It’s become an every six year political ritual in Washington State: Democratic Senator Patty Murray gets “misunderestimated” (a word coined by George W. Bush) by pundits, opponents and even staff and supporters as she heads into a debate with a Republican challenger said to be her most formidable adversary yet.
The debate Sunday night in Spokane showed Murray on her game, from championing the cleanup of nuclear waste at Hanford, to capping insulin costs for seniors, to curbing gun violence by banning assault weapons, to codifying abortion rights formerly guaranteed by Roe v. Wade into law.
While challenger Tiffany Smiley sought to define her as a U.S. Capitol creature – “She works for Washington, D.C., she is the image of big government” — Murray displayed far more detailed knowledge of the job at which Republicans have long claimed she is overmatched. As for Smiley, in Murray’s words: “I’ve just heard a whole slew of Republican talking points.”
The talking points were borrowed from a master.
Smiley appropriated Ronald Reagan’s description of America as “the shining city on the hill” and reprised the Gipper’s famous better-off question from his 1980 debate with President Carter. “Are you in a better place?” she asked.
The issue of reproductive rights underscored a distinction between sound bites and women’s rights. “The Supreme Court gave power to the people,” said Smiley, referring to the Supremes’ Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and took away the federally protected right to abortion.
Actually, the high court gave power to legislatures, which in Republican-run states have passed laws severely restricting or outlawing abortion.
Smiley has tried to finesse the issue in a state which has voted for abortion rights. “I’m personally pro-life,” she said. “I’ve been clear from the very beginning. I oppose the federal abortion ban.”
Murray has championed reproductive freedom, and worked the issue of women’s health, literally from her first Senate floor speech. “I believe that every woman should be able to make her health care choices about her own family working with her doctor, her faith and her own needs,” she said last night.
Bizarrely, Smiley responded by saying, “Senator Murray made clear she wants politicians to decide this.”
Smiley is opposed to changing U.S. Senate rules to end the filibuster and pass legislation to codify rights guaranteed in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Washington is consistently ranked at or near the top when magazines survey the fifty states on what’s the best place to live, to retire, to be young and single, or find a job. You’d never believe that hearing Tiffany Smiley talk.
“Our cities are being destroyed by crime,” Smiley said.
She depicted students at the University of Washington unable to leave the classroom because “someone is swinging a machete around.”
What to do about it?
Smiley pledged to “work with Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison to make sure repeat offenders are prosecuted.” How is a U.S. Senator going to do that, when laws are written at the state level and enforced at the county and local level?
“I am here to make sure we rebuild our reputation in Washington State,” Smiley said later.
Murray turned to where Congress can act – gun violence.
“We need to ban assault weapons,” she began.
And the kind of magazines that allowed an assassin to murder more than fifty people at a Las Vegas concert. She noted that gun safety legislation passed the House this year but was blocked by Republicans in the Senate.
With relentless help from FNC, Republicans have put the U.S. Mexico border at the center of their issue agenda. Smiley did, too. “I don’t know my opponent Senator Murray has ever been to the Southern border: I went down there because I know how important it is to Washington State.”
Murray shot back. She made a trip at a time when the Trump regime was separating immigrants’ parents from their children. “I went to the border not with a photographer but with a pediatrician,” she noted.
Murray added that she voted for a bipartisan immigration reform bill which passed the Senate. The legislation, in 2013, was blocked by House Republicans.
Earth may be in the balance, but rarely does a question on climate damage get asked in a candidates’ debate. We heard one in Spokane.
“We are seeing the impact of drought and extreme heat that keeps fires from being put out,” Murray observed, noting smoke that at times has given Washington cities and towns the nation’s worst air quality.
She went on to point out economic damage, threats to the state’s shellfish industry. The country must work for a clean energy economy and technologies that we can market to the rest of the world.
Smiley was all over the place. She grew up on a farm, and said: “There’s no better stewards of our land than the farmers.” She said that Washington “should not suffer from pie-in-the-sky” plans out of Washington, D.C., without specifically critiquing any such plan. She called for an “all-of-the-above” energy policy, whose details include more pipelines, more refineries and more drilling on federal lands.
Republican challengers have repeatedly argued that Murray has lost touch.
A black money PAC sponsored by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS deluged mailboxes in 2010 with fliers claiming the senator was no longer of “our Washington.”
The mail pieces had a return address on New York Avenue in Washington, D.C.
“Senator Murray, you are not a mom in tennis shoes anymore,” Tiffany Smiley said at another point. It’s the kind of line candidates bring with them to a debate. Smiley spent much of the debate addressing Murray rather than the audience in Spokane and across the state via livestream or television link.
Murray responded that her shoes still get a workout.
“I have come home and heard from you,” she said, discussing health provisions of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.
The Republicans have fielded a Senate candidate well drilled in the party’s talking points, in poll-tested themes, but vague on specifics of what she would do with the job. Murray has grown a little less accessible, but carries a clear sense of what she is doing and why. The debate was not a hurdle and she did not stumble.
One Comment
Tiffany Smiley is backed by Trump and would not help the people in Washington — I do not trust her! Patty Murray is looking out for all of us in WA and we need her. I voted for Patty Murray!!