Keep Washington Rolling goes up in Spokane; Washington Fairness Coalition unveils first ad

Today was an impor­tant day for each of the coali­tions work­ing for pro­gres­sive out­comes on the two statewide ini­tia­tives cur­rent­ly before Wash­ing­ton voters.

Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling, which is work­ing to secure the defeat of Tim Eyman’s incred­i­bly destruc­tive Ini­tia­tive 976, went up on the air in Spokane with an ad that con­cise­ly sum­ma­rizes what the Inland North­west stands to lose if the mea­sure is imple­ment­ed. The spot, cre­at­ed by Kul­ly Stru­ble, notes that Spokane could lose fund­ing for the North-South Express­way as well as for street maintenance.

Watch it:

This is the cam­paign’s fourth ad over­all. Its pre­vi­ous spots, which launched last month, are “Engi­neer”, “Troop­er”, and “Less Reli­able”.

Of all the NO on I‑976 ads, this one might just be my favorite. It is well put togeth­er and uses dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives to com­mu­ni­cate our coali­tion’s mes­sage. It mix­es aer­i­al scenes togeth­er with shots tak­en from the van­tage point of a neigh­bor on the street. It also ends with a cheeky flourish.

Mean­while, the Wash­ing­ton Fair­ness Coali­tion, which is work­ing to defend I‑1000 (Wash­ing­ton’s Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion Act), launched its first tele­vi­sion ad, star­ring our very own Pres­i­dent Rick Heg­dahl, a vet­er­an of the con­flict in Iraq.

Watch the ad here:

Rick has been a val­ued staff and board mem­ber of NPI since 2006. He’s extreme­ly artic­u­late and we’re thrilled that the coali­tion asked him to par­tic­i­pate in this spot, which will help Wash­ing­ton vot­ers under­stand why it’s essen­tial that we approve I‑1000. The ad also fea­tures Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil Sec­re­tary-Trea­sur­er April Sims (one of our favorite peo­ple!) and Uwa­ji­maya’s Denise Moriguchi.

The North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute belongs to both the Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling and Wash­ing­ton Fair­ness coali­tions, and we sup­port each in their efforts to win these cru­cial bal­lot bat­tles in Novem­ber. Unit­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans against right wing attempts to take Wash­ing­ton State back­wards is we’ve been doing for near­ly eigh­teen years through our Per­ma­nent Defense project.

We will con­tin­ue to enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pro­vide sup­port to each of these fine coali­tions dur­ing the final three weeks of this cam­paign season.

When you get your bal­lot, please join us in vot­ing NO on Tim Eyman’s I‑976 and APPROVED on Ini­tia­tive 1000. We have a longer list of bal­lot mea­sure rec­om­men­da­tions here if you’re look­ing for addi­tion­al guid­ance on how to vote.