NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, May 18th, 2023

Democrats win spring mayoral contests in Jacksonsville, Florida and Colorado Springs

Jack­sonville, Florida’s largest city, was the only one of America’s ten most pop­u­lous munic­i­pal­i­ties to have a Repub­li­can mayor.

Until Tues­day.

Demo­c­rat Don­na Dee­gan beat Repub­li­can Daniel Davis, who heads the Jack­sonville Chsm­ber of Com­merce, although Davis heav­i­ly out­spent her and was run­ning with an endorse­ment from mil­i­tant right wing Gov­er­nor Ron DeSantis.

“This is a big loss for the Repub­li­can Par­ty,” Don­ald Trump crowed in a “Truth Social” post, tak­ing aim at DeSan­tis, who he has been call­ing “DeSanc­ti­mo­nious.”

Trump called Deegan’s vic­to­ry “shock­ing” in that Repub­li­cans have run the city most of the time for three decades. But May may­oral elec­tions deliv­ered a greater shock­er. Repub­li­cans lost a mayor’s race in Col­orado Springs.

The Col­orado urban cen­ter has a big mil­i­tary pres­ence, sym­bol­ized by the near­by Air Force Acad­e­my. It is home to the head­quar­ters of James Dob­son’s Focus on Fam­i­ly, and is home to a very con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic diocese.

The Repub­li­cans put up Wayne Williams, a for­mer Col­orado Sec­re­tary of State with a 28 year record in El Paso Coun­ty pol­i­tics. He lost to Yemi Mobo­lade, an Ethiopi­an immi­grant and open­er of two pop­u­lar restau­rants.

Mobo­lade ran as an independent.

Our nation’s cities are becom­ing younger, more diverse and inclu­sive places. They’ve become increas­ing­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic, despite efforts by Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors to make vot­ing more difficult.

The trend is like­ly to be felt in Wash­ing­ton this fall with Lisa Brown’s chal­lenge to Repub­li­can May­or Nadine Wood­ward in Spokane. Brown left her post head­ing the state’s Depart­ment of Com­merce to enter the race.

The new cen­tu­ry has fea­tured two strik­ing trends.

Rur­al areas have swung sharply to the right. The rur­al con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­rat, once a fix­ture of Wash­ing­ton pol­i­tics, is now as endan­gered as the spot­ted owl.

In the mean­time, cities turned toward pro­gres­sives. Seat­tle was among the first, with Wes Uhlman’s 1969 win ush­er­ing in what has been a suc­ces­sion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic may­ors. The Repub­li­cans have tried to demo­nize the Emer­ald City but fall­en flat — wit­ness all those Tiffany Smi­ley tele­vi­sion ads last fall.

“We are Col­orado Springs: It’s a new day for our beloved city,” said Mobo­lade in claim­ing vic­to­ry. Williams acknowl­edged as much, say­ing vot­ers want­ed “some­thing new” as opposed to some­one with a “tried and true track record.”

Long-suf­fer­ing Flori­da Democ­rats bad­ly need­ed Deegan’s win. She is a for­mer news­cast­er, a can­cer sur­vivor who found­ed a non­prof­it ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing breast can­cer. The Flori­da Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty present­ly holds no statewide offices (an inverse of the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s sit­u­a­tion here in Wash­ing­ton State), so it is cel­e­brat­ing this odd-year down­bal­lot win as a good omen for the future.

Dee­gan ran on a plat­form of “uni­ty over divi­sion” while oppo­nent Davis mor­phed from a cham­ber-of-com­merce con­ser­v­a­tive a MAGA Repub­li­can in the race.

The urban trend has dis­turbed Repub­li­cans. Their big aim, in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture, is to dimin­ish pow­ers of Har­ris Coun­ty (Hous­ton) by such gam­bits as allow­ing only one drop box for advance vot­ing, and allow­ing state pros­e­cu­tors to usurp local juris­dic­tion and take over crim­i­nal cases.

With the fall of Jack­sonville to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, Fort Worth, Texas, has become the largest Amer­i­can city with a Repub­li­can mayor.

Written by Joel Connelly :: 4:16 PM

Categories: Elections

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Tuesday, May 16th, 2023

Washington State Legislature swiftly agrees on a Blake fix after going into special session

Demon­strat­ing what can be accom­plished when lib­er­at­ed from the con­fines of a gru­el­ing one-sea­son ses­sion lim­it­ed to just one hun­dred and five days, the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture today adopt­ed a com­pro­mise bill that more ele­gant­ly responds to the Supreme Court’s Blake deci­sion from 2021 and updates the crim­i­nal code per­tain­ing to penal­ties and con­se­quences for drug pos­ses­sion — though with­out ful­ly piv­ot­ing away from the nation’s failed “war on drugs.”

2E2SSB 5536, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor June Robin­son (D‑38th Dis­trict: Sno­homish Coun­ty), received over­whelm­ing sup­port in both cham­bers on the first — and per­haps only — day of the 2023 spe­cial ses­sion. It now goes to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, who is expect­ed to sign it. Inslee had sum­moned law­mak­ers into spe­cial ses­sion after the pre­vi­ous ver­sion of 5356 foundered in the House in the last few hours of the reg­u­lar ses­sion only a cou­ple of weeks ago.

(The “2E2SSB” abbre­vi­a­tion pre­ced­ing 5536, which we don’t often see, means Sec­ond Engrossed Sec­ond Sub­sti­tute Sen­ate Bill, which is quite a mouthful!)

“The bill sets the penal­ty for pos­ses­sion of con­trolled sub­stances as a gross mis­de­meanor with a max­i­mum con­fine­ment time of six months for the first two con­vic­tions and any fine for any con­vic­tion is capped at a max­i­mum of $1,000,” explains a news release from the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic caucus.

“It also cre­ates a sys­tem for pre-tri­al diver­sion into treat­ment. Rec­og­niz­ing the col­lat­er­al con­se­quences a con­vic­tion can have, the bill requires manda­to­ry ear­ly con­vic­tion vaca­tion if a per­son can prove that they have com­plet­ed treat­ment or have ‘sub­stan­tial­ly com­plied’ with the recov­ery nav­i­ga­tor pro­gram or sim­i­lar ser­vices for six months,” the state­ment went on to say.

“The bill takes strides toward set­ting up an effec­tive sys­tem for out­reach, treat­ment, and recov­ery while pro­vid­ing avenues for account­abil­i­ty with plen­ty of offramps into treat­ment. To address the prob­lem of peo­ple using drugs in com­mu­ni­ty spaces, the bill cre­ates the crime of pub­lic use.”

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jami­la Tay­lor (D‑30th Dis­trict: Fed­er­al Way), one of the few Black women in the Leg­is­la­ture, served as a lead nego­tia­tor on this com­pro­mise ver­sion. She explained why 5536 mer­it­ed pas­sage in a statement.

“This bill rec­og­nizes the harm that pub­lic use caus­es our com­mu­ni­ties by cre­at­ing the crime of pub­lic use,” said Tay­lor. “More impor­tant­ly, it focus­es on the most up-to-date sci­ence on recov­ery, work­ing to con­nect peo­ple to treat­ment, hous­ing, ser­vices, and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. The bill includes direct invest­ments of $63 mil­lion; how­ev­er, over­all, we are invest­ing over $1.1 bil­lion in our behav­ioral health sys­tem in addi­tion to the $1 bil­lion we invest­ed last biennium.”

“The recov­ery nav­i­ga­tor pro­gram is up and run­ning in every coun­ty in the state and the 988 sui­cide and cri­sis line, which can serve as an alter­na­tive to law enforce­ment, is also up and run­ning. We are build­ing a statewide sys­tem that cre­ates account­abil­i­ty through com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and offers hope and con­nec­tion to those in our com­mu­ni­ty who are strug­gling. This is not a prob­lem that will go away eas­i­ly, but if our local, coun­ty, state, and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments work in con­junc­tion with the com­mu­ni­ty we can address this crisis.”

The improved pro­vi­sions nego­ti­at­ed by Tay­lor were insuf­fi­cient in the eyes of a num­ber of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Seat­tle del­e­ga­tion, and so they vot­ed against the bill. How­ev­er, their sub­ur­ban col­leagues all joined the yea col­umn, ensur­ing that 5356 could pass the House — even almost with­out any Repub­li­can votes.

The bill first sailed through the Sen­ate, show­ing it was on a robust trajectory.

The roll call there was:

Roll Call
SB 5536
Con­trolled substances
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
5/16/2023

Yeas: 43; Nays: 6

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Boehnke, Braun, Cleve­land, Con­way, Dhin­gra, Dozi­er, For­tu­na­to, Frame, Gildon, Hawkins, Holy, Hunt, Kauff­man, Keis­er, King, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Lovick, MacEwen, McCune, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Nguyen, Nobles, Ran­dall, Robin­son, Rolfes, Salomon, Shew­make, Short, Stan­ford, Tor­res, Trudeau, Valdez, Van De Wege, Wag­oner, War­nick, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire), Wil­son (Jeff), Wil­son (Lyn­da)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Hasegawa, Pad­den, Ped­er­sen, Rivers, Sal­daña, Schoesler

Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors vot­ing nay were Bob Hasegawa, Jamie Ped­er­sen, and Rebec­ca Sal­daña, all from Seat­tle. Repub­li­can sen­a­tors vot­ing nay were Mike Pad­den, Ann Rivers, and Mark Schoesler, from East­ern and South­west Washington.

In the House, the bill earned almost twice as much sup­port as the last ver­sion did, receiv­ing a big bipar­ti­san major­i­ty and the back­ing of lead­er­ship of both par­ties, like it had in the Sen­ate only min­utes before. Here’s that roll call:

Roll Call
SB 5536
Con­trolled substances
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
Wash­ing­ton State House
5/16/2023

Yeas: 83; Nays: 13; Excused: 2

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Abbarno, Barkis, Barnard, Bate­man, Berg, Bergquist, Berry, Bronoske, Caldier, Callan, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Chap­man, Cheney, Chris­t­ian, Con­nors, Cor­ry, Cortes, Cou­ture, Dent, Doglio, Don­aghy, Duerr, Enten­man, Eslick, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Fos­se, Goehn­er, Good­man, Gra­ham, Gregerson, Grif­fey, Hack­ney, Hansen, Har­ris, Hutchins, Jacob­sen, Klick­er, Klo­ba, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Low, May­cum­ber, McClin­tock, Mena, Mor­gan, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Peter­son, Ramel, Ramos, Reed, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Robert­son, Rude, Rule, San­dlin, Schmidt, Senn, Shavers, Sim­mons, Slat­ter, Springer, Stearns, Steele, Stokes­bary, Stonier, Tay­lor, Tharinger, Tim­mons, Volz, Walen, Waters, Wilcox, Wylie, Ybar­ra, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Alvara­do, Chopp, Davis, Dye, Fari­var, Macri, McEn­tire, Pol­let, Ryu, San­tos, Schmick, Street, Walsh

Excused: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Kretz, Thai

The nay votes were Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Emi­ly Alvara­do, Frank Chopp, Lau­ren Davis, Darya Fari­var, Nicole Macri, Ger­ry Pol­let, Cindy Ryu, Sharon Tomiko San­tos, and Chipa­lo Street. Also vot­ing no were Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Mary Dye, Joe Schmick, Joel McEn­tire, and Jim Walsh.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who switched from no to yes were:

  • Jes­si­ca Bate­man, 22nd Dis­trict (Thurston County)
  • Liz Berry, 36th Dis­trict (King County)
  • Beth Doglio, 22nd Dis­trict (Thurston County)
  • Mia Gregerson, 33rd Dis­trict (King County)
  • Sharlett Mena, 29th Dis­trict (Pierce County)
  • Melanie Mor­gan, 29th Dis­trict (Pierce County)
  • Julia Reed, 36th Dis­trict (King County)
  • Kris­tine Reeves, 30th Dis­trict (King County)
  • Tar­ra Sim­mons, 23rd Dis­trict (Kit­sap County)

Many pro­gres­sive activists and orga­ni­za­tions remain dis­sat­is­fied with 5536.

“The com­pro­mise unveiled this after­noon rolls U.S. drug pol­i­cy back­ward decades,” said Ali­son Hol­comb of the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union.

“At a time fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties are being rav­aged by fen­tanyl, leg­is­la­tors are throw­ing up their hands instead of rolling up their sleeves.”

A few hours before the vote, Leslie Cush­man tweet­ed: “Lots of mis­in­for­ma­tion about 5536 com­pro­mise to get those yes votes. It will allow local juris­dic­tions to crim­i­nal­ize harm reduc­tion. That’s just wrong.”

State Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra, a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber, told The Stranger that while the bill is far from per­fect, it will allow the state to make incre­men­tal progress on man­ag­ing con­trolled substances.

“I’ll just say this is not a bill where any­body got every­thing they want­ed. It is a bill that is imple­mentable. We can start tak­ing action to help peo­ple,” she said.

“After decades of the failed and cost­ly war on drugs, we have col­lec­tive­ly learned that we can­not pun­ish and incar­cer­ate peo­ple into sobri­ety and well­ness,” not­ed Dr. Susan Collins of the Harm Reduc­tion Research & Treat­ment Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton School of Med­i­cine. “And in the wake of the 2021 Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court Blake deci­sion, we have a once-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty to ensure recov­ery, not pun­ish­ment, for peo­ple with sub­stance use dis­or­ders by using the evi­dence-based tools of harm reduction.”

The Leg­is­la­ture’s pre­vi­ous “Blake fix” would have expired July 1st, which could have result­ed in a messy sys­tem of local ordi­nances dif­fer­ing from one juris­dic­tion to the next. Local­i­ties, espe­cial­ly those, under right wing rule would have been in a posi­tion to pass dra­con­ian and puni­tive poli­cies that would have hurt peo­ple. The pas­sage of this leg­is­la­tion will avert a lot of chaos and harm and is, in our view, bet­ter than the alter­na­tive of inac­tion by the House and Senate.

Could the Leg­is­la­ture have done bet­ter? Def­i­nite­ly. But it’s impor­tant to remem­ber Wash­ing­ton does­n’t have a year-round Leg­is­la­ture with appro­pri­ate salaries for full time work. The Con­sti­tu­tion lim­its odd year reg­u­lar ses­sions to one hun­dred and five days, and even year reg­u­lar ses­sions to a mere six­ty days. If we want to empow­er our leg­isla­tive branch to reach the best pol­i­cy out­comes, we need to switch from a part-time Leg­is­la­ture (in name only, any­way) to a full-time one.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 4:51 PM

Categories: Civil Liberties, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics

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Sunday, May 14th, 2023

Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (May 8th-12th)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Mem­bers of Con­gress vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing May 12th, 2023.

In the United States House of Representatives

Chamber of the United States House of Representatives

The House cham­ber (U.S. Con­gress photo)

PUNITIVE MEASURES TO BLOCK PEOPLE FROM COMING TO AMERICA: The House on May 9th passed the Repub­li­can-named “Secure the Bor­der Act” (H.R. 2), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mario Diaz-Balart, R‑Florida. The bill would require the resump­tion of con­struc­tion of a wall at the bor­der with Mex­i­co, lim­it asy­lum claims by per­sons seek­ing U.S. res­i­den­cy, increase penal­ties for over­stay­ing a res­i­den­cy visa, and bar the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Depart­ment from pro­cess­ing the entry of for­eign­ers who arrive in the U.S. oth­er than at a port of entry.

Diaz-Balart said the bill “pro­vides real solu­tions to restore order to the south­ern bor­der, strength­en our nation­al secu­ri­ty, enhance our bro­ken immi­gra­tion sys­tem, and pro­tect inno­cent minors while enforc­ing the rule of law.”

An oppo­nent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sylvia Gar­cia, D‑Texas, said: “This bill will sep­a­rate fam­i­lies, put human lives at risk, lead to more unlaw­ful migra­tion by block­ing off law­ful path­ways to pro­tec­tion, and waste tax­pay­er dol­lars on an inef­fec­tive wall that can’t even with­stand wind much less crim­i­nal smug­gling cartels.”

The vote was 219 yeas to 213 nays. A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Yea (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Cliff Bentz and Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Vot­ing Nay (4): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Val Hoyle, and Andrea Salinas

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Vot­ing Nay (8): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Mar­i­lyn Strickland

Cas­ca­dia total: 6 yea votes, 12 nay votes

DEFUNDING PUBLIC SERVICES AND SABOTAGING EFFORTS TO COMBAT FRAUD: The House on May 11th passed the Repub­li­can-named “Pro­tect­ing Tax­pay­ers and Vic­tims of Unem­ploy­ment Fraud Act” (H.R. 1163), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jason Smith, R‑Missouri, to pro­vide var­i­ous finan­cial incen­tives for states to recov­er exces­sive unem­ploy­ment insur­ance ben­e­fits issued dur­ing COVID lock­downs, and expand to ten years the peri­od for recov­er­ing erro­neous­ly paid ben­e­fits. Smith said: “Crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions and for­eign fraud­sters exploit­ed the pan­dem­ic to steal hun­dreds of bil­lions in pay­ments intend­ed to keep work­ers afloat amidst gov­ern­ment lock­downs, and the vic­tims need our help.”

An oppo­nent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dan­ny Davis, D‑Illinois, said the bill “guts fed­er­al fund­ing to fight fraud, weak­ens state unem­ploy­ment sys­tems, pri­va­tizes Amer­i­can pub­lic ser­vice jobs, and sends cru­el sur­prise bills to inno­cent work­ers who were unem­ployed dur­ing the pandemic.”

The vote was 230 yeas to 200 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Yea (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Cliff Bentz and Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Vot­ing Nay (4): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Val Hoyle, and Andrea Salinas

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (3): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marie Glue­senkamp Perez; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Vot­ing Nay (7): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Mar­i­lyn Strickland

Cas­ca­dia total: 7 yea votes, 11 nay votes

COUNTERING OCEAN ACIDIFICATION: The House on May 9th passed the Coastal Com­mu­ni­ties Ocean Acid­i­fi­ca­tion Act (H.R. 676), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chel­lie Pin­gree, D‑Maine. The bill would require the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion to work with state and local gov­ern­ments to assess the acid­i­fi­ca­tion of oceans and oth­er water­ways, and devel­op respons­es to acid­i­fi­ca­tion. Pin­gree said the effort was need­ed to “sup­port the cur­rent efforts of coastal com­mu­ni­ties already fac­ing the impacts of ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly under­served and rur­al coastal com­mu­ni­ties, and bet­ter equip them with the resources to respond.” The vote was 351 yeas to 58 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Yea (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Simpson

Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Russ Fulcher

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (6): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Val Hoyle, Earl Blu­me­nauer, and Andrea Sali­nas; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Cliff Bentz and Lori Chavez-DeRemer

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (9): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, and Mar­i­lyn Strick­land; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Not Vot­ing (1): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith

Cas­ca­dia total: 16 yea votes, 1 nay vote, 1 not voting

IMPROVING WEATHER AND CLIMATE FORECASTING: The House has passed the Advanced Weath­er Mod­el Com­put­ing Devel­op­ment Act (H.R. 1715), spon­sored by Rep. Max Miller, R‑Ohio. The bill would direct the Ener­gy Depart­ment and Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion to do research on using machine learn­ing and com­put­ing to improve pre­dic­tion of the weath­er and cli­mate. Miller said the bill “lever­ages exist­ing fed­er­al research dol­lars to advance weath­er and cli­mate sci­ence that will pro­tect Amer­i­can lives and prop­er­ty.” The vote, on May 9, was 356 yeas to 50 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Yea (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (6): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Val Hoyle, Earl Blu­me­nauer, and Andrea Sali­nas; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Cliff Bentz and Lori Chavez-DeRemer

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (9): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, and Mar­i­lyn Strick­land; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Not Vot­ing (1): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith

Cas­ca­dia total: 17 yea votes, 1 not voting

IDENTIFYING ILLICIT DRUGS: The House on May 11th passed the Test­ing, Rapid Analy­sis, and Nar­cot­ic Qual­i­ty Research Act (H.R. 1734), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Collins, R‑Georgia, to require the Nation­al Insti­tute of Stan­dards and Tech­nol­o­gy to fund research into the poten­tial use of meth­ods to iden­ti­fy xylazine, a vet­eri­nary tran­quil­iz­er drug also known as tranq, nov­el syn­thet­ic opi­oids, and oth­er illic­it drugs that pose health concerns.

Collins said: “By under­stand­ing what these addi­tives are, how to test for them, and how to safe­ly han­dle them, we can bet­ter pro­tect our first responders.”

The vote was unan­i­mous with 425 yeas.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Yea (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (6): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Val Hoyle, Earl Blu­me­nauer, and Andrea Sali­nas; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Cliff Bentz and Lori Chavez-DeRemer

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (10): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Mar­i­lyn Strick­land; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Cas­ca­dia total: 18 yea votes

In the United States Senate

Chamber of the United States Senate

The Sen­ate cham­ber (U.S. Con­gress photo)

L. FELICE GORODO, INTERNATIONAL BANKING POSITION: The Sen­ate on May 10th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of L. Felice Goror­do to be the U.S. Alter­nate Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Inter­na­tion­al Bank for Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment for a two-year term. Goror­do has been a CEO of mul­ti­ple tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies involved in immi­gra­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship, as well as a gov­ern­ment offi­cial dur­ing the George W. Bush and Oba­ma administrations.

A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Robert Menen­dez, D‑New Jer­sey, said of Goror­do: “His under­stand­ing of finance, eco­nom­ic state­craft, and tech­nol­o­gy will help the Unit­ed States and its like-mind­ed part­ners make the con­cert­ed push to pre­vent eco­nom­ic col­lapse in the devel­op­ing world.” The vote was 52 yeas to 45 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

GLENNA LAUREEN WRIGHT-GALLO, ASSISTANT EDUCATION SECRETARY: The Sen­ate on May 10th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Glen­na Lau­reen Wright-Gal­lo to be the Edu­ca­tion Depart­men­t’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion and Reha­bil­i­ta­tive Ser­vices. Gal­lo has been a senior spe­cial edu­ca­tion offi­cial for pub­lic schools in Wash­ing­ton and Utah.

The vote was 52 yeas to 44 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

COLLEEN SHOGAN, NATIONAL ARCHIVIST: The Sen­ate on May 11th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Colleen Shogan to the Archivist of the Unit­ed States. The Archivist man­ages the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion (NARA), which stores fed­er­al gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments con­sid­ered to be of per­ma­nent impor­tance. Shogan is a senior offi­cial at the White House His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion; pre­vi­ous­ly, she worked at the Library of Con­gress, Con­gres­sion­al Research Ser­vice, and the Sen­ate. A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Tom Carp­er, D‑Delaware, called Shogan “a ded­i­cat­ed pub­lic ser­vant” with exten­sive qual­i­fi­ca­tions to lead the NARA. The vote was 52 yeas to 45 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

GEETA RAO GUPTA, U.S. AMBASSADOR: The Sen­ate on May 10th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Gee­ta Rao Gup­ta to be the U.S. Ambas­sador at Large for Glob­al Wom­en’s Issues. Gup­ta, cur­rent­ly a senior fel­low at the U.N. Foun­da­tion, is also co-chair of a World Health Orga­ni­za­tion advi­so­ry com­mit­tee on health emer­gen­cies. A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Robert Menen­dez, D‑New Jer­sey, said Gup­ta “would bring decades of expe­ri­ence work­ing to empow­er women. She has fought to increase the eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion of women.”

The vote was 51 yeas to 47 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

VOIDING FISHERIES SERVICE RULE TO PROTECT ENDANGERED SPECIES: The Sen­ate on May 11th passed a res­o­lu­tion (S.J. Res. 23), spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Cyn­thia Lum­mis, R‑Wyoming, to dis­ap­prove of and void a 2022 Nation­al Marine Fish­eries Ser­vice rule reg­u­lat­ing the list­ing of endan­gered and threat­ened species, and crit­i­cal habi­tat for those species.

Lum­mis said the rule has cre­at­ed “an ad hoc sys­tem that cre­ates decreased prop­er­ty val­ues and preda­to­ry legal chal­lenges for Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es. In fact, it incen­tivizes landown­ers to make sure that their land could nev­er be habi­tat for threat­ened or endan­gered species.”

A res­o­lu­tion oppo­nent, Sen­a­tor Tom Carp­er, D‑Delaware, said: “When a species’ habi­tat range shifts as a result of cli­mate change, our fed­er­al wildlife pro­tec­tion agen­cies may need to account for this shift when they decide what poten­tial habi­tat we should pro­tect to sup­port their long-term recovery.”

The vote, on May 11th, was 51 yeas to 49 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 2 yea votes, 4 nay votes

VOIDING RULE TO PROTECT THE LONG-EARED BAT: The Sen­ate on May 11th passed a res­o­lu­tion (S.J. Res. 24), spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Mark­wayne Mullin, R‑Oklahoma, to dis­ap­prove of and void a Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice rule list­ing the north­ern long-eared bat as an endan­gered species. An oppo­nent, Sen­a­tor Tom Carp­er, D‑Delaware, cit­ed the bat’s ben­e­fi­cial role in con­trol­ling farm pest pop­u­la­tions, and said: “By pro­tect­ing this species, we are pro­tect­ing our farm­ers, our agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties, and the rev­enues that they depend on.”

The vote, on May 11, was 51 yeas to 49 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 2 yea votes, 4 nay votes

ADDITIONAL SENATE VOTE: In addi­tion to the week’s roll call votes, the Sen­ate also passed, by unan­i­mous con­sent, a res­o­lu­tion (S. Res. 23), demand­ing that Chi­na’s gov­ern­ment imme­di­ate­ly release U.S. cit­i­zen Mark Swidan from custody.

Key votes ahead

The House will take up the “POLICE Act of 2023″ and the Fed­er­al Law Enforce­ment Offi­cer Ser­vice Weapon Pur­chase Act, as well as the “NDO Fair­ness Act.” At least two res­o­lu­tions are also slat­ed to be considered.

The Sen­ate will main­ly be work­ing on judi­cial nom­i­na­tions. Three votes are planned: Nan­cy G. Abudu, of Geor­gia, to be Unit­ed States Cir­cuit Judge for the Eleventh Cir­cuit, Jere­my C. Daniel, of Illi­nois, to be Unit­ed States Dis­trict Judge for the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois, and Dar­rel James Papil­lion, of Louisiana, to be Unit­ed States Dis­trict Judge for the East­ern Dis­trict of Louisiana.

Edi­tor’s Note: The infor­ma­tion in NPI’s week­ly How Cas­ca­di­a’s U.S. law­mak­ers vot­ed fea­ture is pro­vid­ed by Tar­get­ed News Ser­vice. All rights are reserved. Repro­duc­tion of this post is not per­mit­ted, not even with attri­bu­tion. Use the per­ma­nent link to this post to share it… thanks!

© 2023 Tar­get­ed News Ser­vice, LLC. 

Written by Targeted News Service :: 7:30 AM

Categories: Legislative Advocacy, Series & Special Reports

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Saturday, May 13th, 2023

Expansion of access to Working Connections Child Care will help Washington families

Wash­ing­ton is fac­ing two big chal­lenges when it comes to childcare.

The first is access to safe and reli­able care, and the sec­ond is main­tain­ing a strong, sta­ble work­force. Sen­ate Bill 5225 will help solve both.

Washington State Senator Claire Wilson

Wash­ing­ton State Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son, the spon­sor of SB 5225 (Pho­to: Once And Future Lau­ra, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

In 2021, the Leg­is­la­ture passed the his­toric Fair Start for Kids Act, which expand­ed access to the Work­ing Con­nec­tions Child Care (WCCC) pro­gram, which helps reduce the cost of child­care for many fam­i­lies and in turn, sup­ports our youngest learners.

Imple­men­ta­tion of the act has been suc­cess­ful and is already help­ing thou­sands of fam­i­lies pay for and access afford­able child­care — but it was evi­dent in many con­ver­sa­tions I have had that more need­ed to be done.

That is why this year, I brought for­ward SB 5225 to expand WCCC eli­gi­bil­i­ty to even more families.

Right now, child­care providers are strug­gling to hire and retain employ­ees. We have more licensed slots in the sys­tem than before the pan­dem­ic, but few­er kids in care. Often class­rooms sit emp­ty because work­ers can­not find care for their own children.

With the pas­sage of this leg­is­la­tion, those child­care employ­ees will soon have access to Work­ing Con­nec­tions Child Care. This win-win solu­tion ensures their chil­dren have a safe place to go dur­ing the day and they them­selves can get back to work to care for even more of our young learners.

My col­leagues and I also rec­og­nized that while many fam­i­lies involved with the court sys­tem have access to child­care to help them recov­er, our ther­a­peu­tic court sys­tem, which pro­vides treat­ment for men­tal health and sub­stance use dis­or­der as part of its mis­sion of reha­bil­i­ta­tion, lacks this tool.

Access to child­care will help sup­port par­ents’ suc­cess in these courts, and pro­vide sta­ble, con­sis­tent care for their children.

U.S. Senator Patty Murray Visits LCC's Childcare Center

Democ­rats elect­ed to the fed­er­al and state lev­els in Wash­ing­ton have a long his­to­ry of work­ing to strength­en child­care. Pic­tured here is U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, who vis­it­ed Low­er Colum­bia Col­lege’s Ear­ly Learn­ing Cen­ter in April 2018 as part of her effort to bol­ster invest­ments in our nation’s child care net­work. (Pho­to: Low­er Colum­bia Col­lege, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

Here in Wash­ing­ton, many fam­i­lies who are already eli­gi­ble for the pro­gram in every way sim­ply do not pos­sess the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion required by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. SB 5225 pro­vides those par­ents with access to the WCCC benefits.

Not only will this help these par­ents, but it will also, in turn, help address our cur­rent work­force shortages.

To fur­ther boost our child­care work­force, we also took action this ses­sion with SB 5316 to decrease sys­temic delays and costs that were keep­ing appli­cants from get­ting down to work.

State law requires back­ground checks when the Depart­ment of Chil­dren, Youth and Fam­i­lies is approv­ing appli­cants to our child­care workforce.

This is impor­tant for the safe­ty of kids in our care, but it intro­duces delays between when some­one accepts a job and when they can begin work.

When back­ground fees were sus­pend­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, we learned that sim­ply remov­ing the require­ment for pay­ment saved sev­er­al days in the process.

When pay­ment does not have to be hand­ed from per­son to per­son, it saves time, and every day saved is a day soon­er that per­son can get to work.

Not only does waiv­ing these fees speed up the process of get­ting approved appli­cants into posi­tions, but it also removes a cost that too often keeps qual­i­fied work­ers from apply­ing in the first place.

Help­ing child­care providers is a cru­cial part of solv­ing the child­care cri­sis. They are the back­bone of the indus­try and their abil­i­ty to offer safe, sta­ble care is essen­tial for Wash­ing­ton families.

This leg­isla­tive ses­sion, we focused on remov­ing some of the road­blocks that were stand­ing in the way. I am proud to have cham­pi­oned these two bills to increase sup­port and resources for our providers, which will help even more fam­i­lies across Wash­ing­ton lead bet­ter, less stress­ful lives.

About the author

Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son (D‑Auburn) rep­re­sents the 30th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, chairs the Sen­ate Human Ser­vices Com­mit­tee and is vice chair of the Sen­ate Ear­ly Learn­ing and K‑12 Com­mit­tee. She cham­pi­oned the land­mark Fair Start for Kids Act, which invest­ed $1.1 bil­lion to make child­care and ear­ly learn­ing more afford­able for Wash­ing­ton families.

Written by Claire Wilson :: 9:30 AM

Categories: Education, Guest Posts, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics

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Friday, May 12th, 2023

House Republicans’ “Default on America Act” would devastate services like veterans’ care

Our Repub­li­can mem­bers of the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives offer up press releas­es and tweets every day of the year pay­ing trib­ute to America’s ser­vice­mem­bers and vet­er­ans, stress­ing a country’s oblig­a­tions and grat­i­tude to the men and women who don the uni­form in defense of the nation.

Those same Repub­li­can House mem­bers recent­ly vot­ed for a bill that would cut spend­ing for the U.S. Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs by twen­ty-two per­cent the com­ing fis­cal year. The hostage-tak­ing scheme is a means of extract­ing destruc­tive con­ces­sions in exchange for vot­ing to raise the debt ceil­ing so the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can pay its bills for spend­ing already approved.

“Peo­ple who reg­u­lar­ly read my newslet­ter know that I am not a par­ti­san bomb-throw­er, but the cuts pro­posed by my Repub­li­can col­leagues would mean gut­ting law enforce­ment, food safe­ty and vital sup­port for work­ing fam­i­lies across Wash­ing­ton state,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Derek Kilmer, D‑Washington, writ­ing to con­stituents. Kilmer rep­re­sents the 6th Dis­trict in the House.

As the clock clicks down on debt oblig­a­tions, we are wak­ing up to the con­se­quences of Repub­li­cans’ fis­cal demands. Any eval­u­a­tion goes beyond hyper­bole, both in the stock mar­ket crash and loss of mil­lions of jobs like­ly result­ing from a default, but also for impacts of Repub­li­can-cham­pi­oned cuts on the state and fed­er­al ser­vices such as those pro­vid­ed by Vet­er­ans Affairs.

Bud­gets are big news and a big deal in oth­er coun­tries, antic­i­pat­ed and talked about in such coun­tries as Cana­da and Great Britain. Gov­ern­ments stand and fall on their pri­or­i­ties. Here, the President’s bud­get pro­pos­al is briefly kissed off as unre­al­is­tic before we turn our atten­tion to the lat­est scan­dals and mul­ti­ple killings.

Bud­gets have con­se­quences. Or as Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Susan Del­Bene, D‑Washington, put it, “With each pass­ing day, Repub­li­cans’ polit­i­cal games cre­ate more uncer­tain­ty for fam­i­lies and the glob­al econ­o­my.” Trans­la­tion, the House Repub­li­cans have set an enor­mous price on avert­ing an enor­mous catastrophe.

I went over that “total­ly unac­cept­able” price on the phone with Mary Karzyn­s­ki, direc­tor of gov­ern­ment affairs for VoteVets.org, an orga­ni­za­tion of pro­gres­sive vet­er­ans work­ing for a bet­ter future for Amer­i­ca. Of course, default has the poten­tial to deny vet­er­ans’ ben­e­fits alto­geth­er. But the Repub­li­cans’ price to keep that from hap­pen­ing would mean cut­ting los­ing $2 bil­lion from the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan and can­cel­ing $365 mil­lion in major con­struc­tion projects.

The pric­etag of pro­posed cuts to the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs totals some $30 bil­lion. Vet­er­ans would find them­selves unable to sched­ule well­ness vis­its, but also can­cer appoint­ments, men­tal health treat­ments, sub­stance abuse treat­ments, and a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of VA ser­vices. The Vet­er­ans Ben­e­fit Admin­is­tra­tion would cut its staff by more than 6,000 peo­ple, wors­en­ing wait time by adding 1134,000 claims to the dis­abil­i­ty claims backlog.

“Don’t believe any­one who says these are dra­con­ian lim­its,” House Speak­er Kevin McCarthy said not long ago, explain­ing that VA would con­tin­ue to oper­ate at 2022 lev­els. But as Seat­tle-based VoteVets orga­niz­er Rick Heg­dahl (a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute) points out, there are going to be more vet­er­ans and more health care demands. Con­gress has recent­ly extend­ed ben­e­fits to ser­vice mem­bers exposed to tox­ic smoke from burn pits here and abroad.

Former NPI President Rick Hegdahl at the U.S. Capitol

Rick Heg­dahl, a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and an orga­niz­er with VoteVets.org, jour­neyed to our nation’s cap­i­tal to ral­ly oppo­si­tion to destruc­tive cuts to vet­er­ans’ care (Pho­to: Rick Heg­dahl, VoteVets.org)

Sim­i­lar­ly, con­se­quences of pro­posed bud­get cuts run up and down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, poten­tial­ly punch­ing more holes in an already-frayed social safe­ty net. A mem­ber of the House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee, Del­Bene recent­ly com­piled a list of painful cuts the Repub­li­can bud­get would inflict on the state of Wash­ing­ton State.

A total of 4,800 pre-school and child care slots would be elim­i­nat­ed. A whop­ping 182,000 Wash­ing­to­ni­ans would lose food assis­tance. We’d see 80,000 stu­dents see the cost of col­lege go up. We’d have 17,000 Wash­ing­ton fam­i­lies feel an increase in hous­ing costs. And 164,500 vet­er­ans could lose med­ical care.

A whop­ping 1.5 mil­lion seniors would have to wait at least two months longer for Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare assistance.

Joel Ryan, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Wash­ing­ton State Head Start, explained what the Repub­li­cans’ attacks on essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices would do to kids: “Head Start pro­grams will be forced to slash enroll­ment, cut staff and dilute ser­vices just as the needs of our low­est income preschool chil­dren and their fam­i­lies have expe­ri­enced dis­rupt­ed learn­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Such cuts are part of Repub­li­cans’ DNA, even as they lion­ize the military.

Some years back, the sec­ond Bush admin­is­tra­tion sought to close the VA’s Jonathan Wain­wright Med­ical Cen­ter in Wal­la Wal­la. The shut­down was stopped after Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray and the local VFW post staged a rau­cous hear­ing. Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion brass heard vets explain how they would have to dri­ve two hun­dred-plus miles to Seat­tle, Port­land or Spokane for need­ed treatment.

All eight of this state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic House mem­bers vot­ed against the Repub­li­cans’ “Default on Amer­i­ca Act,” the name giv­en to it by Democ­rats. The delegation’s two Repub­li­cans, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (CMR) and Dan New­house, cast Yea votes. As chair of the House Ener­gy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee, McMor­ris Rodgers was also over­see­ing a Repub­li­can-spon­sored ener­gy bill through floor passage.

The ener­gy plan extends gen­er­ous fed­er­al sub­si­dies to the oil and gas indus­try, already enjoy­ing mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar prof­its. CMR has made it a touch­stone to vote against the needs of con­stituents in her needy East­ern Wash­ing­ton district.

We need to pay more atten­tion to budgets.

Written by Joel Connelly :: 9:30 AM

Categories: Legislative Advocacy

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Thursday, May 11th, 2023

Washington is making important, long overdue investments in environmental equity

The pas­sage of the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act in 2021 was a his­toric moment in Washington’s efforts to address the dev­as­tat­ing effects of cli­mate dam­age. It sent a loud and clear mes­sage to those who have pol­lut­ed our air and water for far too long: enough is enough. It is time for pol­luters to be held account­able for their actions and for us to take bold steps toward a clean­er, more sus­tain­able future.

Our cap-and-invest sys­tem makes sure that those who have prof­it­ed from pol­lu­tion for years begin to pay what they owe.

Set­ting a lim­it on over­all CO2 emis­sions and requir­ing top pol­luters to obtain allowances to cov­er their emis­sions fast-tracks us to a pol­lu­tion-neu­tral future.

What sets this leg­is­la­tion apart is its forth­right com­mit­ment to pri­or­i­tiz­ing equi­ty in our cli­mate action response. For too long, our most mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties have been left out of the con­ver­sa­tion, bear­ing the brunt of the dam­age caused by cli­mate dam­age. We will not allow this injus­tice to con­tin­ue any longer.

Here in Wash­ing­ton, we are lead­ing the way in ensur­ing that every­one – regard­less of their race, gen­der iden­ti­ty, or socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus – is not only pro­tect­ed from the effects of cli­mate dam­age but giv­en equal access to resources and oppor­tu­ni­ties to ben­e­fit from a clean envi­ron­ment. By gen­er­at­ing funds that will be rein­vest­ed in the most over­bur­dened com­mu­ni­ties, we will cre­ate more resilient and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties that ben­e­fit everyone.

The 2023 leg­isla­tive ses­sion marked the first oppor­tu­ni­ty for Wash­ing­ton to invest funds gen­er­at­ed from the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act (CCA) towards our goals. Across the oper­at­ing, cap­i­tal, and trans­porta­tion bud­gets, a total of just over $2 bil­lion of pro­ject­ed CCA rev­enues are appro­pri­at­ed for the 2023–25 biennium.

The CCA, in tan­dem with the 2021 HEAL Act, man­dates that a min­i­mum of 35% of invest­ments go direct­ly to over­bur­dened com­mu­ni­ties and a min­i­mum of 10% will go to projects sup­port­ed by fed­er­al­ly rec­og­nized trib­al nations.

This rev­enue is going toward elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and clean-ener­gy projects, while ensur­ing com­mu­ni­ties that are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by cli­mate dam­age and air pol­lu­tion receive state assis­tance to build cli­mate resilience.

Most impor­tant­ly, the mon­ey we’re rais­ing will be used while ensur­ing new cli­mate poli­cies do not shift pol­lu­tion into these communities.

This ses­sion, we direct­ed over $430 mil­lion to advanc­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy and clean ener­gy pro­duc­tion. These funds will go toward util­i­ty bill assis­tance for low-income house­holds and ener­gy effi­cien­cy upgrades for homes, school dis­tricts, busi­ness­es and tribes. Funds will also be invest­ed in inno­v­a­tive solar projects, clean ener­gy sit­ing, and trans­mis­sion planning.

Over $1 bil­lion will go toward improv­ing air qual­i­ty and reduc­ing the amounts of green­house gas emis­sions across the state by pro­mot­ing active trans­porta­tion and improv­ing urban infra­struc­ture so that it is safe for all users.

Our bien­ni­al bud­gets also pro­vide $340 mil­lion toward restor­ing habi­tats, pro­tect­ing ecosys­tems, and strength­en­ing work­ing lands.

Invest­ing in com­mu­ni­ty health and safe­ty was at the fore­front of our minds when craft­ing how we would spend these CCA dol­lars. The Leg­is­la­ture has rec­og­nized that impacts of cli­mate pol­lu­tion are uneven­ly dis­trib­uted across the state, and we are work­ing to address those lega­cies while build­ing more resilient communities.

That is why we are invest­ing $200 mil­lion from the CCA accounts to build cli­mate resilience plans, improve health out­comes and mit­i­gate air pol­lu­tion in over­bur­dened com­mu­ni­ties, and sup­port adap­tive strate­gies to address the impacts of cli­mate dam­age on trib­al communities.

Our efforts are noth­ing if they are not root­ed in a com­mit­ment to equi­ty. Our focus on mak­ing sure every com­mu­ni­ty has the resources they need to thrive helped us as we appro­pri­at­ed these funds.

We are mak­ing sure that no one is left behind and that we not only act bold­ly, but inclu­sive­ly for the ben­e­fit of our plan­et and all its inhabitants.

About the authors

Sen­a­tor Joe Nguyễn (D‑34th Dis­trict: White Cen­ter) rep­re­sents the 34th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict and is chair of the Sen­ate Envi­ron­ment, Ener­gy and Tech­nol­o­gy Com­mit­tee. The son of Viet­namese refugees, he is a pas­sion­ate advo­cate in the fight against cli­mate change and advanc­ing social jus­tice reform.

Sen­a­tor Rebec­ca Sal­daña (D‑37th Dis­trict: Seat­tle) rep­re­sents the 37th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict in Wash­ing­ton. She is a proud Chi­cana of Mex­i­can and Ger­man­ic roots who advo­cates for racial, social and eco­nom­ic jus­tice for his­tor­i­cal­ly oppressed communities.

Written by Joe Nguyen and Rebecca Saldana :: 9:30 AM

Categories: Guest Posts, Legislative Advocacy, Our Environment, Policy Topics

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Wednesday, May 10th, 2023

Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz announces candidacy for Governor of Washington State

Mak­ing good on her promise last week to “watch this space,” Wash­ing­ton State’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz today entered the 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test with a press release, video, and cam­paign website.

Franz will be com­pet­ing with fel­low statewide office­hold­er Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son to suc­ceed cur­rent Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, who announced last week he’ll leave office when his third term is com­plete in Jan­u­ary 2025.

“I’m run­ning for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State,” said Franz.

“My office has been on the front lines of our chang­ing world. I know what it means to take bold risks to make big progress because there isn’t time to wait. We’re fac­ing many chal­lenges, but we can tack­le them, together.”

“My grand­par­ents were cat­tle ranch­ers in Pierce Coun­ty,” Franz explains on her cam­paign web­site. “My sis­ter and I grew up in Port­land, raised by a sin­gle father. My dad was a do-or-die union guy who took great pride in serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. After school, I would vis­it him at the fire sta­tion where he worked. It was there I learned about ded­i­ca­tion and pur­pose. These heroes taught me that progress comes from work­ing togeth­er and putting peo­ple first.”

In both her launch video and on her web­site, Franz specif­i­cal­ly men­tions the cli­mate cri­sis and the hous­ing cri­sis as top issues she’s focused on mak­ing progress. Franz has won praise and plau­dits from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum in secur­ing invest­ments for fight­ing wild­fires and obtain­ing bet­ter data to under­stand the threat of geo­log­i­cal haz­ards like tsunamis, earth­quakes, and lahars.

The word “edu­ca­tion” does­n’t appear on her “Meet Hilary” page, though Wash­ing­ton’s next gov­er­nor is almost cer­tain­ly going to be con­fronting a school fund­ing cri­sis too, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that the 2023 Leg­is­la­ture and Gov­er­nor Inslee opt­ed not to cre­ate a bien­ni­al bud­get that pro­vides enough resources to pro­tect our school dis­tricts from destruc­tive cuts and aus­ter­i­ty measures.

Unlike Fer­gu­son, Franz did not unveil a lengthy list of ear­ly endorse­ments at the out­set of her cam­paign, though pre­sum­ably she will begin shar­ing endorse­ments down the road. She has an announce­ment event planned for next Monday.

Here’s her launch video, which is cen­tered on her max­im of “do epic”:

Fer­gu­son’s tenure in the exec­u­tive depart­ment (which con­sists of nine statewide elect­ed offi­cials) dates back to 2013, while Franz’s dates back to 2017.

Fer­gu­son pre­vailed over Repub­li­can Rea­gan Dunn to become Attor­ney Gen­er­al in 2012; Franz emerged out of a crowd­ed field for Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands in 2016 to win that posi­tion, defeat­ing Repub­li­can Steve McLaughlin.

Fer­gu­son faced no Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion in 2016, the first time he sought reelec­tion. In 2020, both Fer­gu­son and Franz chose to run for reelec­tion to their cur­rent posi­tions rather than run for gov­er­nor, after Jay Inslee switched from run­ning for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States to seek­ing a third term as the state’s chief exec­u­tive. Against Repub­li­can Matt Larkin, Fer­gu­son earned 56.43% of the vote. Against Repub­li­can Sue Kuehl Ped­er­son, Franz earned 56.69% of the vote.

Also in the 2024 race are Repub­li­cans Semi Bird and Raul Gar­cia, who have lit­tle name recog­ni­tion and face steep odds. Wash­ing­ton has­n’t elect­ed a Repub­li­can to the gov­er­nor’s office since 1980, an epoch ago in state and nation­al politics.

Gar­cia, a Yaki­ma doc­tor and 2020 guber­na­to­r­i­al con­tender who was eclipsed by Loren Culp, just filed cam­paign paper­work with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission.

Not run­ning in 2024 are Coun­ty Exec­u­tives Bruce Dammeier and Dow Con­stan­tine. Dammeier, a Repub­li­can, is the cur­rent Exec­u­tive of Pierce Coun­ty, while Con­stan­tine, a Demo­c­rat, is the cur­rent Exec­u­tive of King County.

Dammeier and Con­stan­tine were part of a hypo­thet­i­cal guber­na­to­r­i­al field we polled on about two months ago in our win­ter statewide sur­vey. Dammeier was the only Repub­li­can in the poll and received 35%, which is the same as what Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler got in a the­o­ret­i­cal matchup against Maria Cantwell and what we believe in any Repub­li­can could get in a head-to-head contest.

Con­stan­tine got 7%, tying with Hilary Franz and trail­ing Fer­gu­son, who got 21%.

In a few weeks, our next statewide sea­son­al poll will go into the field, and we’ll be able to ask about an actu­al field of can­di­dates rather than a hypo­thet­i­cal one, which is excit­ing. The results of that sur­vey will be released right here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. So, like Hilary Franz said last week… watch this space!

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 12:30 PM

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Monday, May 8th, 2023

Senator Manka Dhingra launches 2024 campaign for Attorney General

Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Sam­mamish, Duvall), a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber, today became the first major can­di­date to jump into the 2024 con­test for Attor­ney Gen­er­al of Wash­ing­ton State, which will be open next year due to incum­bent Bob Fer­gu­son’s deci­sion to run for gov­er­nor after Jay Inslee announced his retirement.

“Wash­ing­ton has nev­er had an Attor­ney Gen­er­al of Wash­ing­ton with deep expe­ri­ence in crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion,” said Dhin­gra, who was first elect­ed to the Leg­is­la­ture in 2017 in an expen­sive spe­cial elec­tion in the 45th Dis­trict and has eas­i­ly secured reelec­tion twice since then (in 2018 and 2022).

“I began my legal career in the State Attor­ney General’s Office assist­ing with Sex­u­al­ly Vio­lent Preda­tor cas­es, and went on to a two decade career as a King Coun­ty Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor. I’ve put domes­tic abusers and child preda­tors behind bars, pros­e­cut­ed gun crimes, and con­front­ed the blind spots in our jus­tice sys­tem to improve account­abil­i­ty and reduce crime.”

“I’ve spent my career in the court­room and State Sen­ate speak­ing out for peo­ple who too often have no voice,” she added. “I’ve led reforms to cre­ate vet­er­ans and men­tal health courts to make sure peo­ple get the treat­ment they need.”

“I’ve writ­ten, spon­sored, and passed laws to address gun vio­lence, ban assault weapons and ghost guns. I’ve strength­ened pro­tec­tion order laws so vic­tims of abuse and their fam­i­lies can find solace and recov­ery. I’ve also secured the nation’s strongest pri­va­cy pro­tec­tions for sen­si­tive repro­duc­tive and health care data.” (NPI worked with Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra to pass many of these bills.)

“I’m excit­ed to take this next step in my legal and advo­ca­cy career, con­tin­u­ing to work for all the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State as we con­front nation­al chal­lenges to vot­ing and access to repro­duc­tive rights. I’ll lead nation­al­ly on laws that safe­guard work­er rights, hold pol­luters account­able, and address the epi­dem­ic of gun violence.”

Most of Dhin­gra’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­leagues in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate are sup­port­ing her can­di­da­cy. Twen­ty fel­low Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors — which is most of the cau­cus — have already endorsed her. For­mer state par­ty chair Tina Pod­lodows­ki is a sup­port­er, along with King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­bers Sarah Per­ry and Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, who rep­re­sent the East­side at the coun­ty level.

In 2020, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Drew Hansen and then Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Lore­na Gon­za­lez also con­sid­ered run­ning for Attor­ney Gen­er­al along with Dhin­gra, but nei­ther is present­ly mak­ing moves to enter the 2024 race. Nick Brown, the U.S. Attor­ney for West­ern Wash­ing­ton, is said to be con­tem­plat­ing a run, but has declined to com­ment when asked reporters about his plans. Brown is good friends with Wash­ing­ton State Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al Noah Pur­cell, who has also pre­vi­ous­ly weighed run­ning for AG. (If Brown does run, Pur­cell told Jer­ry Corn­field he won’t.)

Repub­li­cans have not yet put forth a can­di­date. They could try to field a coun­ty pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney, as they hold some of those offices.

Seat­tle City Attor­ney Ann Davi­son is report­ed­ly inter­est­ed in run­ning, but she has pre­vi­ous­ly flopped as a statewide can­di­date, and if she runs for AG as a Repub­li­can, she’ll have to pan­der to the mil­i­tant, extreme, Trump-ador­ing Repub­li­can base through­out the state, which could sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­age her stand­ing among Seat­tle vot­ers, destroy­ing any hope of reelec­tion in 2025.

Incum­bent Bob Fer­gu­son will be leav­ing behind some mighty big shoes. Fer­gu­son has had an incred­i­ble run as AG, with an impres­sive record in the legal are­na, the leg­isla­tive are­na, and the elec­toral are­na. He and his team have secured cru­cial vic­to­ries at every lev­el for a long list of pro­gres­sive caus­es: envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, repro­duc­tive rights, work­er and immi­grant pro­tec­tions, and health free­dom, to name a few. He fear­less­ly took on the Trump regime, ear­ly and often.

Fer­gu­son has also vig­or­ous­ly enforced Wash­ing­ton State’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws, hold­ing bad actors like Tim Eyman and the Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers accountable.

No one in mod­ern times has done more with the office. But Fer­gu­son would be the first to say there’s always more to do. If Dhin­gra is his suc­ces­sor, he’ll be fol­lowed by some­one who is extreme­ly pas­sion­ate about secur­ing progress and get­ting results. Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra has con­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ed a first-rate work eth­ic since she joined the Sen­ate, and our staff has no doubt she’d work very hard as Attor­ney Gen­er­al to get jus­tice for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans every day.

NPI does not endorse can­di­dates for office or engage in elec­tion­eer­ing for or against any can­di­date, but we will be cov­er­ing this race over the next year and a half, and polling on it as well. We’ll be keep­ing an eye on the field as it grows!

Updat­ed May 9th, 2023 with infor­ma­tion about oth­er can­di­dates in the race.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 1:55 PM

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Sunday, May 7th, 2023

Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (May 1st-5th)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Mem­bers of Con­gress vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing May 5th, 2023.

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives was in recess.

In the United States Senate

Chamber of the United States Senate

The Sen­ate cham­ber (U.S. Con­gress photo)

ANTHONY DEVOS JOHNSTONE, APPEALS COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on May 1st con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Antho­ny Devos John­stone to be a judge on the U.S. Ninth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals. John­stone was a lawyer in New York from 1999 to 2004, then became suc­ces­sive­ly a lawyer in the Mon­tana Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s Office, the state’s solic­i­tor, and a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mon­tana. A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Jon Tester, D‑Mont., cit­ed broad, bipar­ti­san sup­port for the nom­i­na­tion from Mon­tana offi­cials, and called John­stone “an excel­lent and impar­tial legal mind.” The vote, on May 1st, was 49 yeas to 45 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

MICHAEL FARBIARZ, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on May 2nd con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Michael Far­biarz to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for New Jer­sey. Gen­er­al coun­sel for the Port Author­i­ty of New York and New Jer­sey since 2016, Far­biarz was pre­vi­ous­ly a New York City pri­vate prac­tice lawyer, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, and fel­low at New York Uni­ver­si­ty’s law school.

A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Robert Menen­dez, D‑New Jer­sey, said of Far­biarz: “Whether serv­ing in the lead­er­ship roles that he has had, enforc­ing our laws as a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, or pro­vid­ing legal coun­sel to those who serve on the Port Author­i­ty com­mis­sion, his breadth and depth of legal expe­ri­ence pre­pare him well to con­tin­ue his ser­vice to the Gar­den State as a fair and effec­tive fed­er­al judge.”

The vote, on May 2, was 65 yeas to 34 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

ROBERT KIRSCH, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on May 2nd con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Robert Kirsch to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for New Jer­sey. Kirsch has been a coun­ty supe­ri­or court judge in New Jer­sey since 2010, and before that was a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor for the New Jer­sey dis­trict. A sup­port­er, Sen. Robert Menen­dez, D‑New Jer­sey, said: “Through­out his tenure, Judge Kirsch has con­sis­tent­ly earned bipar­ti­san sup­port in his long and impres­sive career in pub­lic ser­vice.” The vote, on May 2, was 57 yeas to 42 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

ORELIA ELETA MERCHANT, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on May 3rd con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Ore­lia Ele­ta Mer­chant to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the East­ern Dis­trict of New York.

Mer­chant was a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in the dis­trict from 2002 to 2019, then became New York’s Chief Deputy Attor­ney Gen­er­al. A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Dick Durbin, D‑Illinois, called Mer­chant “a sea­soned lit­i­ga­tor whose exper­tise will be an asset to the East­ern Dis­trict of New York.” An oppo­nent, Sen­a­tor Mar­sha Black­burn, R‑Tennessee, ques­tioned whether Mer­chant had an ade­quate under­stand­ing of judi­cial phi­los­o­phy. The vote, on May 3rd, was 51 yeas to 48 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

DUTIES ON SOLAR PANEL IMPORTS: The Sen­ate on May 3rd passed a res­o­lu­tion (H.J. Res. 39), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bill Posey, R‑Florida, to dis­ap­prove of and void a Com­merce Depart­ment rule that would sus­pend duties on imports of solar pan­els that were assem­bled in South­east Asia and used com­po­nents made in China.

A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Sher­rod Brown, D‑Ohio, said Amer­i­can solar pan­el man­u­fac­tur­ers “need a lev­el play­ing field” and not allow­ing Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers to cir­cum­vent duties by assem­bling pan­els in near­by coun­tries would pro­tect them from ille­gal­ly sub­si­dized imports from China.

A res­o­lu­tion oppo­nent, Sen­a­tor Jacky Rosen, D‑Nevada, said sus­pend­ing the duties was “a bridge that allows us to do both: keep our domes­tic solar indus­try alive while we invest and bol­ster our domes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing so that we can be com­pet­i­tive with Chi­na.” The vote was 56 yeas to 41 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mike Crapo

Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Jim Risch

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (1): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden

Vot­ing Nay (1): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 3 yea votes, 3 nay votes

ATTEMPTING TO VOID LESSER PRAIRIE-CHICKEN RULE: The Sen­ate on May 3rd passed a res­o­lu­tion (S.J. Res. 9), spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Roger Mar­shall, R‑Kansas, to dis­ap­prove of and void a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice rule putting pop­u­la­tions of the less­er prairie-chick­en on threat­ened and endan­gered species lists, with accom­pa­ny­ing envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions for chick­en habitat.

Mar­shall said the list­ing was unnec­es­sary because years of part­ner­ships with Fish and Wildlife have cre­at­ed mil­lions of acres of habi­tat for the less­er prairie-chick­en, and the list­ing would increase “the reg­u­la­to­ry bur­den on our farm­ers and ranch­ers, ulti­mate­ly, increas­ing the cost of food.” A res­o­lu­tion oppo­nent, Sen­a­tor Tom Carp­er, D‑Delaware, said: “Over­turn­ing this list­ing may well mean the per­ma­nent loss of an icon­ic Amer­i­can species. That would harm our planet.”

The vote, on May 3rd, was 50 yeas to 48 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

WESLEY L. HSU, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on May 3rd con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Wes­ley L. Hsu to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the Cen­tral Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia. Hsu, a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in the dis­trict from 2000 to 2017, then became a judge on Los Ange­les Coun­ty’s supe­ri­or court.

The vote, on May 3, was 53 yeas to 43 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

LASHONDA HUNT, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on May 4th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of LaShon­da A. Hunt to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois. A bank­rupt­cy judge in the dis­trict since 2017, Hunt was pre­vi­ous­ly a civ­il law lawyer in the U.S. attor­ney’s office for the dis­trict. A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Dick Durbin, D‑Illinois, cit­ed “her exten­sive expe­ri­ence, ded­i­ca­tion to pub­lic ser­vice and deep knowl­edge of the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois.” The vote, on May 4, was 56 yeas to 41 nays.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 yea votes, 2 nay votes

ADDITIONAL SENATE VOTES: Along with the roll call votes this week, the Sen­ate also con­firmed the two fol­low­ing nom­i­nees by voice vote: Aman­da K. Brails­ford, to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for Ida­ho; and Damien M. Dig­gs, to be the U.S. Attor­ney for the East­ern Dis­trict of Texas for a 4‑year term.

Edi­tor’s Note: The infor­ma­tion in NPI’s week­ly How Cas­ca­di­a’s U.S. law­mak­ers vot­ed fea­ture is pro­vid­ed by Tar­get­ed News Ser­vice. All rights are reserved. Repro­duc­tion of this post is not per­mit­ted, not even with attri­bu­tion. Use the per­ma­nent link to this post to share it… thanks!

© 2023 Tar­get­ed News Ser­vice, LLC. 

Written by Targeted News Service :: 7:30 AM

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Thursday, May 4th, 2023

Several Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy in January 6th insurrection

Jus­tice has been served to anoth­er group of domes­tic ter­ror­ists:

For­mer Proud Boys chair­man Hen­ry “Enrique” Tar­rio and three oth­er mem­bers of the extrem­ist group were found guilty Thurs­day of sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

A jury delib­er­at­ed for sev­en days in Wash­ing­ton before find­ing Tar­rio, 39, and oth­er defen­dants guilty on 31 of 46 counts.

The jury returned not guilty ver­dicts on four counts and con­tin­ued delib­er­at­ing on 11 remain­ing counts. The result was anoth­er deci­sive vic­to­ry for the Jus­tice Depart­ment in the last of three sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy tri­als held after what it called a his­toric act of domes­tic ter­ror­ism to pre­vent the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er from Don­ald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 pres­i­den­tial election.

These con­vic­tions are more than just a vic­to­ry for the Depart­ment of Jus­tice — they are an encour­ag­ing sign for the future of Amer­i­can democracy.

For our repub­lic to endure, attempts to over­turn a free and fair elec­tion by force must be thwart­ed and their per­pe­tra­tors held accountable.

The Irish ora­tor and attor­ney John Philpot Cur­ran once said: “The con­di­tion upon which God hath giv­en lib­er­ty to man is eter­nal vig­i­lance; which con­di­tion if he break, servi­tude is at once the con­se­quence of his crime and the pun­ish­ment of his guilt.” This state­ment has been abbre­vi­at­ed to some vari­a­tion of eter­nal vig­i­lance is the price of lib­er­ty by a num­ber of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal figures.

It’s still mean­ing­ful today: it’s one of those true and time­less maxims.

We can’t be com­pla­cent about the future of our democ­ra­cy. We can’t take our free­doms for grant­ed. We saw what hap­pened on Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021.

We learned from the sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the House Select Com­mit­tee how close the insur­rec­tion­ist mob incit­ed by Don­ald Trump came to find­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress after forcibly smash­ing their way into the Capi­tol, our tem­ple of liberty.

While jus­tice has been served to many of Trump’s under­lings since that trag­ic and fright­en­ing day, Trump him­self has yet to be held accountable.

Mitch McConnell and Sen­ate Repub­li­cans unfor­giv­ably made sure that Trump was acquit­ted two years ago for his crimes — leav­ing Trump free to run for Pres­i­dent again, which he is doing right now. Spe­cial Coun­sel Jack Smith is inves­ti­gat­ing Trump’s con­duct, but has not yet brought any charges.

Legal experts told The Post they believe today’s con­vic­tions will be helpful:

“The ver­dict empow­ers the spe­cial coun­sel to bring indict­ments for the efforts to over­turn the elec­tion,” said New York Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor Ryan Good­man. “It under­scores the enor­mous stakes in mobi­liz­ing Amer­i­cans to believe the Big Lie and direct­ing an armed crowd to inter­fere with the con­gres­sion­al proceedings.”

The con­vic­tions mark “an impor­tant mile­stone on the jour­ney to account­abil­i­ty for the per­pe­tra­tors of the insur­rec­tion on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021 … show­ing that polit­i­cal vio­lence and attacks on our demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions will be tak­en seri­ous­ly by our jus­tice sys­tem and will not be tol­er­at­ed by the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” said Lind­say Schu­bin­er, direc­tor of pro­grams at West­ern States Cen­ter, a Port­land-based civ­il rights group that mon­i­tors anti-democ­ra­cy move­ments nationwide.

Let’s hope they’re right. Grave threats remain to our democracy.

Extrem­ism has flour­ished in Amer­i­ca in recent years, aid­ed and abet­ted by social net­work­ing plat­forms with algo­rithms that help con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and dis­in­for­ma­tion spread like wild­fire. One of our two major polit­i­cal par­ties is no longer com­mit­ted to repub­li­can­ism, despite hav­ing the name Repub­li­can. We remain in dan­ger­ous waters, and we have a ways to go before we’re out of them.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 11:44 AM

Categories: Civil Liberties, Policy Topics

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Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023

Oregon Republicans flee the Capitol to block gun safety and reproductive justice bills

Repub­li­cans in Ore­gon are once again hold­ing up the busi­ness of the Ore­gon State Leg­is­la­ture by refus­ing to show up for work, which is pre­vent­ing the Sen­ate from tak­ing up crit­i­cal gun safe­ty and repro­duc­tive jus­tice bills:

Most Ore­gon Repub­li­can sen­a­tors on Wednes­day skipped the Senate’s floor ses­sion, bring­ing the upper chamber’s work to a halt with­out the required two-thirds quo­rum as they face votes on the most divi­sive issues of the ses­sion: repro­duc­tive health and gun control.

The walk­out – which Repub­li­can lead­ers called a work stop­page – comes amid frus­tra­tions between minor­i­ty GOP sen­a­tors and Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers over con­tentious issues like firearms reg­u­la­tions, trans­gen­der rights and abor­tion. GOP lead­ers say the move is not tied to any one bill and aims to com­bat an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al process of pass­ing bills that fail to meet legal require­ments for read­able lan­guage that the pub­lic can understand.

What’s real­ly going on here is that Repub­li­cans want to find a way to block bills they don’t like from pass­ing. The non­sense about bills not being read­able is just a pre­text to jus­ti­fy their lat­est walk­out. Weird­ly, due to Ore­gon’s ridicu­lous quo­rum require­ment, Repub­li­cans have the pow­er to block bills if they don’t show up to work, where­as if they are there, they can’t stop the bills from passing.

Walk­out fil­i­busters are not a thing north of the Colum­bia Riv­er, because the quo­rum require­ment is a major­i­ty of leg­is­la­tors — which means Repub­li­cans can’t hold up the busi­ness of the Wash­ing­ton State Capi­tol by flee­ing the Capitol.

But in Ore­gon, the Con­sti­tu­tion says that a quo­rum is much more than a sim­ple major­i­ty. Inex­plic­a­bly, the per­cent­age required to meet quo­rum is two-thirds, which means the few can con­trol the pro­ceed­ings rather than the many:

Arti­cle IV, Sec­tion 12. Quo­rum; fail­ure to effect orga­ni­za­tion. Two thirds of each house shall con­sti­tute a quo­rum to do busi­ness, but a small­er num­ber may meet; adjourn from day to day, and com­pel the atten­dance of absent mem­bers. A quo­rum being in atten­dance, if either house fail to effect an orga­ni­za­tion with­in the first five days there­after, the mem­bers of the house so fail­ing shall be enti­tled to no com­pen­sa­tion from the end of the said five days until an orga­ni­za­tion shall have been effected.

An amend­ment passed by vot­ers last year and sup­port­ed by NPI says leg­is­la­tors with more than ten unex­cused absences become inel­i­gi­ble for reelec­tion, but that still gives Repub­li­cans an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stage walk­out fil­i­busters — albeit of a short­er dura­tion than in the past — with­out incur­ring consequences.

Here’s the text of the amend­ment that passed last year:

Arti­cle IV, Sec­tion 15. Pun­ish­ment and expul­sion of mem­bers. Either house may pun­ish its mem­bers for dis­or­der­ly behav­ior, and may with the con­cur­rence of two thirds, expel a mem­ber; but not a sec­ond time for the same cause. Fail­ure to attend, with­out per­mis­sion or excuse, ten or more leg­isla­tive floor ses­sions called to trans­act busi­ness dur­ing a reg­u­lar or spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion shall be deemed dis­or­der­ly behav­ior and shall dis­qual­i­fy the mem­ber from hold­ing office as a Sen­a­tor or Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the term fol­low­ing the elec­tion after the member’s cur­rent term is com­plet­ed.

Repub­li­cans have talked about hav­ing at least one mem­ber delib­er­ate­ly vio­late this pro­vi­sion in order to bring a chal­lenge against it — pre­sum­ably under the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion, since a pro­vi­sion law­ful­ly added to Ore­gon’s con­sti­tu­tion can’t be chal­lenged as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al at the state level.

Repub­li­cans timed their fil­i­buster walk­out to cause as much dis­rup­tion as pos­si­ble and hin­der the busi­ness of Ore­gon’s Legislature.

To put an end to these stalling tac­tics, an amend­ment to alter the quo­rum to a sim­ple major­i­ty will ulti­mate­ly be nec­es­sary. NPI will work with allies in Ore­gon to secure pas­sage of such an amend­ment in the com­ing years.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 6:55 PM

Categories: Civil Liberties, Policy Topics

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Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023

Attorney General Bob Ferguson announces candidacy for Governor of Washington State

With Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee hav­ing announced yes­ter­day that he won’t be seek­ing a fourth term in the state’s top posi­tion of pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son has wast­ed no time in jump­ing into the race, mak­ing his can­di­da­cy offi­cial with a PDC fil­ing, cam­paign web­site, launch video, and press statement.

“I have nev­er been afraid to take on big chal­lenges, and I’ve nev­er for­got­ten who I’m fight­ing for,” Fer­gu­son said in a state­ment. “I look for­ward to lis­ten­ing and learn­ing from Wash­ing­to­ni­ans in every coun­ty and cor­ner of this great state.”

Fer­gu­son says he con­sid­ers his cam­paign to be in the “explorato­ry” phase right now, imply­ing that he intends to put togeth­er a launch event of some sort in the weeks to come. While “explorato­ry” has a legal mean­ing attached to it for fed­er­al can­di­dates, at the state lev­el, it does­n’t. You’re either a can­di­date or you’re not — and Fer­gu­son is a declared can­di­date for Gov­er­nor, the first cred­i­ble can­di­date on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side to offi­cial­ly toss his hat into the ring.

Dur­ing this explorato­ry phase, Fer­gu­son says he will:

Pur­sue these goals

  • Vis­it every cor­ner of the state;
  • Earn 5,000 grass­roots con­tri­bu­tions from Wash­ing­to­ni­ans in all 39 counties;
  • Earn 200 endorse­ments from elect­ed officials.

Statewide Lis­ten­ing Tour

Fer­gu­son will begin his lis­ten­ing tour this month with a trip to East­ern Wash­ing­ton. The lis­ten­ing tour will include pub­lic appear­ances, house par­ties, meet­ings with trib­al gov­ern­ments, busi­ness lead­ers, and elect­ed officials.

Fer­gu­son vis­it­ed every Wash­ing­ton coun­ty as a can­di­date for Attor­ney Gen­er­al, and vis­it­ed every coun­ty again dur­ing his first term. As Attor­ney Gen­er­al Fer­gu­son also vis­it­ed every Rotary club in the state – approx­i­mate­ly 200 clubs across 103 dif­fer­ent Wash­ing­ton cities.

Fer­gu­son is already most of the way towards his third goal, at least if he’s count­ing what he’s start­ing with. He unveiled a long list of ear­ly endorsers, includ­ing five Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of the state’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion: Suzan Del­Bene, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Derek Kilmer, Rick Larsen, and Adam Smith and Trea­sur­er Mike Pel­lic­ciot­ti from the exec­u­tive depart­ment. A huge num­ber of state leg­is­la­tors are also behind Fer­gu­son, includ­ing Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Andy Billig.

Here’s Fer­gu­son’s launch video:

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz is expect­ed to join Fer­gu­son in the con­test soon, per­haps with­in days. King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine took him­self out of the run­ning sev­er­al weeks ago, announc­ing his focus will be on his cur­rent job run­ning the state’s largest locality.

On the Repub­li­can side, ultra MAGA Repub­li­can Semi Bird is run­ning, hav­ing already raised over $50,000. Yaki­ma doc­tor Raul Gar­cia, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Walsh, and State Sen­a­tor John Braun have been men­tioned as pos­si­ble can­di­dates. Repub­li­can Bruce Dammeier, the term-lim­it­ed Pierce Coun­ty Exec­u­tive, has said he has no inter­est in run­ning for Governor.

Dammeier and Con­stan­tine were part of a hypo­thet­i­cal guber­na­to­r­i­al field we polled on about two months ago in our win­ter statewide sur­vey. Dammeier was the only Repub­li­can in the poll and received 35%, which is the same as what Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler got in a the­o­ret­i­cal matchup against Maria Cantwell and what we believe in any Repub­li­can could get in a head-to-head contest.

Con­stan­tine got 7%, tying with Hilary Franz and trail­ing Fer­gu­son, who got 21%.

We will be polling the guber­na­to­r­i­al race again next month, and this time, we’ll have an actu­al field to ask vot­ers about rather than a hypo­thet­i­cal one.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 1:06 PM

Categories: Elections

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Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023

Disney sues Ron DeSantis, seeking to have retaliatory laws declared unconstitutional

Ora­tors at Repub­li­can con­fabs like to rail against “big gov­ern­ment” and “over reg­u­la­tion,” declar­ing them­selves pro-busi­ness and anti-red tape. The heavy hand of gov­ern­ment gets depict­ed as an imped­i­ment to America’s mar­ket economy.

Well, that was before Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis of Flori­da came along.

DeSan­tis had appeared, until recent­ly, to be a rem­e­dy to the wild rhetoric of Don­ald Trump, a Trump-with­out-Trump ultra MAGA dar­ling and hot prospect for the 2024 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. He is report­ed­ly ready to announce his can­di­da­cy as soon as the Flori­da Leg­is­la­ture adjourns its 2023 ses­sion. A pro-DeSan­tis super-PAC is already duel­ing in TV ads with a Trump super-PAC.

But DeSan­tis is falling in the polls, trail­ing Trump by thir­teen points in the lat­est Wall Street Jour­nal sur­vey and los­ing ground in endorsements.

DeSan­tis held a meet-and-greet with Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress recent­ly in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. The Trump cam­paign used the occa­sion to roll out endorse­ments from House mem­bers, notably from Florida.

How come? DeSan­tis is learn­ing that Mick­ey Mouse is Mighty Mouse. He has tak­en on Dis­ney World, a mas­sive pres­ence in the Orlan­do area, and learned a basic tru­ism: He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind.

Dis­ney is now suing the Sun­shine State, charg­ing DeSan­tis with wag­ing “a relent­less cam­paign to weaponize gov­ern­ment pow­er against Dis­ney in retal­i­a­tion for express­ing a polit­i­cal view­point unpop­u­lar with cer­tain state officials.”

Mean­ing DeSantis.

DeSan­tis has set out to make the Sun­shine State a right wing mod­el for the nation. At his behest, the ger­ry­man­dered Flori­da Leg­is­la­ture has just vot­ed to ban abor­tion after six weeks. The gov­er­nor has set out to take over and trans­form a small state-run uni­ver­si­ty. But as cen­ter­piece, DeSan­tis cham­pi­oned the “Parental Rights in Edu­ca­tion Act,” bet­ter known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. It ban­ish­es dis­cus­sion of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty from Florida’s pub­lic schools.

Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek dis­sent­ed, say­ing he would work to revoke the leg­is­la­tion. DeSan­tis retal­i­at­ed. with leg­is­la­tion to strip Dis­ney of its spe­cial tax sta­tus and put Dis­ney World under the aegis of DeSan­tis appointees.

The Reedy Creek Improve­ment Dis­trict is a moniker. It was an induce­ment that Flori­da offered to Dis­ney, giv­ing the com­pa­ny con­trol over its domain. With its own gov­ern­ing board, the com­pa­ny has long run a sort of city-with­in-a-city over its domain, over­see­ing roads and pro­vid­ing such ser­vices as fire protection.

The com­pa­ny respond­ed with an inge­nious way to hold onto its pow­er. The out­go­ing Dis­ney board evoked a “roy­al lives” clause allow­ing Dis­ney to hold onto devel­op­ment rights over a forty-square mile area, as well as any alter­na­tions to its prop­er­ty. The clause, says Dis­ney in remark­able lan­guage, is “valid in per­pe­tu­ity or until death of the last sur­vivor of the descen­dants of King Charles III.”

Big dom­i­neer­ing gov­ern­ment, DeSan­tis style, does not tol­er­ate dis­sent even from a big cor­po­ra­tion. The Gov­er­nor has talked about locat­ing a “state prison” next to Dis­ney World. The new­ly DeSan­tis-appoint­ed Cen­tral Flori­da Tourism Over­sight Dis­trict Board has declared Disney’s devel­op­ment plan “void and unenforceable.”

The gov­er­nor has accused the com­pa­ny of a “woke” men­tal­i­ty – the polit­i­cal right has its own jar­gon for such things – and “indoc­tri­nat­ing young chil­dren” in a ver­boten lifestyle. He has talked about locat­ing a “state prison” next to Dis­ney World.

The sev­en­ty-sev­en-page Dis­ney suit was dropped while DeSan­tis was on a busi­ness-pro­mot­ing trip to Europe and the Mid­dle East, capped by a ses­sion with Israel’s Prime Min­is­ter Netanyahu. Small busi­ness­es lack resources to chal­lenge the state, says the com­pa­ny, “but Dis­ney knows that it is for­tu­nate to have the resources to take a stand against the State’s retaliation… ”

Of DeSan­tis’ actions, the Dis­ney brief declares: “This gov­ern­ment action was patent­ly retal­ia­to­ry, patent­ly anti-busi­ness and patent­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. But the Gov­er­nor and his allies have made clear they do not care and will not stop.”

“Patent­ly anti-busi­ness”, a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor with pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions. “Do not care and will not stop” – words that Repub­li­can politi­cians have so often applied to Demo­c­ra­t­ic office­hold­ers.” “Weaponiz­ing gov­ern­ment pow­er” — words often spo­ken by Repub­li­can lawmakers.

DeSan­tis is no main-street con­ser­v­a­tive. He is a believ­er in and prac­ti­tion­er of big gov­ern­ment and author­i­tar­i­an rule. He is seek­ing to impose his will and retal­i­ate against any and all who stand in his way, even a major employ­er in his state.

What would Walt Dis­ney, a stead­fast Hol­ly­wood con­ser­v­a­tive and foe of union­iz­ing, have thought of DeSan­tis’ actions?

The pub­lic is get­ting a whiff of this and does not like it.

DeSan­tis is mount­ing up a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign just as his sup­port is falling. Author­i­tar­i­an rule is the antithe­sis of what Amer­i­ca is about.

Written by Joel Connelly :: 9:30 AM

Categories: Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, World Commmunity

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Monday, May 1st, 2023

State and party leaders react to Governor Jay Inslee’s decision not to seek a fourth term

This morn­ing, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee announced he would not be seek­ing a fourth term as Wash­ing­ton State’s chief exec­u­tive and will “pass the torch” to a new leader when his cur­rent term ends in Jan­u­ary 2025.

Here’s a roundup of state­ments we’ve received com­ment­ing on the gov­er­nor’s announce­ment from oth­er state offi­cials and par­ty leaders.

Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray:

Con­grat­u­la­tions to my friend Gov­er­nor Inslee. You’ve made his­toric progress for Wash­ing­ton State — whether it was lead­ing the nation on cli­mate, get­ting us through COVID, or build­ing a stronger econ­o­my for every­one. Your lead­er­ship has made life bet­ter for so many peo­ple in our state.

House Speak­er Lau­rie Jinkins:

Under Gov­er­nor Inslee’s tenure, Wash­ing­ton has con­sis­tent­ly been a nation­al leader in for­ward-think­ing poli­cies cham­pi­oning cli­mate action and clean ener­gy, civ­il rights, gun vio­lence pre­ven­tion, and an econ­o­my that works bet­ter for every­one. Our state fared bet­ter than almost any oth­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic thanks to tough deci­sions he made that saved thou­sands of lives and helped our econ­o­my bounce back faster and more equi­tably. As Speak­er I have appre­ci­at­ed work­ing with him and his admin­is­tra­tion on some of the most chal­leng­ing issues fac­ing our state, includ­ing our con­tin­ued work to find a statewide solu­tion in response to the Blake decision.

Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Andy Billig:

Gov­er­nor Inslee has guid­ed Wash­ing­ton on a path to achieve remark­able progress over the past decade.

He will be the first to tell you there are many chal­lenges that remain, and I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our work togeth­er over the next year and a half. But today is a day to cel­e­brate a lega­cy and a part­ner­ship that pro­duced his­toric leg­is­la­tion to com­bat cli­mate change and gun vio­lence, and to expand vot­ing rights and make our tax sys­tem more sta­ble and fair. We’ve seen Washington’s econ­o­my reach new heights under his watch, and his lead­er­ship was crit­i­cal in times of cri­sis such as the Oso mud­slide, the I‑5 bridge col­lapse in Skag­it Coun­ty, and espe­cial­ly dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic when he imple­ment­ed crit­i­cal safe­ty mea­sures to save thou­sands of lives.

In tough times and in great times, Gov­er­nor Inslee has led our state with integri­ty, com­pas­sion, and vision.

Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair Shasti Conrad:

“Gov­er­nor Inslee’s stead­fast lead­er­ship has guid­ed Wash­ing­ton through both times of his­toric pros­per­i­ty and unprece­dent­ed cri­sis. He kept us safe and secure through the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and deliv­ered trans­for­ma­tion­al poli­cies on cli­mate change, eco­nom­ic jus­tice, and gun vio­lence pre­ven­tion. Wash­ing­ton has become a bea­con of hope in a divid­ed Amer­i­ca under his watch, and the Wash­ing­ton Democ­rats stand ready to defend his lega­cy at the bal­lot box next year.”

In the past three statewide elec­tions, Wash­ing­ton Democ­rats’ staff have orga­nized thou­sands of vol­un­teers to make mil­lions of phone calls to vot­ers and knock on hun­dreds of thou­sands of doors to get out the vote for the Demo­c­rat lead­ing the top of the tick­et. As a result of those unprece­dent­ed orga­niz­ing efforts, Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, and Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray each trounced their Repub­li­can oppo­nents in the gen­er­al elec­tion by dou­ble digits.

Ever­green Action co-founders Jamal Raad, Sam Rick­etts, Ais­ling Kerins, Tra­cy New­man, Jared Leopold and Brack­en Hendricks:

Gov­er­nor Inslee has been one of the most impact­ful gov­er­nors on cli­mate action in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Dur­ing the eleven years he has so far served as gov­er­nor, trans­formed Wash­ing­ton state’s cli­mate pol­i­cy, and made the Ever­green State the mod­el for a thriv­ing and just clean ener­gy econ­o­my. Gov­er­nor Inslee passed nation-lead­ing one hun­dred per­cent clean elec­tric­i­ty and econ­o­my-wide car­bon reduc­tion laws, as well as land­mark clean fuels and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice legislation.

Through his lead­er­ship in Con­gress, as gov­er­nor, and his vision­ary cam­paign for pres­i­dent, Gov­er­nor Inslee has been an inspi­ra­tion for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans that we can defeat cli­mate change, advance envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, and cre­ate mil­lions of clean ener­gy jobs.

His cam­paign for pres­i­dent set the bar for cli­mate pol­i­cy and cre­at­ed an open-source gold stan­dard cli­mate plan that became a mod­el for Pres­i­dent Biden’s plan and is reflect­ed through­out the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act. In his cli­mate plan and his lead­er­ship as gov­er­nor, Gov­er­nor Inslee laid out a clear vision for a clean ener­gy future built on stan­dards, invest­ment and jus­tice, which con­tin­ues to shape cli­mate poli­cies at the fed­er­al, state, and local level.

Gov­er­nor Inslee’s vision and detailed plans also inspired the cre­ation of Ever­green Action and count­less oth­er cli­mate lead­ers across the nation and the world. We look for­ward to see­ing his con­tin­ued lead­er­ship in Wash­ing­ton state over the next eigh­teen months, his ongo­ing nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship on cli­mate, and the impact of his work for gen­er­a­tions to come. Gov­er­nor Inslee is right: This is our moment to defeat cli­mate change.

Ore­gon Gov­er­nor Tina Kotek:

Thank you, Gov­er­nor Inslee, for your years of pub­lic ser­vice and strong lead­er­ship. Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon are great part­ners, and I’m ready to keep our momen­tum going for the next year and half!

British Colum­bia Pre­mier David Eby:

Thank you, Gov­er­nor Inslee, for all the work you have done, espe­cial­ly your lead­er­ship on cli­mate change. It has been a priv­i­lege to work with you to make BC and Wash­ing­ton bet­ter places for every­one. All your friends in BC wish you well, and I look for­ward to con­tin­ue strength­en­ing our rela­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton state.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Ferguson:

It has been a priv­i­lege to work with you to stand up to the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion, pro­tect women’s repro­duc­tive free­dom, defend immi­grants, get assault weapons off our streets, pro­tect our air and water, elim­i­nate the death penal­ty, and advo­cate for our vet­er­ans. I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing that part­ner­ship tak­ing on the tough­est fights on behalf of every Wash­ing­ton­ian for the next eigh­teen months!

Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz:

When it comes to fight­ing the cli­mate cri­sis, Gov­er­nor Inslee
has been a pow­er­ful force for change. I’m grate­ful for the steps he’s tak­en to help us pre­serve Washington’s lands and waters.

King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine:

Gov­er­nor Inslee has done great work for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton, and has led the nation in the fight against the cli­mate cri­sis. I look for­ward to work­ing with the Gov­er­nor and his team over the next year as we con­tin­ue to build a coun­ty and state where every per­son can thrive.

Seat­tle May­or Bruce Har­rell:

Thank you Gov­er­nor Inslee for your years of ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to Wash­ing­ton and its residents.

From bold action on the cli­mate cri­sis, cham­pi­oning com­mon­sense gun leg­is­la­tion, and sup­port­ing an ever inno­v­a­tive econ­o­my, your lead­er­ship has helped build a stronger state for us all.

Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Pres­i­dent Ana Marie Cauce:

Thank you, Gov­er­nor Inslee, for your ser­vice to Wash­ing­ton and your lead­er­ship through the pan­dem­ic, strong sup­port for cli­mate and clean ener­gy, invest­ments in behav­ioral health and cham­pi­oning of high­er edu­ca­tion. We are so proud to call you a Husky alum.

U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­i­lyn Strick­land:

I’m so grate­ful to Gov­er­nor Inslee for his years of pub­lic ser­vice. He has been a cham­pi­on for grow­ing our econ­o­my, cre­at­ing good jobs, and address­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work with him dur­ing the remain­der of his term to deliv­er for the South Sound.

Mean­while, Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Caleb Heim­lich — who was unable to defeat Inslee — had noth­ing to offer but bit­ter­ness and scorn:

It’s time to turn the page on the dis­as­trous Inslee era in Wash­ing­ton State. For over a decade, Gov­er­nor Inslee has tak­en our state in the wrong direc­tion. His deci­sion to not seek a fourth term presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to elect a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor who will put Wash­ing­to­ni­ans first and pri­or­i­tize the needs of our communities.

Of course, had Inslee decid­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, Heim­lich would have prob­a­bly said about the same thing. Just get rid of the word “not” from that sec­ond sentence:

His deci­sion to seek a fourth term presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to elect a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor who will put Wash­ing­to­ni­ans first and pri­or­i­tize the needs of our communities.

Heads there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty, tails there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty… a slim opportunity.

The last Repub­li­can gov­er­nor to be elect­ed in Wash­ing­ton State was John Spell­man in 1980, more than forty years ago. Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­cans own the longest guber­na­to­r­i­al los­ing streak in the coun­try, and that’s not like­ly to change in 2024, no mat­ter how fer­vent­ly they pre­tend otherwise.

Desir­able recruits like Pierce Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Bruce Dammeier aren’t even inter­est­ed in run­ning — they don’t want to have to deal with the rabid, right wing, Don­ald Trump wor­ship­ing Repub­li­can base. Repub­li­cans have no statewide elect­ed offi­cials and only two seats in Con­gress, so their bench is incred­i­bly thin.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 2:30 PM

Categories: Elections, Public Service

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