Welcome to the Emerald’s general election guide. King County Elections should be mailing out the 2024 general election ballots on Oct. 15. This is the real deal — whoever wins this time around will soon have their greasy mitts on the levers of power. Or will keep them there, in the case of many incumbents. As we did during the primary, we’ve tried to balance comprehensive coverage with concern for what’s actually relevant to you. We’ve skipped a number of no-contest state-level and federal legislative races where, in the grand tradition of Western Washington politics, a Democrat is set to absolutely clobber a Republican or third-party challenger. However, there are a couple interesting districts that we’ve followed from the primary. In general, if it’s in here, it’s because we feel like it’s worth paying attention to.
There is, in fact, a lot worth paying attention to this year. And we don’t mean the presidential race, which is maybe more of an “I don’t want to watch, but I can’t look away” thing. Several of our races here at home have some serious stakes. The Commissioner of Public Lands post is set to change hands for the first time in almost a decade, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith is facing off against an anti-war progressive, and longtime 43rd District Washington State Rep. Frank Chopp (D) is ceding his seat to either We Heart Seattle founder Andrea Suarez or beloved local activist and author Shaun Scott. The winners of those contests, not to mention the Governor’s Mansion, one of our two U.S. Senate seats, and the race for the District 8 Seattle City Council seat currently held by appointee Tanya Woo, will have a lot to say about what kind of policy we adopt on everything from military funding to climate change to homelessness.
There’s also a whole spate of boring ballot initiatives that are anything but — the initiative process being one of the most insidious methods by which Republicans try to end-run their agenda around the Legislature. This time around, it appears that they’re trying to nix electrification and discourage natural gas use efforts, exempt the ultra-rich from a newly created capital gains tax, and repeal the state’s fledgling cap and trade program. Then there’s one on the state’s long-term care scheme that’s not so easy to call. But we tried. Heaven knows we tried.
Despite being arguably the most important race on this ticket, it’s also the one we think you least need our input on. If you’re a Trump voter, we’re shocked you made it onto this website and into this individual article page without turning to dust. Maybe someone sent you a direct link — either way, turn back now. If you’re not a Trump voter, the choice is pretty obvious: Kamala or abstain.
If you can’t vote for Kamala because of how her buddy Joe’s administration has handled the ongoing genocide in Palestine (by funding it), obviously you’re not going to vote for the guy who is even cozier with Netanyahu and even more supportive of violence on a global scale. We suppose there’s an argument to be made that Trump is against the war in Ukraine, but being for the bloodthirsty dictator on the opposite side of it isn’t exactly being against the war. Regardless, here in Washington, you have the luxury of sitting this one out. Unless you happen to start seeing flying pigs everywhere, our state’s electoral votes are going to Kamala. Just crack open a cold one, vote the down-ballot races, and let it (the rapidly declining American empire) be what it is (doomed).
Longstanding U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) is facing off against Republican challenger Raul Garcia, an emergency room doctor and medical entrepreneur from Yakima. How does Garcia plan to unseat one of Washington State’s most tenured politicians? A walk-a-thon, of course! Garcia recently completed a “fentanyl walk” stretching from just outside of Ellensburg to Seattle’s East Portal Viewpoint park that sits above the I-90 bridge. The goal of the walk was to “bring focus” to the fentanyl crisis, something he accuses Cantwell of failing to address. Were he to win her seat, he promises to immediately introduce the “Americans Against Fentanyl” act, which would — drumroll, please — “target serious fentanyl dealers with mandatory felony charges and significant prison time,” in addition to providing more funding for treatment (presumably of the mandatory type, given his photo-ops with We Heart Seattle and courting of coverage from Jonathan Choe).
So, how did things go last time we introduced mandatory drug sentencing minimums? Pretty racistly.
We’ll say it one more time for the people in the back, but the only serious proposition for saving lives from fentanyl poisoning is to immediately introduce safe supply and safe consumption sites. If you want to reduce fentanyl use after you’ve started saving lives, then you can introduce free, voluntary, and widely available treatment programs. It’s really that simple.
Okay, back to the business at hand. Besides Garcia’s backward views on the fentanyl crisis, what else has he got? He’s pro-choice, at least, citing his experience as an ER doc in shaping his views. But he’s also desperate to secure more federal funding for cops while reducing “reckless federal spending” in general. What has that meant, when coming from the mouths of Republicans, historically? That’s right! Cutting social programs to pay for more meatheads to crack down on people who act out, when the increasingly tattered social safety net fails to catch them. Sure, you can argue that reelecting Maria Cantwell is a vote for the status quo, which is not so great right now. But if your alternative is to do even more of what we’ve always done wrong as a country, well, that’s not much of an alternative, is it? This question also applies to the previous race we discussed, by the way.
Where that question doesn’t apply is the race for 9th Congressional District. Rep. Adam Smith is absolutely, unequivocally the status quo. He has been in his seat since 1996, having risen to the position of ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee. Some of his greatest hits include authorizing the disastrous 2001 invasion of Iraq, siding with Republicans in 2004 to allow federal authorities to continue accessing our library records under the Patriot Act, and sending billions of dollars worth of aid to Ukraine and Israel so they can buy weapons, frequently from the very companies funding his invariably successful reelection campaigns.
In his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that, while the U.S. would need a permanent supply chain for its military in the post-WWII landscape, we should be extremely careful of allowing that industry to gain undue influence in the other Washington. Smith’s political career is exactly what he was warning us about. Top donors to this year’s campaign include, in order, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at $197,203, defense contractor General Atomics at $32,600, defense contractor General Dynamics at $22,000, defense contractor Microsoft (it’s true!) at $16,150, and defense contractor Anduril Industries at $13,500.
All that money isn’t for nothing: Smith has been a staunch supporter of Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks carried out by Hamas. A retaliation that some pretty notable figures in the human rights community would describe as genocide, by the way. Smith has also drawn criticism recently for saying that pro-Palestinian protestors were “leftwing fascists” and that protestors who employ tactics like blocking freeways or shutting down airports “ought to be arrested.” Interestingly, despite being his second largest all-time donor, AIPAC is a very recent supporter of Smith’s candidacy. In the 2022 cycle, they gave less than $18,000, and contributed nothing in previous cycles. Regardless, it sure seems to be a well-timed investment. He simply cannot wait to send them more weapons.
Melissa Chaudry, on the other hand, is everything AIPAC — along with the rogue’s gallery of defense contractors that populate Smith’s top lifetime donors page — hates. Unlike the typical MAGA kooks running against Smith, she does not want to take what he is already doing (funding war and funneling taxpayer money to the defense industry) and do more of it, she wants to do the exact opposite. But is it enough to get her over the line? Smith has faced and successfully fended off challenges from the left before, most notably from Sarah Smith in 2018, a Bernie-supporting progressive hoping to catch the same left-breaking wave that brought us The Squad. Unfortunately for her, she wiped out, as did Stephanie Gallardo, another challenger from the left who failed to make it through the 2022 election cycle’s primary.
Luckily for Chaudry, there’s a pretty big difference between the 2024 race and those previous contests: an extremely unpopular and debatably genocidal war that the incumbent is in full-throated support of. She’s betting that voters in the 9th care more about that, and about uprooting a deeply entrenched ally of the military-industrial complex, than any of Smith’s unrelated progressive accomplishments (which are, to be fair, many). Smith hasn’t won in the general by any less of a margin than 30 points in 14 years, so the odds aren’t exactly in Chaudry’s favor, but odds are not results. Just ask Hilary Clinton!
Attorney General Bob Ferguson is almost preordained for this post, having been more or less handpicked for it by departing incumbent Jay Inslee. He did lay a lot groundwork, building up tons of name recognition by suing the living daylights out of the Trump administration — 97 times, to be exact.
While he did stomp through the primary with 45 points to challenger and former U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert’s 28, the governor’s race has historically been a hotly contested one. Dino Rossi and Christine Gregoire can tell you all about that. As close as ol’ Dino came though, he still didn’t break the 10-governor streak of Democrats in our state.
But maybe that could change once voters hear about Reichert’s innovative policy ideas and bold stances. Let’s check our notes on what they are. Hmm, Reichert voted three times in favor of a nationwide abortion ban but claims he’s pro-choice when it comes to Washington. Abortion bans are not exactly a popular concept in Washington. Could this be a classic instance of playing to your base when your base is a right-leaning congressional district and then changing the tune when you’ve got to get the whole state to vote for you? We can never know the contents of another man’s mind, but we can certainly make an educated guess here!
What else is Reichert in favor of? More funding for cops, of course, which makes sense given his long tenure as our King County Sheriff. That said, Ferguson also wants to throw more money at cops. Like, $100 million more. Top Democrats might have done that photo-op with the kente-cloth stoles, but you know that was never going to stop the party from trying to outflank Republicans in our country’s eternal cop-funding contest.
Besides that lone area of convergence though, the two candidates could not be more different. Reichert is not into gay marriage, while Ferguson famously argued the case against a Washington florist who refused to do flowers for a gay wedding. Reichert is, at best, squeamish about trans people, while Ferguson has gone to the mat for them in a pretty serious way. Reichert voted for Trump, Ferguson very much did not. Ferguson was, before political ambition took over, in favor of drug decriminalization, a stance Reichert has not hesitated to hit him on.
Both candidates enjoy name recognition in spades, Reichert from his capture of the infamous Green River Killer and time in Congress, and Ferguson from his prolific litigation against Trump. But when it comes down to it, Reichert faces a more steeply graded uphill battle to convince Washingtonians he’ll represent their interests, given that our state has repeatedly expressed interest in preserving a woman’s right to choose, protecting trans people, and keeping Donald Trump out of the Oval Office.
There is almost no world in which TVW founder, former legislator, and current Lt. Gov. Denny Heck doesn’t win. He is up against Air Force vet and longtime commercial pilot Dan Matthews, who once interned for a state senator. Heck had 48 points in the primary, Matthews had a little under 23. If you’ve never heard anything about this office, awesome. That means Heck has been doing a great job.
Sadly, the young Black man who wanted to focus on increasing equitable access to voting didn’t make it through the primary. Keep trying, Mr. Tiggs! Instead, we get one of those boring Republican versus Democrat fights that always go blue. Incumbent Steve Hobbs looks slated to smash Republican Dale Whitaker. Both want to protect election integrity and are excited about using technology to improve access to voting. Hobbs has been doing that with no issues since 2021.
What does Whitaker want to do differently? Well, he’s really bent out of shape about having to check a party affiliation box on the ballot, to the extent that he filmed a video about it in one of those extremely corny hats with the all-black American flag. He claims “tens of thousands” of ballots went uncounted because people didn’t check the box in the primary. To win, he’ll need his fantasy of a previously undiscovered trove of independent voters to become reality. Hobbs had 48 points to Whitaker’s 37, with Hobbs’ fellow Democrat Tiggs taking another 9%.
Nothing has changed here since the primary bout: Democrat Mike Pellicotti will face off against Republican Sharon Hanek. Besides being the incumbent, Pellicotti studied rural development in grad school, got a law degree from Gonzaga, served a couple terms in the state Legislature, and is really into saving and earning the state money ($3 million per day, he claims!).
Hanek, a CPA turned public policy research consultant, comes to politics via a passion for education and education funding. Noble, to be sure, but Pellicotti is poised to take it. He took 58 points to Hanek’s 41 in the primary.
Another primary rerun! We would tell you to just go read the primary guide, but that would be lazy. Instead, we’ll tell you that Democratic incumbent Pat McCarthy has been doing the type of boring, wonky, and sometimes even unpleasant (auditing police Use of Deadly Force Investigations) work that we the public need done on our behalf but don’t really need to know about. Eliminating so-called “unauditable” governments — tiny administrations like rural water district boards or mosquito control boards or what have you that don’t report their finances on time — doesn’t sound very sexy, but it is the type of thing you want your auditor doing.
Her Republican opponent, Matt Hawkins, has 10 children, which is impressive. He also has 10 points on his policy platform, and most of them revolve around classic Republican talking points, like how government regulations are hurting the poor small businesses, how climate legislation is driving up energy costs, and how mismanagement is causing the homelessness crisis (not, say, the fact that Republicans have been eroding regulation for ages, allowing corporations to extract more and more from their employees and leaving said employees in increasingly precarious financial situations).
We didn’t think this race could be more boring, then Pasco mayor, perennial filer of frivolous lawsuits, and Republican Attorney General candidate Pete Serrano took his tour of the Seattle light rail lobby alongside local kook Rachel Savage, where his cameraman invented something entirely new: the “racist zoom.” In the now-viral video, as they pass Annapurna Cafe’s patio, Savage starts to balk at the idea of actually going down into the belly of the beast (the platform of a busy, well-lit, and relatively clean light rail station). As Savage sputters about being afraid to enter a public transit facility, the cameraman hits a tight zoom on a Black man sitting by himself on a bench, pretty clearly connecting a white woman’s fear to a Black man simply existing. Yuck.
Anyway, besides being the leader of “Savage Citizens,” a group looking to block 120 units of supportive housing on Capitol Hill, Savage says she’ll run against Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell if he doesn’t call in the military to solve the fentanyl crisis. Serrano has said no such thing (yet!), but you can tell a lot by the company someone keeps.
So, now that we’ve gotten an idea of what Pete Serrano is all about, let’s turn to his opponent. Current U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington Nick Brown, a lifetime Washingtonian, wants to ply his trade for the state instead of the feds. He was Gov. Jay Inslee’s general counsel, as well as assistant U.S. attorney, so he’s got plenty of experience representing and advising governments in matters of the law. He began his career as a judge advocate general in the Army, where he served as both a defender and prosecutor. He’s got a bronze star. He’s worked private practice. He helped Inslee end the death penalty and fight Trump’s Muslim ban.
As if that wasn’t enough on the ol’ resume, he made it nine episodes into the second season of Survivor: The Australian Outback. He also proudly lists his first job on his campaign website, at Taco Bell, which taught him about “the dignity of all work and workers.” Ugh, dude, stop, we get it. You’re perfect. Even his campaign slogan — Give a Damn! — is perfect.
Long story short, Nick Brown is the Black man that Serrano should be afraid of. While Serrano took home 42 points in the primary to Brown’s 35, progressive also-ran Manka Dingrha took 22. A combined 47 points is not a huge lead, but considering that Serrano’s greatest achievement in the name recognition department is coming to Seattle to do lame “Seattle is Dying” content and getting spooked by a dude sitting on a bench, all Brown has to do is exist, really.
While the governor race might be the most important of the state executive races, it is by no means the spiciest. First off, there was the recount, triggered by an incredibly close contest for second place. Had the Democratic party done a better job of keeping their candidates in line, also-ran Republican Sue Kuehl Peterson should never have stood a chance. Instead, Democratic contender and King County Council Chair Dave Upthegrove snuck past her with just a few hundred votes, having been forced to share his base with not one but three other progressives. Lucky for the public, as Upthegrove is the only serious candidate in the race who hasn’t taken any money from the timber industry, which he could soon be tasked with regulating.
In contrast, his opponent, former U.S. Rep. Jamie Hererra Beutler, has taken the most. Among various logging industry councils and associations, she’s taken big donations from Dunn Lumber, whose owner Mike Dunn sits on the board of the Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute, for those of you who are blissfully unaware, is a Seattle-based conservative think tank that bankrolls a frightening array of conservative thinkers, including notorious anti-homeless menswear enthusiast and YouTuber Jonathan Choe. Which is all to say that Hererra Beutler’s money comes not only from the industry that stands to gain the most from installing a favorable commissioner of public lands, but from the weirdest wing of the right wing.
We’ll be covering this race in more depth later this month, but for now, we simply suggest you follow the money. Corporations don’t give out political donations out of the goodness of their heart.
Having fended off a challenge from the center-left in the form of Reid Saaris, current education chief Chris Reykdal is facing off against conservative challenger and Peninsula School Board commissioner David Olson. At least we won’t have to squint to see a difference between these two.
Olson wants to do some pretty noble things, like increase funding for skilled trades education, support paraeducators and special ed, and provide more money for the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports program. He also makes some pretty strong points about how badly our state’s kids are doing in school. Like how about half of them cannot read at their grade level. He wants to amend that by encouraging more academic rigor, reducing grade inflation, and providing more money for individual tutoring of failing students. He also wants to curtail cellphone use in the classroom.
But then, so does Reykdal, who has already issued fairly nuanced guidance to all educators on how to handle cellphones in the classroom, instructing them to reduce cellphone use but still allow exceptions for students with disabilities. He’s also much rosier on how our state’s students are doing, noting that “graduation rates are at an all-time high, with the fastest gains coming from Native youth, students with disabilities, and low-income students.”
And where Olson is calling for more skilled trades education, Reykdal touts an increase under his watch from 38% to 52% of all students who have completed two such courses by the time they graduate.
So, both of these guys want students to succeed, get jobs, and generally be happy. That’s nice. Where do they disagree?
Though Olson doesn’t say much about it on his website, he does support charter schools. Reykdal says a lot about charter schools on his website, namely that they’re a danger to our public school system. The question of charter schools, he says, is “a battle of values between strengthening public schools (the common good) versus privatizing our constitutional duty,” adding that, “Children are harmed when we segregate our schools based on income, race, disability, and religion, but that is exactly what’s happening all over the country – I won’t let it happen here!”
They also don’t see eye-to-eye on LGBTQ+ issues. Olson is a staunch advocate for parental oversight, often a dog whistle for outing trans kids to their parents and banning any books or classroom materials featuring LGBTQ+ characters or themes. And, per Stranger writer Vivian McCall’s shoe-leather reporting in Olson’s own district, he doesn’t have the best record on issues around race and gender, having turned the district away from DEI measures, banned critical race theory, and cozied up with the anti-trans Moms for Liberty group.
Reykdal, on the other hand, is insistent that educators honor a student’s chosen name and pronouns, that schools provide gender-inclusive bathrooms, and that we “teach our students the importance of gender diversity, whether it be through direct lesson plans or by lifting up classroom materials and books that feature LGBTQ+ characters.”
As predicted, it’s a battle between sitting state Sens. Patty Kuderer and Phil Fortunato. Ideologically, they could not be more different. Besides the obvious fact that Kuderer is a Democrat and Fortunato is a Republican, Kuderer is actively engaged in the process of creating a public health insurance option in Washington State. Fortunato is strongly opposed to that. He told the Spokesman-Review that, “The only thing that keeps Medicare afloat is everybody else paying full price. You wanna see Medicare for all? Just look at the VA system. My first three sons are all veterans, and it’s a joke trying to get medical care through the VA system. Three months for a dental appointment.”
Has he tried making a dentist appointment at a private practice? It’s not exactly next-day either.
Kuderer’s personal experience, in contrast, is giving birth to a critically ill and underweight child and having the lifesaving medical care that made her a mother of two, not one, denied by her insurance company. She is adamant about reforming the appeals process for claim denials.
They also diverge on guns. Fortunato also hates the idea of requiring gun owners to carry liability insurance, to protect against the possibility that their gun is used to cause harm, a bit of legislation that Kuderer herself sponsored and has said she will put in an agency request for, should she become commissioner. Whether or not you believe the government should get its hands off our guns, it does seem fair to at least to require people who are the victims of unintentional or accidental shootings due to gun owner negligence to be compensated by said gun owner.
Either way, this contest is a pretty straight-up ideological slugfest. If you want someone who believes in low-cost insulin and universal access to care, you want Kuderer. If you want someone who prefers that we deregulate insurance companies to, uhh, save them money that they will presumably (ha!) pass on to consumers, you want Fortunato.
Here we have a rare contest between two Democrats, Andrea Suarez and Shaun Scott. Now, some people, like former City Council candidate Ron Davis, would contend that Suarez is in actuality not a Democrat, citing things like her numerous appearances with prominent Republican candidates and speaking gigs at Republican events. Either way, she’s got a “D” next to her name this time around. Certainly a wise move in one of the Washington State Democratic Party’s most reliable districts.
Questions of appropriate party affiliation aside, what differentiates fellow Democrats Scott and Suarez? Well Suarez’s main claim to fame is founding We Heart Seattle, an organization that ostensibly helps out homeless people and picks up trash, typically around homeless encampments. They’ve been accused of picking up treasures instead of trash, as well as working to demonize homeless people instead of doing anything on their behalf. That said, this journalist has personally witnessed the organization doing tangible things on behalf of homeless Seattleites.
What is Scott all about? He’s currently the Policy Lead at the Statewide Poverty Action Network, where he fights to fund the social safety net, fund affordable housing, advocate for people with disabilities, and enforce consumer protections. Sounds great and all, but that’s not even what he’s best known for. Prior to his role as a prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement and 2021’s associated protests over police brutality, he was already a successful filmmaker and journalist whose work provided critiques of consumer capitalism, systemic racism, and whatever other bad -isms you can think of.
While it’s hard to nail down Suarez’s political positions, besides that forced or coerced treatment for people suffering from addiction is good and that the city should be aggressively removing homeless encampments, Scott has been pretty vocal about what he wants to do with whatever political power he obtains. During his recent but unsuccessful run for Seattle City Council, he was aggressively pro-labor, in favor of municipal broadband, and in favor of social housing. On the topic of homelessness and drug use, he is against encampment removals and in favor of harm reduction strategies, like safe injection sites. Not to be a broken record, but if we want to stop fentanyl overdoses, safe injection sites are a huge, huge part of doing that.
Anyway, don’t let this race confuse you because it’s ostensibly an internecine conflict. While both candidates might be listed as Democrats, they are on very different ends of the political spectrum. If Suarez’s political leanings please you, by all means, vote for her. But do yourself and the political process a favor and don’t just vote for whichever Democrat your pen lands on here.
Court races are nonpartisan, but nothing in life is apolitical. Sal Mungia, a longtime trial lawyer endorsed by just about everyone who is anyone in our state’s Democratic Party, is squaring off against Dave Larson, a municipal court judge for the city of Federal Way. While both are extremely decorated lawyers, Larson really wants to remind voters that he’s the only one with actual experience holding the gavel.
Be that as it may, what they each want to do with that gavel on the State Supreme Court is what you really need to focus on here. Larson touts his involvement with the Legislature “in fixing Blake, as well as other past erroneous decisions of the Supreme Court that affected public health and safety.” On the other hand, Mungia has worked with the ACLU, the Equal Justice Coalition, and on the Washington State Access to Justice Board.
Not to stereotype Larson, who seems like a genuinely great guy, but anytime someone complains about the Blake decision, you can reasonably assume they have a little bit of drug warrior in them. It is exhausting having to type this even one more time, but drugs are not and have never been legal in Washington. Anyone using drugs in public could have, at any time after the Blake decision came down, been arrested by any law enforcement officer in any area of the state. Whether they were prosecuted and under what statute is another question, but nothing ever stopped cops from arresting people for drug possession. For crying out loud, a cop can still arrest you for weed under federal law, if they want.
Focusing on restoring the ability of cops to arrest people who are suffering from addiction is fundamentally counterproductive. If you agree, never fear: Larson made it through the primary with a little under half of Mungia’s vote totals.
Councilmember Tanya Woo ended up in office after losing her actual campaign against Tammy Morales in District 2, garnering a seat via the appointment process when former District 8 Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda decamped to the King County Council. This race is something of a political bellwether, being basically a referendum on the agenda of the council’s conservative majority that appointed their fallen comrade in the first place. Thus, as more of an ideological contest than an interpersonal one, it was always going to be Woo against whatever progressive made it out of the primary dogpile. Any progressive would do. But challenger Alexis Mercedes Rinck is not just any progressive.
Mercedes Rinck comes most recently from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), where she did the dirty business of getting suburban and exurban cities to buy into the KCRHA’s plans. And the even dirtier business of getting everyone to buy into the agency’s initially quite unpopular 5-year plan, which was eventually approved by the agency’s implementation board and is currently guiding its policy. And that’s not her only accomplishment as a wonk. Since graduating from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs, Mercedes Rinck has done nothing but municipal policy, first as an intern for the city of Lakewood, then as a policy analyst for the Sound Cities Association. She eats briefings for breakfast, basically.
Woo is most well known for being the landlord of the Louisa Hotel, an affordable apartment complex in the Chinatown-International District (CID). She’s big on public safety, and has voted in favor of bonuses and pay increases for cops, as well as the city’s controversial new SODA and SOAP legislation, which aim to ban people caught using drugs or doing sex work from certain zones of the city.
We’ll have more on this race, as we’ve already interviewed Mercedes Rinck and issued an interview request to Woo, but for your purposes here, this race boils down to tough-on-crime versus technocratic, wonky policy solutions. While the tough-on-crime pitch sure worked well last cycle (for most every candidate except Woo, that is), it may not fly after a year of not a single thing being different downtown. If you take the bus from 3rd and Union, or spend any time anywhere in the area, you probably know by now that we can’t arrest our way out of this crisis. Plenty of others do too, apparently. Mercedes Rinck made it through the primary with 50 points to Woo’s 38, while progressive also-rans Tariq Yusef and Saunatina Sanchez took about eight points between them. Considering Mercedes Rinck will almost surely inherit their votes, that’s more like 58 to 38, which is not great for Woo.
Okay, before we dive into the four ballot initiatives you’re being asked to vote on this cycle, a bit of backstory. All four are being championed by an organization called Let’s Go Washington, which is in turn backed by one Brian Heywood. Heywood, a self-styled hayseed who gives interviews from his farm in Redmond, is actually a multimillionaire hedge fund manager and Republican megadonor. Using $6 million of his own money, he pitched six ballot initiatives to the Legislature, which passed three and punted the remaining three over to the voters, with the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) sneaking another one about natural gas onto the ballot via an Initiative to the People. Heywood’s three hits were really playing the hits, as they say, to his conservative base: preemptively banning any sort of income tax (a more fair, progressive taxation model than sales taxes), restoring cops’ ability to undertake potentially dangerous high-speed pursuits, and — despite the fact that parents already have the right to do these things — cementing parental rights to review educational materials and opt their kids out of sex-ed. Doesn’t conservative America have enough men who are, shall we say, very poorly acquainted with female anatomy? Do we really need more? But I digress. His remaining three initiatives, along with the BIAW’s, which Let’s Go Washington also backs, play more hits from the conservative classics catalog: cutting taxes and promoting the use of fossil fuels. While Heywood’s background — which includes lots of work for the oil and gas industry, by the way — might seem disqualifying, we’re going to do our best to evaluate each initiative on its merits.
I-2117 looks to repeal the recently passed Climate Commitment Act (CCA), something described by its authors in a neat bit of branding as a “Cap and Invest” program, but what is more accurately known as a cap and trade program. The basic idea of these programs is that there are costs associated with the use of fossil fuels and pollutants that we have not been paying. Or, rather, that Mother Earth has been paying on our behalf. The neato neoliberal solution to that is — what else? — the market! If we just make it costly to use fossil fuel, people will stop using it. Washington’s program forces polluters and fossil fuel peddlers to purchase allowances in order to continue business as usual. The allowances are capped and, once bought, can be traded; thus the name. As the years go by (and average daily temperatures creep up and the smoke fills the air every August), the total number of allowances will go down, driving their prices sky-high and, in theory, forcing many polluters to call it a day. That all sounds good, right? We get a boatload of tax revenue from selling the allowances, we slow the progress of climate change, and we do it all with a nice, gentle transition. If only it were that simple.
As Syracuse professor and “Climate Change as Class War” author Matthew Huber argues in his Jacobin article on the fatal flaw of the cap and trade model, “Focusing on getting the price right, and thereby assuming the market can be corrected, allows right-wing and fossil-fuel interests to effectively argue that any and all climate policy will be a cost to working people.”
That is exactly what is happening with I-2117. Nothing in the CCA prevents the companies subject to its rules from passing costs along to consumers. Heywood, in his campaigning for I-2117, has been hyperfocused on gas prices, even hosting ethically dubious gas “Rollback” events, where he reimburses random gas stations for temporarily dropping their prices to eye-poppingly low levels. The idea being to lure consumers in and then lecture them about how the CCA is causing higher gas prices. He also gives them hot dogs. Now, if we learned one thing from the post-pandemic price-gouging scandals, it should be that it ain’t some dinky piece of climate policy in Washington State that’s driving up gas prices. It’s the companies. It’s always the companies! What Heywood really wants to do here is reduce costs for oil and gas companies, which by no means guarantees reduced prices at the pump. In fact, the people who almost invariably end up with those savings are — you guessed it — shareholders.
Could we come up with a better, faster solution to climate change than tinkering with markets? Absolutely, and we should. But for now, the CCA money is doing a lot. Full disclosure (and potential “Journalists Posting Their Ls” moment) here, this journalist recently received a $200 credit off his electric bill thanks to a CCA program designed to cut energy costs for low-income households. Heywood has, of course, complained about the timing of these credits. To be fair, it did hit accounts about a week before ballots are set to arrive. But whether the money arrived before or after the election, it’s still a pretty hard sell to be like, “What if instead of giving low-income households $200, we gave it to the oil companies?”
According to its own concise explanatory statement, this initiative would “repeal or prohibit certain laws and regulations that discourage natural gas use, and/or promote electrification, and require certain utilities and local governments to provide natural gas to eligible customers.”
On their website, Let’s Go Washington implores us to vote yes on I-2066 and “stop the gas ban.” Sounds cool and all, but there is no ban on gas. The narrative about a gas ban comes from the recent passage of Washington’s House Bill 1589, which is incredibly convoluted, but essentially is a big planning bill to help the state’s large utilities comply with impending climate transition requirements. At one point, it did propose to remove Puget Sound Energy’s legal obligation to provide natural gas service, while also banning new gas hookups. That all got removed in its journey through the Legislature. However, that hasn’t stopped the BIAW and Let’s Go Washington from telling everyone that big government is coming for gas stoves.
What is the bill really about? A couple of things, according to the Washington Conservation Alliance’s climate and clean energy director, Caitlin Krenn: “The whole aim is really to try to lock in profits for the groups that are pushing the initiative,” she said, discussing both I-2217 and I-2066. Oil and gas companies and their associated acts, like Heywood, want to sell as much gas as possible. Shocker.
But why is the BIAW so involved here? Well, per Krenn, they’re “seeking to attack recent energy codes that were passed, which are basically protections for new construction to make sure that new buildings are built in an energy-efficient way.” The BIAW, she continued, “has been on lawsuits against those codes, has been against them from the start, really hates them, and is trying to basically find some way to stop them from going into effect.”
Another thing that I-2066 could do away with, she cautioned, is programs and planning designed to deal with the imminent affordability crisis for natural gas customers. The overall number of natural gas utility customers in the state has already dropped by 5% to 7% per year, she said, just due to people voluntarily switching to electric heating. As the customer base shrinks, the remaining customers are on the hook for maintaining an aging gas system. One of the ways cities, counties, and utilities can those customers with affordability issues is by offering incentive programs to help people switch to more energy-efficient heat pumps. Even for those customers who can’t or won’t switch, I-2066 would halt Puget Sound Energy and other large utilities from planning ahead for the coming transition, something Krenn said research has shown will increase costs. Ultimately, she emphasized, this initiative would end up hurting the natural gas customers it purports to protect.
“What [utilities are] looking at is a real affordability crisis if they’re not able to proactively plan,” Krenn warned. “If PSE and other combination utilities like PSE aren’t allowed to do this proactive planning, it’s going to mean that gas customers are having higher bills over the next couple of decades.”
“Stop the gas ban” does have a nice, populist ring to it, but how does “get rid of green-building codes and make natural gas heat cost more” sound? Not so good.
We’ll make this one quick: A guy with millions of dollars who makes millions of dollars in capital gains wants to “repeal an excise tax imposed on the sale or exchange of certain long-term capital assets by individuals who have annual capital gains of over $250,000.” Is the flannel-wearing gentleman farmer behind this ballot initiative doing this on behalf of working families? Absolutely, fundamentally, numerically not. The tax only applies to about 1% of Washingtonians and it applies specifically to profits of more than $250,000 on stock sales. If coming up a quarter of a million dollars on stocks is a frequent occurrence in your life, you can very obviously afford to pay the tax. On the other hand, if you’re a worker, you stand to gain way more from keeping that tax money in the state’s coffers, where it is used for things like affordable childcare, special education, pre-K programs, community colleges, and job training. The rich spend a lot (like, say, $6 million) to promote their own interests. All you have to do to protect yours here is vote.
Did you know that our state passed a universal long-term care insurance program, called WA Cares? Or did you learn about it via this initiative, which aims to gut said program? It’s okay, us too. What have we learned about the program since then? Here’s how it works: Every worker in the state pays 0.58% of their wages into the program, which pays out eligible participants up to $36,500 should they find themselves in need of “assistance with at least three activities of daily living, such as eating, getting in or out of bed, dressing, taking medications, or bathing.” To be eligible, a Washington worker must pay into the program for 10 years nonconsecutively, though they can’t take a break of more than five consecutive years, or three of the six years immediately prior to applying for the program. People who have other long-term care support in place, like disabled veterans, military spouses, and federal employees, to name a few, are exempt from the WA Cares program. People who provided proof that they carried their own long-term care policy prior to November 2021 were also able to apply for an extension until December 2022. Now, however, if you work part-time, full-time, or temporarily, you pay.
As critics of the program, including Let’s Go Washington, point out, long-term care is expensive in Washington. Their website lists it at $7,500 to $14,000 per month, meaning that you’re getting about five months of WA Cares-funded care at best. That’s not a very long term for long-term care. You could also, in theory, pay more into the program over a lifetime of work than you’d get out of it if you did ultimately use the benefit. You’d need to make about $6.3 million over a lifetime to pay $36,500 in WA Cares taxes, but that’s not outside the realm of possibility for a lot of Washington workers. You can’t throw a lanyard in South Lake Union without lassoing someone whose total comp is over $500,000 a year. The program won’t do them much good. Nor will it do much good for someone who works in Washington for nine years before moving elsewhere. A person making $100,000 a year for nine years would pay $5,220 into the program.
What I-2124 wants to do is switch the WA Cares scheme from a mandatory program to an opt-in affair. Not an opt-out affair, but one where workers are proactively asked if they want to pay this tax. Many will say no, which is the whole point of making it opt-in. The state, which has had to plan for the potential financial impact of I-2124 becoming law, has planned for scenarios in which 25%, 50%, or 75% of workers opt out. Almost any of them will completely tank the program, as it will not pull in enough contributions to pay out eligible claims. So, whether or not you love, hate, or are barely aware of the WA Cares program, you should be clear that I-2124 is about much more than worker choice; it is about the program’s continued viability.
Indeed, the whole point of insurance programs with mandatory participation is to make the provision of that insurance more affordable by subsidizing high-needs participants with dues from low-needs participants. The individual mandate contained in Obamacare was designed to do exactly that. If you let the low-needs people opt out because it doesn’t benefit them as much, you leave the high-needs people high and dry.
Is WA Cares the most efficient system as it stands? Surely not. But is it, at its core, based on principles of collectivism and coming together to support our most vulnerable fellow citizens that we should absolutely be in favor of? You bet. There’s also the fact that, whether or not it’s optional, the program exists and will continue to exist per state law. We have to run it, and shooting it in the leg (or maybe even both legs) is not going to help it run. In fact, zombifying the program will cost us between $12,623,250 and $31,215,960 in additional administrative costs in the first three fiscal years following I-2124’s passage. Coming from conservatives, who are historically obsessed with fiscal responsibility, that seems pretty fiscally irresponsible.
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