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties for two con­sec­u­tive ses­sions, Inslee is no doubt hun­gry for more oppor­tu­ni­ties to make progress on a mul­ti­tude of fronts. A third term might net him as many as four more leg­isla­tive ses­sions with Demo­c­ra­t­ic majorities.

And with Lau­rie Jink­ins tak­ing over as Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives this Jan­u­ary, Inslee will soon have a new leg­isla­tive part­ner who is sup­port­ive of more of his pri­or­i­ties (like the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty) than Frank Chopp was.

Inslee’s report­ed deci­sion to seek anoth­er term could also help the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty focus on expand­ing its majori­ties and flip­ping the two seats in the exec­u­tive depart­ment that it does­n’t con­trol (Sec­re­tary of State and Trea­sur­er). With­out Inslee at the top of the tick­et, there like­ly would be a con­test­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic race for Gov­er­nor, set­ting up con­test­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic races for Attor­ney Gen­er­al and pos­si­bly one for Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands.

And that, in turn, would have led to open seats on both sides of the rotun­da, with Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors run­ning for statewide office instead of pur­su­ing reelection.

Now it appears that realign­ment may be pushed out to the 2024 cycle, allow­ing the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to focus on its offen­sive pri­or­i­ties, includ­ing the afore­men­tioned state-lev­el pick­up oppor­tu­ni­ties as well as the 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, which the par­ty believes can be flipped.

Giv­en that the oth­er Wash­ing­ton is present­ly the site of an unprece­dent­ed, fright­en­ing polit­i­cal dra­ma star­ring a nar­cis­sis­tic, neo­fas­cist sociopath named Don­ald Trump, there’s arguably a real ben­e­fit to post­pon­ing the row of falling domi­noes that would be trig­gered by Inslee’s exit from state politics.

That line of think­ing, stat­ed at greater length, goes some­thing like this: If we can’t have sta­bil­i­ty in the oth­er Wash­ing­ton, at least we can enjoy it here. Why change hors­es mid­stream when we have sound lead­er­ship already? Under Jay Inslee, Wash­ing­ton has been rat­ed the best state in the coun­try. We’re Num­ber One!

And, if Inslee remains gov­er­nor, then at least one state in the coun­try will be led by some­one who is will­ing to make tack­ling the cli­mate cri­sis their top priority.

2020 was already going to be high stakes bat­tle for the future of the Unit­ed States as a whole. Wash­ing­ton will not be a bat­tle­ground state; but big pic­ture mind­ed Wash­ing­to­ni­ans may want to do work in states that are battlegrounds.

It will undoubt­ed­ly be eas­i­er for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to export time, tal­ent, and trea­sure to places where they could affect the tra­jec­to­ry of the entire coun­try if the in-state polit­i­cal land­scape remains sta­ble through the 2020 elec­tion cycle.