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Voters in Washington will soon get their ballots in the mail, and they’re going to be chock full, with races for governor and attorney general, other statewide offices and four statewide initiatives — including one that would repeal Washington’s landmark Climate Commitment Act.
Jeanie Lindsay, the Olympia correspondent for KUOW, joined OPB’s Think Out Loud host Dave Miller recently to walk through the biggest choices Washington voters will make.
The Washington state Capitol in Olympia.
Austin Jenkins / Northwest News Network
Dave Miller: Before we get into individual races, what are the big issues driving voters this year?
Jeanie Lindsay: I talked with some voters at the ballot box on primary day back in August, and two of the issues that came up repeatedly were public safety and reproductive rights. When you look at the polls, people are talking about economic issues, jobs, inflation, housing, taxes.
Miller: How big a partisan split did you see in those concerns among voters?
Lindsay: Everybody seems to be pretty worried about the economy, prices, housing in particular. But I tend to hear more concerns about taxes generally from conservatives and Republican-leaning folks. They’re also the ones who are talking to me more about crime and public safety issues, even though there are concerns across the political spectrum on that issue, no doubt. Then when it comes to abortion and reproductive rights, Democrats and progressive voters bring that one up a lot, especially with Donald Trump on the top of the Republican ticket. They also talk a little bit about protecting democracy.
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Miller: Let’s turn to the governor’s race, an open seat after three terms for Democrat Jay Inslee. What can you tell us about the Democratic candidate, Bob Ferguson?
Lindsay: Ferguson is from Washington and has spent some time in local government before he became attorney general. He was elected in 2012 and has grown the AG’s office quite a bit. He has sued the federal government and companies over abortion, opioids and the Trump travel bans on Muslim-majority countries. He doesn’t talk about Jay Inslee and hasn’t gone so far as to really criticize Inslee’s policies or anything super directly. Inslee has endorsed him, but Ferguson uses this term “change agent” to talk about what he would bring to the governor’s office. That seems more broadly philosophical than on any one particular policy.
One example that did emerge on the campaign trail, though is in the conversation about our state’s ferry system. Gov. Inslee has been all about making new ferry boats that come into Washington hybrid electric, but Ferguson and other candidates for governor earlier this year basically laid out plans or talked about urgency. Our ferry system is in massive crisis. And so in Ferguson’s plan to fix the ferry system, he suggested that he could ask for diesel boats if that’s the fastest way to get more of them online, which is a pretty notable difference from Inslee’s stance.
Miller: What can you tell us about the GOP candidate, Dave Reichert?
Lindsay: Reichert is also from Washington; he grew up in Renton, which is just southeast of Seattle, and he’s been a law enforcement guy for most of his life. He was a detective on the Green River Killer case and then he was King County sheriff for a while. He was elected to Congress in the early 2000s before leaving in 2019.
Miller: How much has the issue of crime played out in this race?
Lindsay: Crime isn’t the top issue for most voters. It’s more economic issues, but it is an important issue for a significant share of voters. And Reichert has a sort of a clearer advantage here being a former cop and making it a core theme of his campaign. When Reichert talks about issues, he almost always loops it back to crime and has tried to take ownership of that.
Attorney General Bob Ferguson is also trying to push back on that. The presidential race and the felony conviction of former President Donald Trump has also been part of this public safety conversation.
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Miller: Reichert says he’s not supporting Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
What kind of tightrope is he walking here as he’s been trying to court independents or maybe even moderate Democrats without losing Republican support?
Lindsay: Republicans have not been exactly big winners in Washington lately. The state as a whole is still pretty close to the middle of the political spectrum, but it certainly tilts Democratic overall, especially because of those densely populated areas like Seattle. Reichert has been walking a very difficult path for any Republican. The Republicans in the state who love Trump and really support him didn’t need to back Reichert in the primary because they had another candidate who was aligned with Trump. But the Republicans who have won elections in Washington throughout history have been moderates or folks who work across the aisle, which is not exactly Trump’s style. At the end of the day, Republicans who come out to vote in the general election are probably going to vote for the Republican candidate for governor even if they didn’t back him in the primary. Reichert is doing everything he can to convince people that he’s this middle-of-the-road Republican so that he can pick up more support among people who might not love the fact that Democrats have held control in Olympia for the past decade.
At the same time, the Democrats are doing everything they can to say, ‘Reichert is extremely Republican’ even when some of his own party say ‘He’s not Republican enough.’”
Miller: Let’s turn to other things on the ballot, including some of the four statewide initiatives. One of them is Initiative 2117, which would repeal the State’s Climate Commitment Act. What is that law?
Lindsay: The main part of this law that’s specifically being targeted by 2117 is the state’s cap and trade or cap and invest program. It’s essentially a carbon market, and it went into effect last year. Very basically this law limits the amount of pollution that companies can put out and makes them buy allowances for that pollution. And the idea is that these allowances will shrink over time, forcing companies to become carbon neutral by 2050.
Miller: But the money that the companies pay for these allowances in the meantime is supposed to be put back into the state’s budget to pay for clean energy programs and infrastructure and helping people adapt to the effects of climate change that are already being felt. What would this initiative mean in terms of transportation projects?
Lindsay: This is a huge part of this conversation. It would be pretty significant. There’s billions of dollars from the cap and trade program built into the state’s long-term transportation plan, so if 2117 passes, it would force the Legislature to reshuffle all of that spending. And the state’s transportation budget is already in somewhat of a crisis, which would mean if they can’t find money to pay for what they’ve set out to get done, cuts are kind of inevitable.
Miller: I want to turn to another statewide measure. What would Initiative 2124 do?
Lindsay: This one is really interesting. It would make a new payroll tax completely optional. That tax, which is like 58 cents for every 100 bucks you make, pays into the state’s new long-term health care benefit program. And that gives people a one-time benefit of more than $36,000 to pay for long-term care costs like caregiver pay or equipment to help people stay in their homes. That benefit isn’t available yet, but this payroll tax is essentially building up the fund to start distributing that benefit in a few years. The program has some exceptions already for people paying into it; you don’t have to pay into it if you’re a military spouse, for example, or if you live in a different state and then work in Washington, but this initiative would make it optional for everybody. Opponents of the initiative say that could collapse the program, which they say is critical for people who can’t afford these things on their own or who can’t get private care insurance themselves.
Miller: There is also an initiative put forward by proponents of the natural gas industry. What would Initiative 2066 do?
Lindsay: This one would ban local governments and the state government from banning natural gas, and it would also ban them from incentivizing electric and basically guarantee natural gas for anybody who wants it in their house. It would repeal parts of a law that the Legislature passed earlier this year that aimed to help speed up the state’s transition away from natural gas. This measure got a lot of signatures to put it on the ballot very quickly. But it’s also been getting quite a bit of pushback, including from several city councils who say it would put their electrification plans at risk.
Miller: Finally, there is another statewide race for elected office with some interesting wrinkles. What can you tell us about both the public lands commissioner position and this race?
Lindsay: The public lands commissioner in Washington heads the Department of Natural Resources, which manages millions of acres of state lands, and it’s also the state’s firefighting response agency. The lands commissioner’s job is to make sure that DNR is leading wildfire response and managing land and timber sales, which can impact school funding in other parts of state government.
Fun fact: Washington is one of only a handful of states that actually elect this job. Most people don’t really know what a public lands commissioner does. But there were five Democrats and two Republicans running in the primary. The top Republican in the race is Jaime Herrera Beutler, the former U.S. House member in the 3rd Congressional District in Southwest Washington.