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.

Tuesday, December 12th, 2023

Let’s Go Washington submits signatures for I‑2081, a parental notification scheme

The right wing group work­ing to qual­i­fy mul­ti­ple ini­tia­tives to the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture turned in sig­na­tures for anoth­er one of their mea­sures today in Tumwa­ter at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex.

Ini­tia­tive 2081 — which, like all of Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton’s mea­sures, is spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Repub­li­can State Par­ty Chair Jim Walsh and fund­ed with mon­ey from right wing mil­lion­aire Bri­an Hey­wood — is an attempt to bring the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s nation­al cul­ture wars push to the Novem­ber 2024 Wash­ing­ton State bal­lot. Osten­si­bly, the ini­tia­tive is about ensur­ing par­ents have the right to know what’s hap­pen­ing to their kids in pub­lic schools.

But the Office of the Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion says much of the ini­tia­tive is try­ing to re-state what’s already in Wash­ing­ton law — mean­ing, it won’t give par­ents much in the way of rights that they don’t already have.

The offi­cial bal­lot title and sum­ma­ry for I‑2081 are as follows:

Bal­lot Title
Ini­tia­tive Mea­sure No. 2081 con­cerns parental rights relat­ing to their children’s pub­lic school education.

This mea­sure would pro­vide cer­tain rights to par­ents and guardians of pub­lic-school chil­dren, includ­ing rights to review instruc­tion­al mate­ri­als, inspect records, receive cer­tain noti­fi­ca­tions, and opt out of cer­tain activ­i­ties, like sex­u­al-health education.

Should this mea­sure be enact­ed into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]

Bal­lot Mea­sure Summary
This mea­sure would allow par­ents and guardians of pub­lic-school chil­dren to review instruc­tion­al mate­ri­als and inspect stu­dent records, includ­ing health and dis­ci­pli­nary records, upon request. It would require pub­lic schools to pro­vide par­ents and guardians with cer­tain noti­fi­ca­tions, includ­ing about med­ical ser­vices giv­en and when stu­dents are tak­en off cam­pus; access to cal­en­dars and cer­tain poli­cies; and writ­ten notice and oppor­tu­ni­ties to opt stu­dents out of com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al-health edu­ca­tion and answer­ing cer­tain sur­veys or assignments.

Some pro­vi­sions in the ini­tia­tive could have the poten­tial to nix Human Rights Com­mis­sion guide­lines about stu­dent pri­va­cy — par­tic­u­lar­ly in sen­si­tive sce­nar­ios, which is rea­son alone in our view to reject this ini­tia­tive. Sup­pose, for a exam­ple, that a stu­dent receives med­ical care that they do not want their par­ents to know about. Pub­lic schools should not be oblig­at­ed by law to be insert­ed into the mid­dle of dis­putes between young peo­ple and their par­ents about med­ical care.

The ini­tia­tive does at least rec­og­nize that when abuse is being inves­ti­gat­ed, par­ents should­n’t have unfet­tered access to their chil­dren’s records.

From sub­sec­tion 3:

Notwith­stand­ing any­thing to the con­trary, a pub­lic school shall not be required to release any records or infor­ma­tion regard­ing a stu­den­t’s med­ical or health records or men­tal health coun­sel­ing records to a par­ent dur­ing the pen­den­cy of an inves­ti­ga­tion of child abuse or neglect con­duct­ed by any law enforce­ment agency or the depart­ment of chil­dren, youth, and fam­i­lies where the par­ent is the tar­get of the inves­ti­ga­tion, unless the par­ent has obtained a court order.

This clause is too lim­it­ed, how­ev­er, to pro­vide suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tions for youth.

Giv­en that exist­ing state law strikes a bet­ter bal­ance than I‑2081, Wash­ing­ton would be bet­ter off with­out Ini­tia­tive 2081. This is an instance where the old adage if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it applies. Many of the pro­po­nents of I‑2081 are focus­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly on the sce­nario of par­ents being able to opt their chil­dren out of com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion — but they already have that right under exist­ing law, a law the right wing forced a statewide pub­lic vote on three years ago, which Wash­ing­to­ni­ans vot­ed hand­i­ly to uphold.

From the OSPI’s CSHE (com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion) page:

Parent/Guardian Noti­fi­ca­tion and Materials
Let­ters, Noti­fi­ca­tions, Waivers and FAQs
Par­ents and guardians must be noti­fied at least one month in advance of planned instruc­tion, must be able to review all CSHE instruc­tion­al mate­ri­als, and must be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to opt their child out of CSHE instruction.

This infor­ma­tion is being omit­ted from mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing I‑2081.

The Wash­ing­ton State Catholic Con­fer­ence’s I‑2081 page, for exam­ple, which our team reviewed, neglects to explic­it­ly state that par­ents already have this right, imply­ing instead that I‑2081 would cre­ate it. The only lan­guage that nods to exist­ing law is the word “reit­er­ates” in this sen­tence: “It also reit­er­ates or estab­lish­es numer­ous par­ents’ rights with­in the pub­lic school system.”

NPI’s observers in Tumwa­ter saw a heavy “Moms for Lib­er­ty” pres­ence at the turn-in. “Moms for Lib­er­ty” is an extreme right wing group that cam­paigns for book bans and against efforts to make schools more inclu­sive and cur­ricu­lum more ben­e­fi­cial to stu­dents. The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter had this to say about the group in its Year in Hate and Extrem­ism report for 2022:

Schools, espe­cial­ly, have been on the receiv­ing end of ramped-up and coor­di­nat­ed hard-right attacks, fre­quent­ly through the guise of “par­ents’ rights” groups. These groups were, in part, spurred by the right-wing back­lash to COVID-19 pub­lic safe­ty mea­sures in schools. But they have grown into an anti-stu­dent inclu­sion move­ment that tar­gets any inclu­sive cur­ricu­lum that con­tains dis­cus­sions of race, dis­crim­i­na­tion and LGBTQ identities.

At the fore­front of this mobi­liza­tion is Moms for Lib­er­ty, a Flori­da-based group with vast con­nec­tions to the GOP that this year the SPLC des­ig­nat­ed as an extrem­ist group. They can be spot­ted at school board meet­ings across the coun­try wear­ing shirts and car­ry­ing signs that declare, “We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.” The group hijacks meet­ings, pre­vent­ing offi­cials and par­ents from con­duct­ing their nor­mal proceedings.

“I can be sit­ting in a meet­ing mind­ing my own busi­ness, and they turn around and scream at me that I am a com­mie and teach­ers want to see all kids fail,” a teacher’s union pres­i­dent in Bre­vard Coun­ty, Flori­da, explained to a Wash­ing­ton Post reporter.

The oth­er five mea­sures Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton is work­ing on for 2024 are:

  • Ini­tia­tive 2117 — repeals the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act, which is rais­ing funds to fight cli­mate damage
  • Ini­tia­tive 2109 — repeals bil­lions in edu­ca­tion fund­ing by elim­i­nat­ing the cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy
  • Ini­tia­tive 2113 — rolls back restric­tions on police pur­suits that are mak­ing our com­mu­ni­ties safer
  • Ini­tia­tive 2124 — sab­o­tages the WA Cares plan to help Wash­ing­to­ni­ans afford long-term care
  • Ini­tia­tive 2111 — bars the state and local gov­ern­ments from levy­ing tax­es based on abil­i­ty to pay

Sig­na­tures for Ini­tia­tive 2117 were sub­mit­ted on Tues­day, Novem­ber 21st; our recap of that turn-in can be read here. The next mea­sure Hey­wood and Walsh plan to sub­mit sig­na­tures for is report­ed­ly Ini­tia­tive 2113, which would roll back restric­tions on police pur­suits that are mak­ing our com­mu­ni­ties safer.

NPI’s Stop Greed web­site pro­vides infor­ma­tion about all six ini­tia­tives and the harm they would cre­ate and is a very use­ful resource to book­mark.

NPI urges a no vote on all of the afore­men­tioned ini­tia­tives, includ­ing I‑2081, and will be work­ing to ensure that they get the vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion they deserve.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 8:30 PM

Categories: Education, Elections, Policy Topics

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Tuesday, December 12th, 2023

Recently hired Sound Transit CEO Julie Timm departing agency to care for her father

Sound Tran­sit’s chief exec­u­tive offi­cer Julie Timm will be leav­ing the agency in a few weeks to return to the East Coast and care for her father, the agency announced today. Tim­m’s depar­ture, which came togeth­er quick­ly, was described by ST’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions team as prompt­ed by a fam­i­ly matter.

“Sound Tran­sit CEO Julie Timm announced today she will be leav­ing the agency in order to return to the East Coast to take care of fam­i­ly mat­ters,” the state­ment said. “Since join­ing Sound Tran­sit in Sep­tem­ber 2022, Timm has over­seen a renewed empha­sis on the rid­er expe­ri­ence as Sound Tran­sit approach­es the open­ing of sev­er­al new exten­sions, start­ing with East Link next spring. Her focus and lead­er­ship in cen­ter­ing cur­rent and future rid­ers in the agency’s cap­i­tal and oper­at­ing pro­grams will ben­e­fit the region for years to come.”

“Timm’s last day with Sound Tran­sit will be Jan­u­ary 12th,” the state­ment went on to say. “The board and staff lead­er­ship will form a tran­si­tion team to nav­i­gate the agency through the lead­er­ship tran­si­tion. The board is expect­ed to appoint an inter­im CEO in the weeks ahead.”

“While not impos­si­ble, it would be incred­i­bly chal­leng­ing for me to main­tain a split focus while main­tain­ing the intense lev­el of sup­port and sta­bil­i­ty Sound Tran­sit deserves from its CEO,” Timm explained in the all-staff email.

“The Board has expressed their full com­mit­ment that they will pro­vide sta­bil­i­ty dur­ing the tran­si­tion peri­od as a new CEO is select­ed to lead the vision and mis­sion of the ST [Sound Tran­sit] Pro­gram, and they will be pro­vid­ing more infor­ma­tion in the com­ing weeks,” Tim­m’s note added.

The “fam­i­ly mat­ter” ref­er­enced in the announce­ment per­tains to Tim­m’s father, who resides on the oth­er coast and needs an increased amount of care.

Timm was hired in 2022 after the Sound Tran­sit Board of Direc­tors decid­ed not to renew the con­tract of Peter Rogoff, who was cho­sen as Joni Ear­l’s replace­ment sev­er­al years ago. The Sound Tran­sit Board is an eigh­teen-mem­ber fed­er­at­ed body con­sist­ing of the King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive, the Sno­homish Coun­ty Exec­u­tive, the Pierce Coun­ty Exec­u­tive, the WSDOT Sec­re­tary, and fif­teen coun­ty and city elect­ed offi­cials appoint­ed by the three executives.

Timm quick­ly made a favor­able impres­sion with tran­sit advo­cates and con­stituen­cies served by Sound Tran­sit. She often post­ed com­mute and work pho­tos to her Twit­ter account. She is known for her cheer and professionalism.

An impor­tant mile­stone dur­ing her tenure was the open­ing of the Hill­top Link exten­sion in Taco­ma ear­li­er this autumn, an event we cov­ered right here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Anoth­er mile­stone was the deci­sion to open part of East Link / Line 2 between Red­mond and Belle­vue as a stand­alone “starter line” next spring.

On the oth­er side of the ledger, plan­ning for key ST3 projects remains mired in devel­op­ment pur­ga­to­ry. ST3 is short­hand for Sound Tran­sit Sys­tem Expan­sion Phase III, an ambi­tious bal­lot mea­sure approved by vot­ers in 2016. Although NPI’s research has found that vot­ers remain very sup­port­ive of ST3, Sound Tran­sit’s Board has yet to approve final align­ments for many of the projects (such as light rail to West Seat­tle and Bal­lard) which is caus­ing deliv­ery dates to slip.

Whether or not Tim­m’s depar­ture neg­a­tive­ly impacts the next stages of ST3 plan­ning remains to be seen. Hope­ful­ly, it won’t. Sound Tran­sit is los­ing its chief exec­u­tive, but it has many oth­er senior staff, so the agen­cy’s gears will keep turn­ing despite the lead­er­ship tran­si­tion. The board found Timm through a nation­al search and may opt for a sim­i­lar process to find Tim­m’s successor.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 6:47 PM

Categories: Policy Topics, Public Planning

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Wednesday, December 6th, 2023

DeSantis, Haley, Christie, Ramaswany trade insults in fourth 2024 Republican debate

Four Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates accused each oth­er of being “cor­rupt”, of fas­cism, and lying tonight in a cat fight style pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry debate staged at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alaba­ma and tele­vised by NewsNation.

The can­di­dates tore into each oth­er but the big orange cheese — Don­ald Trump— once again was miss­ing. Three treat­ed him gingerly.

Only ex-New Jer­sey Gov­er­nor Chris Christie took on Trump head on.

“This is the prob­lem with my three col­leagues,” said Christie, “they’re afraid to offend. And if you’re afraid to offend Don­ald Trump, then what are you going to do when you sit across from Pres­i­dent Xi?”

View­ers learned bizarre things dur­ing the debate.

Which past pres­i­dent would be a mod­el for your admin­is­tra­tion, they were asked?

Calvin Coolidge, replied Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis of Flori­da. “Silent Cal knew the role of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” he said of the pre-Great Depres­sion president.

Can­di­date Vivek Ramaswany sees “deep state” foot­prints in the Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021, insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol. “Why am I the only per­son on this stage, at least, that Jan­u­ary 6th is now look­ing like an inside job?”

Issues dear to Repub­li­cans were debated.

While abor­tion rights have topped the country’s women’s agen­da, ex-South Car­oli­na Gov­er­nor Nik­ki Haley had a dif­fer­ent take.

“I said bio­log­i­cal boys shouldn’t be play­ing in girls’ sports and I will do every­thing that I can to stop that because this is the women’s issue of our time,” said Haley.

The debate was thrice inter­rupt­ed with com­mer­cial breaks, includ­ing ads for ByteDance-owned Tik­Tok. Toward the end, how­ev­er, Haley declared: “We real­ly do need to ban Tik­Tok once and for all.”

DeSan­tis danced around the Trump question.

He argued that the sev­en­ty-six-year old is too old to reclaim the White House, that Trump did not deliv­er on depor­ta­tions. “He deport­ed less than Barack Oba­ma when he was pres­i­dent,” said the Flori­da gov­er­nor, who recent­ly sparred with Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som in a Fox prime­time special.

Nik­ki Haley has been gain­ing in the polls and was much picked on.

DeSan­tis even tried to link her to Xi’s Chi­na for the sin of spend­ing a year on Boeing’s board of direc­tors. “I love Boe­ing: They build very good air­planes,” she shot back. (Boe­ing has an assem­bly plant in South Car­oli­na, where the 787 Dream­lin­er is put togeth­er with non-union labor.)

But insults were the order of the day. Trump is a “dic­ta­tor,” a “bul­ly” and late­ly “unhinged” said Christie. He described Ramaswamy as “the biggest blowhard in Amer­i­ca”. Ramaswamy called Haley “cor­rupt” and a “fas­cist.”

There were dis­tor­tions, notably from DeSan­tis, who is depict­ing him­self as an adver­sary of Big Tech and has picked high pro­file fights with Disney.

“Nik­ki Haley said the oth­er day there should be no lim­its on legal immi­gra­tion and that cor­po­rate CEO’s should set pol­i­cy on that,” charged DeSantis.

DeSan­tis is the most script­ed of the can­di­dates, often repeat­ing the line that if he’s elect­ed, “There’ll be a new sher­iff in town.”

He came across as about as dour and humor­less as Calvin Coolidge.

As the four rivals were squab­bling on stage, the Trump cam­paign was unveil­ing a new tele­vi­sion spot, and sit­ting on a forty point lead in the polls.

Written by Joel Connelly :: 10:19 PM

Categories: Elections

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Wednesday, December 6th, 2023

Ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said he’d never quit, decides to quit Congress

For­mer Speak­er Kevin McCarthy has decid­ed to quit the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives before the end of his cur­rent term, despite pre­vi­ous­ly hav­ing vowed to nev­er quit. McCarthy revealed his plans today in a guest essay pub­lished in The Wall Street Jour­nal. Like John Boehn­er, he has decid­ed not to stick around and will instead pur­sue oth­er endeav­ors, though he did­n’t say what those are.

“I have decid­ed to depart the House at the end of this year to serve Amer­i­ca in new ways. I know my work is only get­ting start­ed,” McCarthy wrote.

” I nev­er could have imag­ined the jour­ney when I first threw my hat into the ring. I go know­ing I left it all on the field — as always, with a smile on my face,” he added. “And look­ing back, I wouldn’t have had it any oth­er way.”

His essay invoked Ronald Rea­gan’s name, but did not men­tion Don­ald Trump’s.

After the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion, McCarthy threw his lot in with Trump, even mak­ing a pil­grim­age to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring.

But when it count­ed for McCarthy, that feal­ty was not rewarded.

Trump did not inter­vene to ensure that McCarthy would be elect­ed Speak­er on terms that would enable him to stay in pow­er, such as requir­ing a tra­di­tion­al thresh­old for a motion to vacate the chair. And Trump did not lift a fin­ger to help McCarthy after Matt Gaetz brought such a motion around nine months lat­er.

As report­ed by The Wash­ing­ton Post:

Dur­ing a phone call with McCarthy weeks after his his­toric Oct. 3 removal as House speak­er, Trump detailed the rea­sons he had declined to ask Rep. Matt Gaetz (R‑Fla.) and oth­er hard-right law­mak­ers to back off their cam­paign to oust the Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can from his lead­er­ship posi­tion, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the exchange who, like oth­ers, spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­close a pri­vate conversation.

Dur­ing the call, Trump lam­bast­ed McCarthy for not expung­ing his two impeach­ments and not endors­ing him in the 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the conversation.

McCarthy is said to have respond­ed with an expletive.

And although he claims to be leav­ing with a smile on his face, it’s an open secret that McCarthy holds grudges and has been obsessed with try­ing to pun­ish those who were involved in his down­fall, espe­cial­ly Gaetz and Nan­cy Mace:

Since his ouster, he has tak­en a no-holds-barred approach to the peo­ple who facil­i­tat­ed his removal from lead­er­ship, unload­ing on indi­vid­ual law­mak­ers in pub­lic inter­views. McCarthy and his allies have at times used their pow­er and deep cof­fers to weed out Repub­li­can incum­bents who caused headaches in Wash­ing­ton, or were mis­aligned with McCarthy’s interests.

This month, McCarthy said in an inter­view with CNN that Gaetz should face con­se­quences for his actions and pre­dict­ed that Rep. Nan­cy Mace (R‑S.C.), one of the eight law­mak­ers who joined Gaetz, would lose reelec­tion for her “flip-flop­ping.”

Good rid­dance appears to be the preva­lent sen­ti­ment from Democ­rats upon hear­ing the news that McCarthy will be resign­ing from Congress.

“In his short time as speak­er, Kevin McCarthy man­aged to plunge the People’s House into chaos in the name of serv­ing one per­son and one per­son alone: Don­ald Trump. At every turn, Kevin sought to give his pup­pet mas­ter a life­line, even after the hor­rif­ic events of Jan­u­ary 6th, and spent his embar­rass­ing speak­er­ship bend­ing the knee to the most extreme fac­tions of the MAGA base,” said Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee Chair Jaime Harrison.

“This anti­cli­mac­tic end to Kevin’s polit­i­cal career is in line with the rest of his time on Capi­tol Hill – plagued by cow­ardice, incom­pe­tence, and feck­less­ness. Our coun­try will be bet­ter off with­out Kevin in office, but his failed tenure in the House should serve as a stark warn­ing to the coun­try about the future of the [Repub­li­can Par­ty] – no mat­ter how much he kow­towed to the extreme right, no mat­ter how much he kissed the ring, none of it was MAGA enough for the de fac­to leader of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, Don­ald Trump.”

Vacan­cies in the House can­not be filled by appoint­ment, so there will have to be a spe­cial elec­tion to choose a suc­ces­sor to McCarthy.

McCarthy cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents what is con­sid­ered a safe Repub­li­can dis­trict in the Bak­ers­field, Cal­i­for­nia area. Democ­rats will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pick it up, but it will be very tough to win. How­ev­er, even if the seat remains in Repub­li­can hands, the new mem­ber will not have the senior­i­ty and clout in Con­gress that McCarthy did dur­ing his chaot­ic time atop the House Repub­li­can caucus.

McCarthy’s pre­de­ces­sor, fel­low Cal­i­forn­ian Nan­cy Pelosi, has cho­sen to remain in Con­gress and is referred to by oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers as Speak­er Emer­i­tus, a title we’re unlike­ly to hear bestowed upon McCarthy even by fel­low Republicans.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 11:33 AM

Categories: Public Service

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Monday, December 4th, 2023

NPI makes the case for letting cities switch to even year elections on KUOW’s Soundside

Last week, Wash­ing­ton saw the worst turnout for a gen­er­al elec­tion in state his­to­ry, with just 36.41% of reg­is­tered vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year’s local elec­tions. The dread­ful turnout is spurring inter­est in and dis­cus­sion of NPI’s leg­is­la­tion to allow cities and towns to move their reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tions to even years if they want, which would alle­vi­ate (at least for our munic­i­pal­i­ties) prob­lems stem­ming from extreme­ly lack­lus­ter par­tic­i­pa­tion in local elections.

Today, on NPI’s behalf, I joined Pro­fes­sor Mark Smith of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton on KUOW’s Sound­side to dis­cuss the state’s 2023 turnout and our munic­i­pal elec­toral tim­ing reform leg­is­la­tion, SB 5723, spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Javier Valdez, with a com­pan­ion due to be intro­duced by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Darya Fari­var soon. Sound­side is a real­ly cool pod­cast show that seeks to tell sto­ries that con­nect us to our com­mu­ni­ty — local­ly, nation­al­ly and glob­al­ly.

KUOW’s Lib­by Denkmann asked Pro­fes­sor Smith and I to respond to Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs’ com­ments on elec­tion tim­ing reform.

Sec­re­tary Hobbs, who our team enjoys work­ing with on a range of elec­tion secu­ri­ty and vot­ing jus­tice issues, isn’t yet con­vinced that allow­ing cities and towns to switch their reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tions is a good idea. Like King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Rea­gan Dunn, who in 2022 opposed our char­ter amend­ment to move twelve King Coun­ty posi­tions to even years, Hobbs has expressed con­cerns about local issues get­ting buried and bal­lots get­ting longer.

Pro­fes­sor Smith and I were asked about these concerns.

I observed that we have over a half cen­tu­ry of data show­ing that far more Wash­ing­to­ni­ans turn out for even year elec­tions than odd year elec­tions, and it takes a lot less ener­gy to get some­one to vote down­bal­lot in an even year than it does to con­vince some­one to vote at all in an odd-num­bered year.

Pro­fes­sor Smith agreed, not­ing that research has found that the more fre­quent­ly peo­ple are asked to vote, the worse the turnout gets.

Here’s an excerpt from KUOW’s writ­ten sum­ma­ry of the show:

Sec­re­tary of State Hobbs oppos­es the move to even-year elec­tions. He argues that vot­ers won’t have time to learn about local races, and there will be a lot of undervotes.

He also thinks can­di­dates for small­er races won’t be able to break through in grab­bing vot­er atten­tion. He also points out staffing issues for coun­ty elec­tions offices.

But, while there may be a lot going on dur­ing even year elec­tions, Vil­leneuve says that also means increased inter­est in the elec­tions. Accord­ing to can­vassers, just know­ing that the elec­tions are hap­pen­ing is a plus for local races.

Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Pro­fes­sor Mark Smith agrees.

“The more times you ask peo­ple to vote, the few­er times they actu­al­ly do vote because of vot­er fatigue,” Smith says. “So there cer­tain­ly is high­er turnout, when you con­cen­trate more races on the on the same ballot.”

Defend­ers of the sta­tus quo have not pro­duced evi­dence or data jus­ti­fy­ing the claim that local issues and con­cerns get “buried” in even years, but they keep mak­ing the argu­ment. A few years back, schol­ar Michael D. Hart­ney decid­ed to inves­ti­gate whether the argu­ment had any mer­it. He worked with a col­league to ascer­tain if vot­ers who choose to engage are more knowl­edge­able about local issues in odd years ver­sus even years, look­ing at school boards as an example.

They found there was no sig­nif­i­cant difference:

David Hous­ton and I exam­ined whether cit­i­zens who vote in off-cycle school board races are more knowl­edge­able about edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy in their dis­tricts than those cit­i­zens who vote in on-cycle [even year] board con­tests. To do so, we exam­ined on- and off-cycle [odd year] vot­ers’ respons­es to sev­er­al ques­tions embed­ded in the annu­al, nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Edu­ca­tion Next (EN) poll field­ed by Har­vard University’s Pro­gram on Edu­ca­tion Pol­i­cy and Gov­er­nance (PEPG).

Over­all, on- and off-cycle school-board vot­ers demon­strat­ed sim­i­lar lev­els of knowl­edge about school spend­ing and school per­for­mance in their local com­mu­ni­ties, as well as equal famil­iar­i­ty with char­ter school­ing. In sum, we found no evi­dence to sug­gest that mov­ing school-board elec­tions on-cycle would increase vot­er igno­rance of edu­ca­tion issues.

Empha­sis is mine. You can read Hart­ney’s paper, Revi­tal­iz­ing Local
Democ­ra­cy: The Case for On-Cycle Local Elec­tions, at the web­site of the Man­hat­tan Insti­tute. Man­hat­tan is a right wing think tank which pri­mar­i­ly focus­es  on Amer­i­can domes­tic pol­i­cy and urban affairs.

We know from our own research that Wash­ing­ton vot­ers would rather have a longer bal­lot with more items on it every oth­er year then be asked to vote up to four times a year, every year. They’re quite enthu­si­as­tic about sim­pli­fy­ing our sys­tem of elec­tions. While it’s not going to be fea­si­ble to sud­den­ly stop hold­ing all local elec­tions in odd-num­bered years, we do have an oppor­tu­ni­ty in the 2024 ses­sion to give elect­ed lead­ers and vot­ers at a crit­i­cal lev­el of local gov­ern­ment the free­dom to choose their elec­tion tim­ing by pass­ing Sen­ate Bill 5723.

Impor­tant­ly:

  • Our leg­is­la­tion does not require cities and towns to do any­thing, or impose any tim­ing changes on them. The default tim­ing would remain in odd years.
  • There would be min­i­mal impacts on bal­lot length because no vot­er lives in more than one munic­i­pal­i­ty and pret­ty much all of them stag­ger their terms between cycles (e.g. three city coun­cil seats and pos­si­bly a strong may­or elect­ed in one cycle, four coun­cil seats in anoth­er.) At most, under our leg­is­la­tion, an even year bal­lot might see four or so addi­tion­al items on it, from the voter’s point of view.
  • Due to the time involved in switch­ing (a city must decide to switch, then elect its posi­tions one last time in odd years to bridge terms, which would most often be three years in length) audi­tors would have sev­er­al years of lead time to imple­ment changeovers for those cities and towns that choose even years for their reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elections.

It is not unprece­dent­ed for munic­i­pal items to appear on even year bal­lots — cur­rent law already allows cities/towns to sub­mit bal­lot mea­sures to even year bal­lots and fill vacant posi­tions with spe­cial elec­tions… spe­cial elec­tions that we know see much high­er and more diverse turnout than the reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled munic­i­pal elec­tions we’re hold­ing in odd years.

In Wash­ing­ton, we hold reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tions for most coun­ty posi­tions, pub­lic util­i­ty dis­trict posi­tions, and some munic­i­pal judge­ships in even years. Data shows most vot­ers par­tic­i­pate in these down­bal­lot races.

Giv­en the impor­tance of deci­sions made at the munic­i­pal lev­el, it does­n’t make sense that we are lock­ing munic­i­pal­i­ties into low turnout odd years and pro­hibit­ing them from choos­ing their elec­tion tim­ing. Cities else­where in the coun­try have seen great results from switch­ing, and our cities and towns ought to have the free­dom to decide for them­selves what tim­ing they want.

And, as men­tioned, even year elec­tions are extreme­ly pop­u­lar with vot­ers. We have con­tin­u­ous­ly found this across our polling and it’s been con­firmed in actu­al elec­tions. Across the coun­try, every sin­gle mea­sure con­sid­ered by vot­ers to adopt even year elec­tions passed, includ­ing our char­ter amend­ment in King Coun­ty, which 69%+ of vot­ers said yes to. Even year elec­tions are a reform that the peo­ple want, and it’s impor­tant that we lis­ten to them.

You can lis­ten to the dis­cus­sion with Sec­re­tary Hobbs, Pro­fes­sor Smith, and I on KUOW’s web­site, or using your favorite pod­cast play­er.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 4:30 PM

Categories: Elections

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Sunday, December 3rd, 2023

Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (November 27th-Dec. 1st)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Mem­bers of Con­gress vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Decem­ber 1st, 2023.

Chamber of the United States House of Representatives

The House cham­ber (U.S. Con­gress photo)

RELEASE OF HOSTAGES HELD BY HAMAS: The House on Novem­ber 28th passed a res­o­lu­tion (H. Res. 793), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Haley M. Stevens, D‑Michigan, call­ing for Hamas to imme­di­ate­ly release the hostages it took in its attack on Israel in Octo­ber. Stevens said: “We must con­demn the ter­ror­ists who seek to attack the Jew­ish state. They have bru­tal­ly killed rel­a­tives, neigh­bors, and fel­low Israelis. We must con­tin­ue to push to return the remain­ing hostages.”

The vote was unan­i­mous with 414 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

SOLIDARITY WITH ISRAEL: The House on Novem­ber 28th passed a res­o­lu­tion (H. Res. 888), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Lawler, R‑New York., to reaf­firm Israel’s right to exist, con­demn Hamas’s attack on Israel, and deem the denial of Israel’s right to exist a form of anti-Semitism.

Lawler said: “Con­gress must nev­er stop push­ing back against Israel’s oppo­nents, and we must reject biased attempts to destroy our great­est ally.”

The vote was 412 yeas to 1 nay, with 1 vot­ing present.

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

SANCTIONS AGAINST FIRMS HELPING FACILITATE IRANIAN ACCESS TO FUNDS: The House on Novem­ber 30th passed the No Funds for Iran­ian Ter­ror­ism Act (H.R. 5961), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michael T. McCaul, R‑Texas, to require sanc­tions against for­eign finan­cial firms that attempt to help Iran trans­fer $6 bil­lion that had been held in restrict­ed accounts in South Korea but were de-restrict­ed to facil­i­tate the release of five U.S. cit­i­zens detained in Iran.

McCaul said: “Block­ing mon­ey to Iran is the most con­se­quen­tial thing we can do here in this Con­gress to stop Iran’s financ­ing of ter­ror­ism to Hamas and oth­er prox­ies to help keep our troops safe who are now under fire from Iran-backed mili­tias.” An oppo­nent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Gre­go­ry Meeks, D‑N.Y., said the bill would remove U.S. lever­age against Iran by break­ing a nego­ti­at­ed agree­ment under which the $6 bil­lion could only be used in Iran for “approved human­i­tar­i­an pur­chas­es to acquire med­i­cine, med­ical equip­ment, agri­cul­tur­al goods, and food.”

The vote was 307 yeas to 119 nays, with 1 vot­ing present.

The State of Idaho

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

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Yea (4): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Val Hoyle and Andrea Sali­nas; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Lori Chavez-DeRe­mer and Cliff Bentz

Vot­ing Nay (2): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci and Earl Blumenauer

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Yea (7): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Rick Larsen, Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, Derek Kilmer, Kim Schri­er, and Mar­i­lyn Strick­land; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Vot­ing Nay (3): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Prami­la Jaya­pal, and Adam Smith

Cas­ca­dia total: 13 yea votes, 5 nay votes

CRITICIZING BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FOR INSUFFICIENT DENUNCIATIONS OF HOUTHIS: The House on Novem­ber 30th passed an amend­ment spon­sored by Rep. Andrew Ogles, R‑Tenn., to the No Funds for Iran­ian Ter­ror­ism Act (H.R. 5961), to crit­i­cize the Biden admin­is­tra­tion for fail­ing to unequiv­o­cal­ly con­demn the Houthi group in Yemen, which is sup­port­ed by Iran.

Ogles cit­ed attacks against U.S. cit­i­zens and mil­i­tary ships by the Houthis, and said the lack of con­dem­na­tion “is to the detri­ment of our nation­al security.”

An oppo­nent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Gre­go­ry Meeks, D‑New York, said that in fact the admin­is­tra­tion “has repeat­ed­ly called out the vio­lence of Houthi mil­i­tants that they have per­pet­u­at­ed against civil­ians, includ­ing recent mis­sile launch­es toward Israel.” The vote, was 226 yeas to 199 nays, with 1 vot­ing present.

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

REPUBLICAN BILL TO PUNISH IMMIGRANTS: The House on Novem­ber 30th passed the Pro­tect­ing our Com­mu­ni­ties from Fail­ure to Secure the Bor­der Act (H.R. 5283), spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nicole Mallio­takis, R‑New York, to bar the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from using var­i­ous fed­er­al lands to house for­eign nation­als not autho­rized to be in the U.S.

Mallio­takis said hous­ing immi­grants on fed­er­al lands was not fair to peo­ple who are going through the legal pro­ce­dures for mov­ing to the U.S., and she cit­ed the bur­den that has been placed on New York City by a recent agree­ment to house at least 2,000 unau­tho­rized migrants at a fed­er­al facil­i­ty in Brooklyn.

A bill oppo­nent, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dan Gold­man, D‑New York, called it “anoth­er ploy by the Repub­li­cans to score polit­i­cal points with­out actu­al­ly address­ing the des­per­ate­ly need­ed reforms to our immi­gra­tion system.”

The vote, on Nov. 30, was 224 yeas to 203 nays, with 1 vot­ing present.

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

ADDITIONAL VOTES BY VOICE: Along with roll call votes this week, the House passed these mea­sures by voice vote:

  • a bill (H.R. 4666), to require the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion to sub­mit a quar­ter­ly report on fraud relat­ing to cer­tain COVID-19 loans;
  • the Return­ing Erro­neous COVID Loans Address­ing Ille­gal and Mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed Tax­pay­er Funds Act (H.R. 4667), to require the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion to issue guid­ance and rules for lenders on han­dling amounts of Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Loans returned by borrowers;
  • the Small Busi­ness Con­tract­ing Trans­paren­cy Act (H.R. 4670), to require report­ing on addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion with respect to small busi­ness con­cerns owned and con­trolled by women, qual­i­fied HUB­Zone small busi­ness con­cerns, and small busi­ness con­cerns owned and con­trolled by veterans;
  • and a bill (H.R. 5427), to pro­hib­it indi­vid­u­als con­vict­ed of defraud­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from receiv­ing any assis­tance from the Small Busi­ness Administration.

In the United States Senate

Chamber of the United States Senate

The Sen­ate cham­ber (U.S. Con­gress photo)

JEFFREY M. BRYAN, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on Novem­ber 28th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Jef­frey M. Bryan to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for Min­neso­ta. For the past decade, Bryan has been a dis­trict court and appeals court judge in Min­neso­ta; pre­vi­ous­ly, he was a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in the state. A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Amy Klobuchar, D‑Minnesota, said of Bryan: “Through his devo­tion to jus­tice and the rule of law, he has earned the respect and sup­port of judges, attor­neys, and law enforce­ment offi­cials across the polit­i­cal spec­trum.” The vote was 49 yeas to 46 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

MARGARET M. GARNETT, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on Novem­ber 28th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Mar­garet M. Gar­nett to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York.

Over the past two decades, Gar­nett has var­i­ous­ly been a pri­vate prac­tice lawyer, pros­e­cu­tor in the U.S. Attor­ney’s Office for the South­ern Dis­trict, and lawyer for the New York and New York City gov­ern­ments. A sup­port­er, Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer, D‑New York, called Gar­nett not just “bril­liant but wise, not just deter­mined but kind, not just an out­stand­ing lawyer but a true friend and defend­er of our sys­tem” of jus­tice. The vote was 49 yeas to 46 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

CONTINUING DEBATE ON LABOR APPOINTEE: The Sen­ate on Novem­ber 28th reject­ed a clo­ture motion to end debate on the nom­i­na­tion of Jose Javier Rodriguez to be the Labor Depart­men­t’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Employ­ment and Train­ing. Rodriguez is a pri­vate prac­tice lawyer in Mia­mi, spe­cial­iz­ing in employ­ment law; he was, for eight years, a mem­ber of the Flori­da state leg­is­la­ture. The vote was 44 yeas to 51 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

MICAH SMITH, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on Novem­ber 29th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Mic­ah Smith to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for Hawaii. Since 2012, Smith has been a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in U.S. Attor­ney’s Offices in first New York and then Hawaii.

The vote was 57 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

JAMEL SEMPER, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on Novem­ber 29th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Jamel Sem­per to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for New Jer­sey. A state pros­e­cu­tor for most of the 2010s, Sem­per has, since 2018, been a pros­e­cu­tor in the U.S. Attor­ney’s Office for New Jer­sey. A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Robert Menen­dez, D‑New Jer­sey, said: “Sem­per has demon­strat­ed unflinch­ing fideli­ty to the rule of law. Time and time again, Mr. Sem­per has kept New Jer­seyans safe, while also build­ing bridges between res­i­dents and those who have sworn an oath to pro­tect them.” The vote was 54 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

SHANLYN PARK, U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: The Sen­ate on Novem­ber 30th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Shan­lyn Park to be a judge on the U.S. Dis­trict Court for Hawaii. Park has been a cir­cuit court judge in Hawai­i’s gov­ern­ment since 2021; pre­vi­ous­ly, she had been a pri­vate prac­tice lawyer, and was a fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er in the state for two decades. A sup­port­er, Sen­a­tor Mazie Hirono, D‑Hawaii, said: “As a judge, she has earned high marks for her even-hand­ed approach and well-rea­soned, fair deci­sions.” The vote was 53 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

ADDITIONAL VOTES BY VOICE: The Sen­ate also con­firmed a set of senior offi­cer nom­i­na­tions in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force.

Key votes ahead

The House will take up sev­er­al bills, includ­ing the Choice in Auto­mo­bile Retail Sales Act of 2023 and the DETERRENT Act.

House Repub­li­cans are also plan­ning a vote on a res­o­lu­tion that would repeal the income-dri­ven repay­ment plan for new and exist­ing stu­dent loan bor­row­ers cre­at­ed by the final rule pub­lished by the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion on July 10th, 2023, and pro­hib­it the depart­ment from cre­at­ing a sim­i­lar plan in the future.

The Sen­ate will con­sid­er the nom­i­na­tion of Irma Car­ril­lo Ramirez, of Texas, to be a Unit­ed States Cir­cuit Judge for the Fifth Cir­cuit (which encom­pass­es Texas, Louisiana, and Mis­sis­sip­pi.) The Sen­ate may also con­sid­er the nom­i­na­tion of Loren L. AliKhan to be a Unit­ed States Dis­trict Judge for the Dis­trict of Columbia.

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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Saturday, December 2nd, 2023

Loren Culp backs Semi Bird for governor, calls frontrunner Dave Reichert “a looney liberal”

Grifter and for­mer guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Loren Culp is urg­ing his admir­ers and fol­low­ers to take a pass on fel­low Repub­li­can Dave Reichert’s 2024 cam­paign for gov­er­nor and instead go all in on Semi Bird, the recent­ly oust­ed Rich­land school board mem­ber who was recalled by vot­ers for bla­tant­ly flout­ing state law.

Culp, who used to be employed by Repub­lic as a police­man, denounced Reichert today in a post on Twit­ter, writ­ing: “DNA caught the green riv­er killer, don’t believe the hype. Reichert vot­ed like a looney lib­er­al in Con­gress. Sup­port a real hero for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton. Here are just some of his cre­den­tials: Bronze Star for Val­or, Pur­ple Heart, Mer­i­to­ri­ous Ser­vice Medal, Army Com­men­da­tion Medal (4).”

Respons­es to Culp’s post were mixed.

“Yeah — I don’t under­stand the hype sur­round­ing Reichert except he is a famil­iar name. We don’t anoth­er RINO, we need change and that’ll only hap­pen with [Bird],” said a Culp fol­low­er call­ing them­selves the “Ever­green Constitutionalist”.

“Yep. Reichert even went to Ridge­ways [sic] house and talked to him when he had a vic­tim in the house,” said a Culp sup­port­er with the han­dle Chopper2525. “He walked away. Ridge­way was the #1 sus­pect for years and Reichert could­n’t touch him. Only thru DNA was Ridg­way caught.”

Anoth­er Twit­ter user said: “Semi Bird would be a good gov­er­nor, but putting up a strong Repub­li­can in a bright blue state is a los­ing strat­e­gy. Reichart [sic] is the only Repub­li­can who has a chance.”

“Culp wants repub­li­cans to nom­i­nate some­one who will lose by an even big­ger mar­gin than he did,” said a user call­ing them­selves the Ever­green Republican.

Many pro­gres­sives agree that Reichert’s claim to fame — I’m the guy who caught the Green Riv­er Killer — is non­sense. Michael Hood’s excel­lent piece on the sub­ject, avail­able from the blath­er­Watch archives, is worth read­ing.

This isn’t the first time Culp has gone after Reichert.

In a gripe video post­ed to YouTube sev­er­al months ago, Culp called Reichert “the estab­lish­men­t’s pick” and berat­ed him and oth­er “RINOs” — mean­ing Repub­li­cans in Name Only – as unprin­ci­pled and corrupt.

“He is for more gov­ern­ment intru­sion into our lives,” Culp says in the video.

“Reichert even praised Jay Inslee on his han­dling of the pan­dem­ic in an inter­view… which, to me, in and of itself, is absolute­ly pathet­ic. Don’t expect Dave Reichert to stand up for you in the future. He won’t, because he’s weak-mind­ed. He flails in the wind like a loose kite,” Culp adds.

Reichert and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son are the fron­trun­ners in next year’s guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test, accord­ing to NPI’s research. When pit­ted against Bird and Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let in a sur­vey last month, 31% of respon­dents picked Reichert and 31% picked Fer­gu­son. Only 10% said they would vote for Bird, and a mere 5% said they would vote for Mullet.

In a sub­se­quent head-to-head ques­tion, Reichert edged Fer­gu­son, 46% to 44%.

Among Repub­li­can vot­ers, our polling finds Reichert with a more than 2‑to‑1 advan­tage over Bird. Bird’s sup­port was unchanged from our last poll in the spring­time, when he also received 10%. He clear­ly has a few sup­port­ers out there, but our data sug­gests he’s nowhere close to Reichert.

It’s evi­dent from Culp’s com­ments that he sees his views as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Repub­li­can elec­torate in Wash­ing­ton. In anoth­er sec­tion of his gripe video, Culp brags about how he received more votes than Rob McKen­na and Bill Bryant, Jay Inslee’s 2012 and 2016 Repub­li­can oppo­nents. How­ev­er, any Repub­li­can could have accom­plished that because the uni­verse of reg­is­tered vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton has been increas­ing with each pres­i­den­tial cycle.

There were 3,904,959 reg­is­tered vot­ers in the 2012 elec­tion, 4,270,270 reg­is­tered vot­ers in the 2016 elec­tion, and 4,892,871 reg­is­tered vot­ers in the 2020 election.

Since it’s not pos­si­ble to do an apples-to-apples com­par­i­son with absolute num­bers of vot­ers from dif­fer­ent cycles, let’s con­sid­er the per­cent­ages: Rob McKen­na got 48.46% of the vote when he ran, Bill Bryant got 45.61%, and Loren Culp got 43.12%. Culp’s per­for­mance in 2020 was objec­tive­ly worse than either Bryant or McKen­na; he was Gov­er­nor Inslee’s weak­est opponent.

The only rea­son Culp made it to the gen­er­al elec­tion with Inslee is because Repub­li­cans failed to recruit a strong can­di­date for gov­er­nor in 2020. Culp’s Repub­li­can com­peti­tors includ­ed Tim Eyman, Joshua Freed, and Raul Gar­cia, none of whom had the name recog­ni­tion or stature of some­one like Reichert, McKen­na, or even Bryant. The right wing elec­torate was sub­stan­tial­ly split, and Culp earned a spot on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot with a mere 17.41% of the Top Two vote.

Even if Semi Bird starts get­ting more trac­tion and winds up per­form­ing as well as Culp did in the elim­i­na­tion round, he’d still prob­a­bly lose to Reichert next sum­mer. To eclipse Reichert, Bird would have to sig­nif­i­cant­ly broad­en his base of vot­ers. But that’s going to be excep­tion­al­ly hard to do giv­en his check­ered his­to­ry, cam­paign cash­flow and com­pli­ance dif­fi­cul­ties, and extreme, ultra MAGA views.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 8:30 PM

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Saturday, December 2nd, 2023

Washington defies the pundits again with thrilling Pac-12 title victory over Oregon

Last night, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Huskies stayed unde­feat­ed and won the final grid­iron cham­pi­onship game of the Pac-12 era. In pre­vail­ing over the Ore­gon Ducks, the Huskies defied the world of sports pun­dit­ry, which had reached the erro­neous con­sen­sus that the Ducks were the team to beat.

“Ten points [the point spread Ore­gon was favored by] was ridicu­lous,” said Wash­ing­ton’s Ede­fuan Ulo­fos­hio after the game. “We just kept our heads down and worked. We knew how good we were. There was nev­er a doubt. Even when we were los­ing, there was nev­er a doubt we were going to come back and win.”

“There has to be a deep belief with­in your team that you can win,” Huskies head coach Kalen DeBoer told The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Jer­ry Brew­er ahead of the game. “A lot of peo­ple will say, ‘Oh, we’re going to go dom­i­nate,’ and then they get beat by 30. What hap­pened to teams with that mind-set? Well, is there real­ly a deep belief that you have? I know that the staff I have around me and the amaz­ing play­ers have that because I know who they are, their tal­ent and their character.”

We don’t cov­er sports much here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, but there’s a les­son in Wash­ing­ton’s vic­to­ry that is applic­a­ble to pol­i­tics as well as oth­er fields like busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy: pre­dic­tions are easy to make and easy to get wrong.

Wash­ing­ton’s thrilling win in Las Vegas was a result that a lot of com­men­ta­tors just could­n’t see com­ing. Quite a few sports­writ­ers and pun­dits who offered a pre­dic­tion for the game were wrong, as we’ll see in a moment. Some pun­dits thought Ore­gon would win by a lot, while oth­ers thought it would be closer.

But very few pre­dict­ed a Wash­ing­ton vic­to­ry, or even hedged their bets. They assigned lit­tle val­ue or no val­ue to Wash­ing­ton’s grit and resourcefulness.

Jon Wilner, who is per­haps the most pro­lif­ic, wide­ly read, and knowl­edge­able Pac-12 sports­writer we have, was heav­i­ly invest­ed in an Ore­gon vic­to­ry. Wilner ranked Ore­gon above Wash­ing­ton in his most recent pow­er rank­ings, even though Wash­ing­ton beat Ore­gon and every oth­er team it played dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son, and then argued that the Ducks would take home the title:

Wash­ing­ton vs. Oregon
Kick­off: 5 p.m. on ABC
Line: Ore­gon ‑9.5 (total: 66.5)

The case for Wash­ing­ton is a three-point head-to-head vic­to­ry six weeks ago. The case for Ore­gon is (almost) every­thing else.

Wilner did make space for fac­tors favor­ing the Huskies in his analy­sis, con­ced­ing: “The Huskies have played close games week upon week and are steeled to the pres­sure of exe­cut­ing under make-or-break cir­cum­stances. No team in the coun­try has been more resource­ful. […] If Fri­day night’s affair is tight in the fourth quar­ter, UW will have a deep well of expe­ri­ence upon which to draw — includ­ing two har­row­ing wins over Ore­gon in the past 55 weeks.”

“That can­not be overlooked.”

Nev­er­the­less, Wilner picked the Ducks to win, and he was wrong.

And he was far from the only one.

Here’s Michael Brig­gs:

Ore­gon’s defense will be the dif­fer­ence in this game, as it will pres­sure Penix (32 sacks) often and make it chal­leng­ing for the Huskies to move the chains (25th in oppo­nent third-down con­ver­sion per­cent­age). It has been espe­cial­ly stout against the run, which should make UW too one-dimensional.

Nix will pick apart Wash­ing­ton’s 124th-ranked pass defense, cement­ing his Heis­man lega­cy. This is Ore­gon’s game to win, and it will get the job done with a con­vinc­ing revenge victory.

Pre­dic­tion: Ore­gon ‑9.5

Wrong. In real­i­ty, Wash­ing­ton was­n’t too one-dimen­sion­al, the game was not Ore­gon’s to win, and it did not get the job done. The Ducks did not put togeth­er a “con­vinc­ing revenge vic­to­ry.” As coach Dan Lan­ning said repeat­ed­ly in his postgame remarks, Ore­gon was­n’t able to finish.

Here’s Joe Tansey for Bleach­er Report:

Ore­gon 34, Wash­ing­ton 27

Ore­gon played the more con­sis­tent foot­ball since the first meet­ing with Washington.

The Ducks should be favored in Las Vegas despite being fur­ther down the rank­ings than the Huskies.

Wash­ing­ton should enter Alle­giant Sta­di­um in a CFB Play­off posi­tion, one that Ore­gon can take with a victory.

Ore­gon’s defense can be trust­ed more to get stops against Penix, and this time around, it needs to make sure there is a larg­er gap in the fourth quar­ter so that the Huskies can’t pro­duce more fourth-quar­ter heroics.

Wrong. It was actu­al­ly the Huskies who went into the final min­utes with a lead, rather than the Ducks. When time expired, it was the Huskies who had made sure the Ducks could­n’t pro­duce any last sec­ond hero­ics, not the oth­er way around.

ESPN amus­ing­ly assessed Ore­gon as hav­ing a 75.8% chance of winning:

ESP­N’s Foot­ball Pow­er Index (FPI) puts Ore­gon as the third-best team in the coun­try at a 25.6 rat­ing. Wash­ing­ton, at a 16.8, is 13th in the FBS and sec­ond in the Pac-12. That rat­ing dif­fer­ence is big­ger than the gap from Wash­ing­ton in sec­ond to Utah in sixth when it comes to Pac-12 teams. Unlike their first matchup, the two teams will play at a neu­tral site, giv­ing Ore­gon the edge here.

It did­n’t mat­ter that the teams were play­ing at a neu­tral site: Wash­ing­ton still won. Kalen DeBoer’s tal­ent­ed and ener­getic squad beat Ore­gon at Autzen last year, beat Ore­gon at home on Mont­lake this year, and now it has beat­en Ore­gon at a neu­tral site. It seems Wash­ing­ton’s actu­al recent per­for­mance against Ore­gon both away and at home just was­n’t a fac­tor in ESP­N’s assessment.

Here’s Rob Miech:

In mid-Octo­ber, the game between these two had six lead changes, the Huskies tak­ing the final one with 98 ticks left. They com­bined for 956 total yards of offense, there was a sin­gle turnover and penal­ties were low. In a grand neu­tral site, this rematch is poet­ic, the vic­tor like­ly advanc­ing to the nation­al play­offs. A plus for the Ducks is their 9–2‑1 ATS record, a mea­sure of dom­i­nance; UW is 5–6‑1. Final­ly, Ore­gon is 15–4 in the past 19 between these two, with the Ducks’ aver­age win­ning mar­gin being a sliv­er more than 15 points.

Pick: Ore­gon

This pre­dic­tion refresh­ing­ly relied more on data and the his­tor­i­cal record than some of the oth­er just excerpt­ed. How­ev­er, the pick was still wrong.

Here’s Ayr­ton Ost­ly of USA Today Sports:

Ore­gon 35, Wash­ing­ton 28

The first matchup between these two teams was one of the best games of the 2023 col­lege foot­ball sea­son. Ore­gon’s improved since that close loss while Wash­ing­ton’s eked out mul­ti­ple close wins. In a game of high-pow­ered offens­es, the Ducks’ defense makes the dif­fer­ence at a neu­tral site.

Wrong. Once again, the words “neu­tral site” were used to jus­ti­fy pick­ing the Ducks. It clear­ly mat­tered not to the Huskies that the game was in Las Vegas.

You might think that at least The Seat­tle Times would have made the case for the unde­feat­ed Huskies, but nope, they also went with the pack and picked Oregon:

Vorel’s pre­dic­tion

For eight con­sec­u­tive weeks, Wash­ing­ton has won by 10 points or few­er — con­tin­u­ous­ly, con­sis­tent­ly find­ing a way. But it hasn’t always been pret­ty, with the Huskies’ offense and defense trad­ing spurts of frus­trat­ing incon­sis­ten­cy. Mean­while, Ore­gon has erupt­ed since falling to the Huskies on Oct. 14, bom­bard­ing its last six oppo­nents by an aver­age of 26 points. At this point, the Ducks are sim­ply play­ing bet­ter. And while Penix and Odun­ze will make their plays, and the Huskies will rise to the chal­lenge, Oregon’s offense will sus­tain dri­ves and grad­u­al­ly enforce their will. UW coach Kalen DeBoer has repeat­ed­ly said his team plays its best under the bright lights … and he’s right. But against an Ore­gon unit fir­ing on all cylin­ders, the Huskies’ best won’t quite cut it. UW will suf­fer its first defeat of the sea­son, like­ly falling out of the Col­lege Foot­ball Play­off (and into the Fies­ta Bowl).

Final score: Ducks 37, Huskies 34

Wrong. The Huskies’ best effort did cut it. They’re the Pac-12 cham­pi­ons and they are head­ed to the Col­lege Foot­ball Play­off. Vorel is sure­ly hap­py to be wrong, but why’d he make this pre­dic­tion to begin with? He cov­ers the Huskies for Wash­ing­ton’s news­pa­per of record, so he knows them bet­ter than any­body and has seen them pre­vail again and again when many com­men­ta­tors thought they would­n’t. Yet he still did­n’t envi­sion them win­ning this game.

Because pre­dic­tions are so easy to make and so easy to get wrong, as I wrote above, NPI refus­es to offer any. We will dis­cuss prob­a­bil­i­ties based on the avail­able data, but only with the stat­ed caveat that we don’t know the future. Unlike oth­ers, we do not con­sid­er pre­dic­tions to be harm­less fun because they can neg­a­tive­ly influ­ence and dom­i­nate pub­lic dis­course. We believe in being open-mind­ed and being will­ing to con­sid­er dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties and scenarios.

We think pun­dits of all sorts would ben­e­fit from adopt­ing such a mindset.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 4:12 PM

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Friday, December 1st, 2023

Henry Kissinger: 1923–2023

Hen­ry Kissinger was the Met­ter­nich of Amer­i­ca, devi­ous and con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, the archi­tect of the Unit­ed States’ détente with Chi­na, a back­stage deal­er with the Sovi­et Union on the SALT I strate­gic arms treaty, and nego­tia­tor of a peace agree­ment with Viet­nam that he would pri­vate­ly scorn.

Kissinger lived to be 100. He died this week, still writ­ing and try­ing to live down mem­os and remarks unveiled while he was still liv­ing – if not accountable.

He has been con­front­ed with such state­ments as say­ing of the South Viet­namese: “If they are lucky, they can hold out for a year and a half.”

An accu­rate pre­dic­tion. When the agree­ment with North Viet­nam was signed, Kissinger described it as “peace with honor.”

The for­mer Sec­re­tary of State, in the Nixon and Ford admin­is­tra­tions, was fet­ed in Chi­na as recent­ly as July and pho­tographed meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Xi.

Xi has recent­ly been fac­ing an eco­nom­ic down­town and is seek­ing to main­tain busi­ness ties with the Unit­ed States. Last month in Cal­i­for­nia, he held a four-hour dis­cus­sion with Pres­i­dent Biden and din­ners with U.S. busi­ness leaders.

It was Kissinger, in July of 1971, who took a secret trip to Bei­jing to clear a path for Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon’s trip the fol­low­ing February.

The U.S. pres­i­dent, a noto­ri­ous red-baiter, was pho­tographed in inti­mate con­ver­sa­tion with Mao Zedong, walk­ing in the For­bid­den City, and attend­ing an opera per­for­mance of “Red Detach­ment of Women.”

Kissinger was a Ger­man Jew­ish refuge from Nazi Ger­many, arriv­ing on our shores at the age of fif­teen. He would rise to become, for a time, the sec­ond most impor­tant per­son in the Unit­ed States government.

He would score diplo­mat­ic break­throughs while work­ing with a pres­i­dent noto­ri­ous for his anti­se­mit­ic remarks.

Leslie Gelb, a future New York Times colum­nist, knew Kissinger from days on the Har­vard fac­ul­ty and described him as “devi­ous with his peers, dom­i­neer­ing with his sub­or­di­nates and obse­quious to his superiors.”

It was so in his diplo­mat­ic maneu­vers. Kissinger came to fame with his 1957 book, “Nuclear Weapons and For­eign Pol­i­cy,” which sug­gest­ed that a tac­ti­cal nuclear strike could be con­tained. He briefly advised Pres­i­dent Kennedy in the ear­ly 1960s. The Har­vard pro­fes­sor found an endur­ing patron in New York Gov­er­nor (and future vice pres­i­dent) Nel­son Rock­e­feller. He was, to his sur­prise, asked by Pres­i­dent-elect Nixon to assume the role of nation­al secu­ri­ty adviser.

He would advise every suc­ceed­ing pres­i­dent. After meet­ing with Don­ald Trump, Kissinger observed: “He’s not the first pres­i­dent I’ve advised who either didn’t under­stand­ing what I was say­ing or didn’t want to.” The Kissinger ego was dis­played repeat­ed­ly over the years. Once, while speak­ing to diplo­mats in France, he praised the gath­er­ing as the great­est gath­er­ing of wis­dom since he looked at his reflec­tion while vis­it­ing the Hall of Mir­rors at Versailles.

Pres­i­dent Nixon kept pow­er close to the vest. He cut Sec­re­tary of State William Rogers out of the pic­ture and dealt almost exclu­sive­ly with Kissinger. Even­tu­al­ly, Dr. K would com­bine the posts of nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er and Sec­re­tary of State. He would hang onto both dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford.

Trans­fixed with pow­er, Kissinger had lit­tle regard for small coun­tries or peo­ple per­ceived as get­ting in the way. Kissinger would-be a co-recip­i­ent (along with Lee Duc Tho of North Viet­nam) of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet, this is the same man who urged the car­pet bomb­ing of Cam­bo­dia and Laos, stag­ing areas for North Vietnam’s con­quest of South Viet­nam – we were to bomb “any­thing that flies and moves any­where,” Kissinger said pri­vate­ly — and a man who described U.S. sol­diers as “dumb stu­pid ani­mals to be used.”

When Pak­istani forces slaugh­tered 300,000 peo­ple in what is today Bangladesh but used to be called East Pak­istan, the Unit­ed States worked back­stage to sup­port Pak­istan. Pres­i­dent Yahya Khan had served as inter­me­di­ary and facil­i­ta­tor of the secret 1971 trip to Chi­na. East Pak­istan had had the nerve, in an elec­tion, to elect an Ben­gali government.

The U.S. stood by while Indone­sia invad­ed East Tim­or and slaugh­tered peo­ple. It had elect­ed a left­ist gov­ern­ment which the Unit­ed States dis­ap­proved. The small island was treat­ed as a pawn in great pow­er relations.

Of most inter­est, the Unit­ed States encour­aged, and the CIA played facil­i­ta­tor, in the 1973 coup that top­pled and assas­si­nat­ed Chile’s Marx­ist Pres­i­dent Sal­vador Allende. The U.S. could not per­mit anoth­er per­ceived Sovi­et ally in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. The result was a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry of mil­i­tary dictatorship.

Kissinger was quot­ed after­ward say­ing the Chilean pres­i­den­cy was too impor­tant a mat­ter to be decid­ed by the Chilean peo­ple. Glob­al pow­er was what mat­tered. Ear­ly in the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion, Kissinger declared (in pri­vate): “I can’t believe any fourth-rate pow­er like North Viet­nam doesn’t have a break­ing point.”

The man was even will­ing to stomp on his own ori­gins. Nego­ti­a­tions with the Sovi­et Union could not, would not, be dis­rupt­ed by appeals from Sovi­et Jews wish­ing to immi­grate to Israel. “And if they put Jews into gas cham­bers in the Sovi­et Union, it is not an Amer­i­can con­cern. Maybe a human­i­tar­i­an con­cern.” The remark was described as “tru­ly chill­ing” by the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Committee.

Such state­ments get attrib­uted to Kissinger’s near-con­sis­tent pan­der­ing to Nixon. The thir­ty-sev­enth pres­i­dent would seek him out to pray in the White House on the eve of his res­ig­na­tion, an episode exposed in the Wood­ward-Bern­stein book “The Final Days.” Kissinger would lat­er reflect of Nixon, what the man could have done “had he been loved.”

Kissinger lived more than four decades after Ford’s defeat in the 1976 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He hung up his shin­gle as Hen­ry Kissinger Asso­ciates and con­sol­i­dat­ed with the high and mighty. Stu­dent protests made cam­pus appear­ances dan­ger­ous. But big busi­ness want­ed to hear from the big dog of the 1970s. Dis­ney con­sult­ed Kissinger when it want­ed to locate a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar theme park in China.

Hen­ry Kissinger was a for­mi­da­ble boss. He hired the best and the bright­est to work at the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, but then ordered the FBI to spy on them. He was infu­ri­at­ed at such leaks as the Pen­ta­gon Papers, revealed by Daniel Ells­berg, which detailed America’s march to fol­ly in Vietnam.

If any leaks came out of the NSC, they would come “from me,” he told aides.

The Nixon-Kissinger col­lab­o­ra­tion brought home some for­eign pol­i­cy tri­umphs. The open­ing to Chi­na brought coop­er­a­tion and mas­sive trade between the two coun­tries, but threats of con­fronta­tion now that Chi­na has become the world’s sec­ond-rank­ing super­pow­er. The Viet­nam War came to an end after killing 58,000 Amer­i­cans and an esti­mat­ed three mil­lion Vietnamese.

The long­stand­ing U.S. con­fronta­tion with the Sovi­et Union was down­sized until the “evil empire” stag­gered and fell at the end of the 1980s.

Still, Kissinger tram­pled peo­ple and nations while big pow­ers maneu­vered for glob­al influ­ence. The death toll was exceed­ing­ly high and often felt hard­est in such places as East Tim­or, East Pak­istan and Chile, far from North Amer­i­can and Euro­pean cap­i­tals. When pressed, Kissinger would speak of a world in which Amer­i­can was con­front­ed with unsa­vory char­ac­ters and thank­less choices.

A New York Times obit­u­ary car­ries this quote: “The ille­gal we do imme­di­ate­ly. The uncon­sti­tu­tion­al takes a lit­tle longer.”

So did the Viet­nam War, at what human cost? Inter­viewed by The Atlantic in 2016, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma reflect­ed: “We dropped more ordi­nance on Cam­bo­dia and Laos than on Europe in World War II And yet, ulti­mate­ly, Nixon with­drew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind was chaos, slaugh­ter and author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments that final­ly, over time, have emerged from that hell.”

“In what way did that strat­e­gy pro­mote our inter­ests?” Oba­ma asked.

Written by Joel Connelly :: 7:20 PM

Categories: Appreciations & Remembrances

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Friday, December 1st, 2023

United States House of Representatives finally expels fraudster George Santos

By a vote of 311–114, the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives today vot­ed to expel Repub­li­can George San­tos, a con artist and fraud­ster who was elect­ed to the House a lit­tle over a year ago from New York’s 3rd Dis­trict. San­tos is just the sixth per­son to be forcibly removed from the House in its cen­turies-long existence.

Near­ly all Democ­rats and a good num­ber of Repub­li­cans vot­ed to get rid of San­tos, mak­ing his expul­sion pos­si­ble. Sev­er­al pre­vi­ous expul­sion attempts had failed, but this one came in the wake of a blis­ter­ing report from the House Ethics Com­mit­tee which doc­u­ment­ed crimes by San­tos. (San­tos has also been crim­i­nal­ly charged by the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and claims the charges are baseless.)

“In May, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors charged Mr. San­tos on 13 felony counts large­ly tied to finan­cial fraud,” The New York Times report­ed. “That indict­ment focused on three schemes iden­ti­fied by pros­e­cu­tors; Mr. San­tos plead­ed not guilty. In Octo­ber, pros­e­cu­tors accused Mr. San­tos of new crim­i­nal schemes relat­ed to his 2022 cam­paign; he plead­ed not guilty again. He has also repeat­ed­ly denied any crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, includ­ing after the House Ethics report’s release.”

San­tos did­n’t stick around to find out his fate, choos­ing to leave instead.

“As unof­fi­cial­ly already no longer a mem­ber of Con­gress, I no longer have to answer a sin­gle ques­tion. That is the one thing that I’m going to take for­ev­er,” San­tos huffed. (He does have a Fifth Amend­ment pro­tec­tion against self-incrim­i­na­tion, but he’s not going to be off the hook for his mis­deeds, even if he choos­es not to answer any more ques­tions from anyone.)

Speak­er Mike John­son and oth­er top Repub­li­cans opposed the expul­sion of San­tos, mak­ing it clear they’d rather have a fraud­ster remain among their ranks rather than lose a vote from their already slim majority.

How­ev­er, they did not whip the vote to expel Santos.

“While John­son and his lead­er­ship team are not for­mal­ly whip­ping against the lat­est expul­sion push, describ­ing it as a vote of con­science, oth­er House Repub­li­cans on the fence are cer­tain to take cues from lead­er­ship,” Politi­co report­ed pri­or to the vote. “It’s not clear that there are enough votes to meet the two-thirds thresh­old need­ed to eject Santos.”

But in the end, there were enough votes.

San­tos’ fel­low New York Repub­li­cans have helped lead the charge. They had con­clud­ed that their 2024 elec­toral for­tunes will be improved with San­tos gone.

“He should have resigned. It shouldn’t have come to this. But it is. And now we’re going to actu­al­ly allow the third dis­trict to elect a rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Some­one that they can trust. Some­one that they know,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Antho­ny D’E­s­pos­i­to, who rep­re­sents the 4th Dis­trict and fre­quent­ly crit­i­cizes Santos.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing for expul­sion: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Mar­i­lyn Strick­land (WA), Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Val Hoyle, and Andrea Sali­nas (OR), Mary Pel­to­la (AK); Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house (WA), Cliff Bentz and Lori Chavez-DeRe­mer (OR), Mike Simp­son (ID), Ryan Zinke (MT)

Vot­ing against expul­sion: Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher (ID), Matt Rosendale (MT)

Not vot­ing: Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (WA)

Ultra MAGA Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher and Matt Rosendale were the only rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the greater Pacif­ic North­west to oppose expulsion.

Also among the 112 Repub­li­cans vot­ing nay were Lau­ren Boe­bert, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Nan­cy Mace, Chip Roy, and Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene.

Only New York Repub­li­cans besides San­tos vot­ed with him: Elise Ste­fanik and Clau­dia Ten­ney. Ste­fanik is a Trump-ador­ing mem­ber of leadership.

For­mer Speak­er Kevin McCarthy skipped the vote along with McMor­ris Rodgers and six oth­er mem­bers of the House, includ­ing Dean Phillips and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez. (Phillips is chal­leng­ing Joe Biden for President.)

A spe­cial elec­tion must now be held to pick a suc­ces­sor to San­tos. Vacan­cies in the House can­not be filled by appoint­ment, unlike Sen­ate vacancies.

“I am pre­pared to under­take the solemn respon­si­bil­i­ty of fill­ing the vacan­cy in New York’s 3rd Dis­trict. The peo­ple of Long Island deserve noth­ing less,” New York Gov­er­nor Kathy Hochul tweet­ed. By that, she means she will be pre­pared to call a spe­cial elec­tion, because she does­n’t get to make an appointment. 

New York Democ­rats are like­ly to nom­i­nate San­tos’ pre­de­ces­sor Tom Suozzi in the spe­cial elec­tion. Repub­li­cans have sev­er­al can­di­dates to choose from and it’s not yet clear which one of them will get the nod. The spe­cial elec­tion is like­ly be held in sev­er­al weeks’ time, around mid­win­ter or short­ly thereafter.

As for San­tos, we say good rid­dance. After he answers for his alleged crimes, he deserves his own episode of Amer­i­can Greed on CNBC.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 10:36 AM

Categories: Open Government, Party Politics, Policy Topics

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Tuesday, November 28th, 2023

2023 is the new worst: Washington again sets a record for low turnout in a general election

For the third time in eight years, Wash­ing­ton has sad­ly set a new record for the low­est statewide turnout ever record­ed in a gen­er­al election.

Today was the dead­line for coun­ties to cer­ti­fy their returns in the Novem­ber 2023 gen­er­al elec­tion, and all coun­ties have now sub­mit­ted their final tal­lies up to the Sec­re­tary of State. Statewide turnout will pass into the his­to­ry books at 36.41% for this year. That’s the low­est Wash­ing­ton has seen since record­keep­ing began.

The pre­vi­ous low record was set in 2017, when turnout was 37.10%.

Before that, the record low was 38.45%, set in 2015.

Here are a few more sober­ing data points:

  • It has been more than a decade since an odd-year elec­tion had major­i­ty turnout. 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2023 are all among the ten worst gen­er­al elec­tion vot­er turnouts in state history.
  • Of the last six odd-year elec­tion cycles, only two had turnout above forty per­cent (2013 and 2019). Four of the six had turnout in the thir­ties, mean­ing few­er than two in five vot­ers returned a ballot.
  • Of Wash­ing­ton’s four biggest coun­ties, only Spokane had turnout exceed­ing forty per­cent this year. Pierce, the state’s sec­ond largest coun­ty, came in at just over thir­ty per­cent. King and Sno­homish were in the mid­dle of the pack, with per­cent­ages mir­ror­ing the state’s total.
  • No coun­ty did as bad as Yaki­ma, which had turnout of just 25.82%.

Our team at NPI tracks vot­er turnout care­ful­ly and close­ly, and has been sound­ing the alarm about elec­tion fatigue for a long time. Twice this month, our staff has assessed that we might end up exact­ly where we now find ourselves.

On Novem­ber 6th, sum­ma­riz­ing the avail­able bal­lot return sta­tis­tics, I wrote:

If there isn’t strong Elec­tion Day par­tic­i­pa­tion from Wash­ing­ton vot­ers, we could end up giv­ing 2017 a run for its mon­ey and set­ting a new record for the worst-ever gen­er­al elec­tion turnout in state his­to­ry. That would be very sad.

On Novem­ber 9th, with sev­er­al bal­lot tal­lies com­plet­ed, I wrote:

We’re way, way behind 2019, so there’s no doubt this turnout will be one of the worst in state his­to­ry. 2023 will eas­i­ly rank above 2019 and 2013 on the worst turnouts of all time list, and prob­a­bly 2021 too. Can it also sur­pass 2015, which had the sec­ond worst turnout, and 2017, which had the worst ever?

Sad­ly, we believe it can.

After Elec­tion Day, staff with Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs’ office fig­ured turnout would land some­where between 36% — 39%. The final per­cent­age is with­in that range, but it’s not high enough to sur­pass 2017’s low mark.

And so here we are, with 2023 turnout the new worst in Wash­ing­ton history.

Turnout by county

This year, Colum­bia Coun­ty had the high­est turnout and Yaki­ma Coun­ty had the worst. Colum­bia was one of just two coun­ties that had major­i­ty turnout — the oth­er was What­com, which had an elec­tion for Exec­u­tive. In Yaki­ma Coun­ty, bare­ly more than a quar­ter of vot­ers returned ballots.

New table of worst voter turnouts in Washington history

Below is the new list of the worst gen­er­al elec­tion vot­er turnouts in Wash­ing­ton State his­to­ry, with 2023 tak­ing its place at the top. 2017 is now sec­ond worst, 2015 third worst, and 2021 fourth worst.

And a chart

Here’s a chrono­log­i­cal visu­al­iza­tion of the data above.

Odd-year turnout is trending down, but it’s looked decent or really strong in recent even-numbered years

There was a peri­od when vot­er turnout in Wash­ing­ton was declin­ing across all types of elec­tions, includ­ing those held in even years, but recent even year turnout has been good. 2018 saw almost record high turnout for a midterm cycle, 2020 saw almost record high turnout for a pres­i­den­tial cycle, and 2022 was sol­id, see­ing turnout near both the aver­age and the mean for a midterm cycle.

Mean­while, turnout in odd years just keeps falling.

Why is Washington’s turnout gotten so bad in odd years?

The recent decline in odd year turnout has coin­cid­ed with the imple­men­ta­tion of reforms mak­ing it even eas­i­er to vote. Since the end of the 2010s, we have adopt­ed pre­paid postage for bal­lot return envelopes, increased the num­ber of drop box­es, added same-day / in per­son vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, and begun pre­reg­is­tra­tion for youth. Wash­ing­ton, along with Ore­gon, is con­sid­ered to be the eas­i­est state in the coun­try to vote in. Bal­lots come to vot­ers and a three week peri­od is pro­vid­ed to vote. Yet, in odd years, most vot­ers aren’t voting.

Why?

Put sim­ply, our research and oth­er data sug­gests that peo­ple sim­ply don’t want to vote up to four times a year every sin­gle year. They’re fatigued. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans want a break from elec­toral pol­i­tics in between even year elections.

The cur­rent elec­tions calendar
  1. Spe­cial elec­tion in February
  2. Spe­cial elec­tion in April
  3. Top Two elec­tion in August
  4. Gen­er­al elec­tion in November

In pres­i­den­tial years: a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry held in March 

What we could have instead
  1. A pri­ma­ry in May or June
  2. Gen­er­al elec­tion in November

In pres­i­den­tial years: a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry held in March *and* most local posi­tions con­test­ed in even-num­bered years, when turnout is higher. 

Peo­ple have also been led to believe that elec­tions held in odd year elec­tions just don’t mat­ter. For exam­ple, many in the media con­tin­u­al­ly refer to years like 2023 as “off” years, a term that implies noth­ing impor­tant is on the bal­lot, when that is absolute­ly not true. On Elec­tion Night, we even heard a reporter work­ing for a nation­al tele­vi­sion net­work call 2023 an “off-off year”. We nev­er use that phrase here at NPI except to crit­i­cize it, but we hear it all the time.

Even if a coor­di­nat­ed effort is made to scrap the use of prob­lem­at­ic terms like “off year”, and even if sig­nif­i­cant resources are invest­ed in vot­er out­reach and edu­ca­tion, it is unlike­ly that odd year turnout will ever be com­pa­ra­ble to even year turnout. In more than a half cen­tu­ry, odd year vot­er turnout has only exceed­ed six­ty per­cent once, and that was in 1991, when there was some­thing real­ly big on the bal­lot: a statewide ini­tia­tive con­cern­ing repro­duc­tive rights.

What voters want

Wash­ing­ton vot­ers favor con­sol­i­dat­ing and sim­pli­fy­ing our sys­tem of elec­tions. They would rather vote on local posi­tions, espe­cial­ly at the munic­i­pal lev­el, at the same time they vote on state and fed­er­al ones.

We know because we’ve asked repeat­ed­ly in our polling. We have found sup­port for even-year elec­tions statewide, in King Coun­ty, and in Sno­homish County.

At NPI, our research informs our advo­ca­cy. We take action in response to what we find. That’s why, in King Coun­ty last year, we worked with Coun­cilmem­bers Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci and Gir­may Zahi­lay to give vot­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to move elec­tions for twelve King Coun­ty posi­tions from odd years to even years.

Over 69% of vot­ers said yes to our char­ter amend­ment. There were a dozen mea­sures like it on bal­lots in places across the coun­try. All of them passed.

King Coun­ty vot­ers in their own words

“I don’t want to get bal­lots every sin­gle year. I vote every time and it takes effort for me to research the can­di­dates. I would like to do this every 2 years.” – Like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty voter

“I think it makes sense to have local elec­tions where more peo­ple turn out. I think the con­cerns about local elec­tions being over­shad­owed by the fed­er­al elec­tion is some­what valid but I think most peo­ple will under­stand the impor­tance of local elec­tions and are aware of the issues fac­ing their com­mu­ni­ties, even if the main top­ic of dis­cus­sion is fed­er­al elec­tions. Also, I think hav­ing fed­er­al and local elec­tions at the some time allows for new peo­ple and ideas to be imple­ment­ed at the same time.” – Like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty voter

“More vot­ers weigh­ing in and reduce like­li­ness of low­er vot­er turnout to impact vot­ing results (good can­di­dates being over­looked or oth­er rule changes pass­ing with unin­formed vot­ers). I gen­er­al­ly think vot­ers take more time and ener­gy to vote dur­ing even years. I dis­agree big­ger issues or elec­tions over­shad­ow small­er issues and elec­tions dur­ing even years.” – Like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty voter

The quotes above are from vot­ers inter­viewed as part of NPI’s July 2022 sur­vey of like­ly Novem­ber 2022 gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers, con­duct­ed for NPI by Change Research. These vot­ers were asked why they planned to vote yes on King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1.

This year, we worked with Sen­a­tor Javier Valdez to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion giv­ing cities and towns the free­dom to move their elec­tions to even-num­bered years. Cur­rent state law locks our munic­i­pal­i­ties into low-turnout odd years, when data com­piled by our friends at Sight­line shows they incur a giant turnout penal­ty.

Our bill, SB 5723, remains parked in the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee, and we are urg­ing the Sen­ate to resume con­sid­er­a­tion of it begin­ning in January.

There is no ques­tion that vot­ers love the idea of even year elec­tions for munic­i­pal­i­ties, both here and else­where. It is huge­ly popular.

Yet some offi­cials, like Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs, are not sup­port­ive. They wor­ry about longer bal­lots in even years and staffing issues.

We believe those are solv­able prob­lems. Our bill is lim­it­ed to a sin­gle lev­el of gov­ern­ment and does­n’t require a city or town to do make any change. For those  that do, the bal­lot would not sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase in length, because no vot­er lives in more than one city or town and most munic­i­pal­i­ties stag­ger terms.

None of the objec­tions that have been raised to mov­ing juris­dic­tions to even years are con­vinc­ing to any of the groups of vot­ers we’ve sur­veyed here in Wash­ing­ton. In fact, after hear­ing both of the argu­ments for and against, sup­port for even-year elec­tions goes up. Vot­ers love the idea of a sim­pler elec­tions sys­tem, with local posi­tions con­test­ed at times when turnout is much high­er and more diverse. It is by far the best solu­tion avail­able to address elec­tion fatigue.

Defend­ers of the sta­tus quo in Wash­ing­ton have yet to offer any ideas for mean­ing­ful­ly address­ing elec­tion fatigue and rais­ing turnout. Since they don’t seem to have any, we urge them to recon­sid­er their oppo­si­tion to our legislation.

Our door is open: we’re hap­py to meet with any­one who wants to become bet­ter acquaint­ed with the data and learn more about the ben­e­fits of even-year elec­tions. The data shows that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans want to see their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives fig­ure out how to get to “yes” on this, rather than say­ing “no.”

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 6:42 PM

Categories: Elections

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Monday, November 27th, 2023

After picking up WA-03 and Alaska in 2022, PNW House Democrats are now on defense

The deplet­ed ranks of Con­gress’ once-abun­dant Blue Dog Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus received an unex­pect­ed replen­ish­ment in these parts last year with the elec­tion of Marie Glue­senkamp Perez in WA-03 and Mary Pel­to­la in Alaska.

Each did the repub­lic a ser­vice. Glue­senkamp Perez (MGP) defeat­ed extrem­ist MAGA Repub­li­can Joe Kent, an extrem­ist who pro­posed putting pres­i­den­tial pan­dem­ic advis­er Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci on tri­al for mur­der. Pel­to­la halt­ed the polit­i­cal revival of 2008 Repub­li­can vice-pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, ex-Gov­er­nor Sarah Palin, becom­ing the first Indige­nous Alas­ka native to serve in Congress.

The Repub­li­cans have already tar­get­ed both as low hang­ing fruit in 2024. Alas­ka has not vot­ed Demo­c­rat for Pres­i­dent since Lyn­don John­son car­ried the 49th state in 1964. Don­ald Trump has twice car­ried the 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict in South­west Wash­ing­ton, and rur­al Wash­ing­ton has become very Republican.

The fates of MGP and Pel­to­la will have nation­wide implications.

The U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is almost even­ly divid­ed. Con­trol rests uneasi­ly with 222 Repub­li­cans, who have fought two bloody inter­nal bat­tles over the speak­er­ship. The House cur­rent­ly has 214 Democ­rats, with a pick­up like­ly in a spe­cial elec­tion if Rep­re­sen­ta­tive George San­tos, R‑New York, gets expelled for his fab­ri­cat­ed back­ground and mul­ti­ple mis­deeds, or resigns.

Repub­li­can chal­lengers are already lin­ing up.

Alaska’s Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Gov­er­nor Nan­cy Dahlstrom announced her can­di­da­cy last week, promis­ing “to stop the assault on Alas­ka from Joe Biden and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., lib­er­als.” Already in the race is Nick Begich III, a Repub­li­can scion of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic fam­i­ly which has pro­duced one U.S. Sen­a­tor and a House mem­ber. Begich III lost to Pel­to­la last year along with Palin. Alas­ka now uses ranked choice vot­ing to select its lone mem­ber of the U.S. House.

Joe Kent is seek­ing a rematch with MGP. He has raised more than $1 mil­lion, won an endorse­ment from the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and is retool­ing to focus on dis­trict issues. Anoth­er con­tender is Camas City Coun­cil mem­ber Leslie Lewallen, a one­time King Coun­ty deputy prosecutor.

She is a self-described “con­ser­v­a­tive fight­er who wins.”

The Repub­li­cans tend to throw resources into one-size-fit-all cam­paigns. They are already seek­ing to asso­ciate Glue­senkamp Perez with very very lib­er­al Seat­tle Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal. Lewallen labels MGP “Port­land Pro­gres­sive Perez.”

In the face of the Israel-Hamas war, Kent decries MGP for vot­ing “to keep our troops as sit­ting ducks in the Mid­dle East war zones like Syr­ia where we have no nation­al inter­est to jus­ti­fy the deployment.”

MAGA Repub­li­cans have a knack for win­ning pri­maries across the coun­try but los­ing gen­er­al elec­tions. Don­ald Trump flew to Alas­ka last year to boost a Repub­li­can chal­lenger to Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki, one of sev­en Repub­li­can sen­a­tors who vot­ed to impeach him after the Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol. He heaped abuse on Murkows­ki and show­ered praise on Sarah Palin. Murkows­ki won, while Palin lost to Peltola.

In Wash­ing­ton State, the Trump-backed Kent best­ed six-term Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler in the August 2022 Top Two elec­tion, only to be defeat­ed by MGP in Novem­ber. Her­rera Beut­ler was one of ten Repub­li­can impeach­ment votes in the House. She is now run­ning for Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands.

Alas­ka has, in Pel­to­la, one of Con­gress’ few pro-oil Democ­rats. Wash­ing­ton has one of the few Democ­rats who has opposed Biden’s stu­dent loan for­give­ness plan. Glue­senkamp Perez argues that the coun­try has short­changed tech­ni­cal train­ing and should be devot­ing resources to “peo­ple who make stuff.”

The low hang­ing fruit may prove hard to pluck.

Joe Kent will be dogged by such actions as his speech at a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., ral­ly decry­ing pros­e­cu­tion of the U.S. Capi­tol insur­rec­tion­ists. He has argued that the FBI “con­tin­ues to take us down the road to total­i­tar­i­an­ism.” He has also pro­posed “tak­ing away the teeth of the FBI” by defund­ing it.

In the mean­time, hard­ly a week goes by that MGP does not intro­duce a new “bipar­ti­san bill” with Repub­li­can cospon­sor. The lat­est, this week, leg­is­la­tion to increase trans­paren­cy and over­sight of for­eign own­er­ship of Amer­i­can farm­land. Glue­senkamp Perez has mount­ed a full-court courtship of rur­al voters.

“Talk is cheap, results mat­ter,” said Dahlstrom, announc­ing for Con­gress in Alas­ka. “Alas­ka needs Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to stop work­ing against us and no one will work hard­er for Alaska’s way of life than me.” Begich is promis­ing to “unlock the full poten­tial of our nat­ur­al resources while ensur­ing envi­ron­men­tal sustainability.”

But Pel­to­la, along with Murkows­ki, have pro­duced results.

The Biden-Har­ris Admin­is­tra­tion, defy­ing its envi­ron­men­tal base, recent­ly approved an ener­gy megapro­ject on Alaska’s North Slope west of Prud­hoe Bay. The Cono­co-Phillips Wil­low devel­op­ment is already under­way. It will yield a max­i­mum 180,000 bar­rels of crude oil a day at max­i­mum pro­duc­tion, 40 per­cent of dai­ly pro­duc­tion in the Last Frontier.

Pel­to­la has opposed the Peb­ble Mine, a pro­posed megapro­ject to locate an enor­mous open pit gold and cop­per mine between two of Bris­tol Bay’s prime salmon spawn­ing streams. Com­mer­cial and sport fish­eries, as well as Alas­ka native cor­po­ra­tions, have fought against it. The Biden-Har­ris Admin­is­tra­tion has just about killed Peb­ble through use of the Clean Water Act.

Under its crusty pub­lish­er Bob Atwood, news sto­ries in the Anchor­age Times used to refer to “self-admit­ted con­ser­va­tion­ists.” Atwood is deceased and the Times shut down. While still allied with the petro­le­um indus­try, Murkows­ki and Pel­to­la have tak­en a more bal­anced approach than Alaska’s old-time boomers.

While polls are rare, Pel­to­la appears to be Alaska’s most pop­u­lar politician.

She is a long­time advo­cate for Alas­ka fish­eries and chairs the Amer­i­can Seafood Cau­cus in Con­gress. She was recent­ly wid­owed when hus­band Eugene “Buzzy” Pel­to­la died in a plane crash after leav­ing off a hunter in west­ern Alas­ka. Two oth­er state lead­ers, for­mer Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Ted Stevens and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nick Begich (grand­fa­ther of the House can­di­date) have lost their lives this way.

Glues­en­camp Perez and Pel­to­la share can count on one oth­er plus in seek­ing to hold House seats. Both are sup­port­ers of repro­duc­tive rights, an issue which has boost­ed the Democ­rats. Alas­ka is a “red” state but of a lib­er­tar­i­an bent, and WA-03 has a lib­er­tar­i­an streak too. Sen­a­tor Murkows­ki has sur­vived wrath of the Repub­li­can right while being both pro-choice and a sup­port­er of mar­riage equality.

The elec­tion is near­ly a year off, but cam­paign­ing is already under­way. The Clark Coun­ty Repub­li­cans are fea­tur­ing Joe Kent, along with Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Jim Walsh and MAGA Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Semi Bird, at a Christ­mas social on Decem­ber 9th.

Many of the nation’s 435 House dis­tricts are heav­i­ly gerrymandered.

For instance, the dis­trict of House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee Chair­man Jim Jor­dan snakes west-to-east to bunch togeth­er Repub­li­can counties.

Only 45–50 dis­tricts are tru­ly com­pet­i­tive. Hence, mil­lions of dol­lars will be spent to defend or depose Glue­senkamp Perez and Peltola.

It takes days to count mail-in bal­lots in Wash­ing­ton, and weeks under Alaska’s ranked vot­ing sys­tem. Con­ceiv­ably, the nation could be kept wait­ing next Novem­ber for a final vote on which par­ty con­trols one house of Congress.

One thing is cer­tain: The Blue Dogs are the hunt­ed rather than the hunters.

Written by Joel Connelly :: 1:42 PM

Categories: Elections

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Sunday, November 26th, 2023

Sorry, Semi Bird: Data shows that Dave Reichert is the leading Republican candidate in Washington’s 2024 gubernatorial contest

This morn­ing, The Seat­tle Times pub­lished an excel­lent sto­ry by respect­ed polit­i­cal reporter Jim Brun­ner look­ing at the Repub­li­can side of the 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al race, in which ultra MAGA can­di­date Semi Bird asserts that he is the lead­ing Repub­li­can can­di­date, rather than for­mer con­gress­man Dave Reichert.

Impor­tant­ly, Brun­ner was able to secure an inter­view with the recent­ly oust­ed Rich­land school board mem­ber (boot­ed out of his seat by vot­ers in a recall) in which Bird went on the record describ­ing how he per­ceives the dynam­ics of the con­test. Here’s a key excerpt from Brun­ner’s story:

He’s been pres­sured by promi­nent Repub­li­cans to drop out of the governor’s race and get behind for­mer U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert. He lags in fundrais­ing behind oth­er major candidates.

But Bird isn’t budg­ing. He’s try­ing to flip the script.

He argues that he — not Reichert — has a bet­ter shot of break­ing the Repub­li­can Party’s decades­long los­ing streak in governor’s races.

“I am seen as the grass­roots can­di­date. Dave Reichert is looked at as the left-mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tive,” Bird said in an inter­view. “He can­not win in King Coun­ty, nor can he win in East­ern Wash­ing­ton. The only way Dave Reichert can win the pri­ma­ry is if I am not in the primary.”

Let’s break down that last para­graph, which con­tains quite a few strik­ing asser­tions from Bird.

First, there’s: I am seen as the grass­roots can­di­date.

Many right wing activists would prob­a­bly agree with that state­ment, and per­haps a few observers out­side of Repub­li­can cir­cles would as well. But it is nev­er­the­less a sub­jec­tive state­ment. Lots of can­di­dates assert that they are run­ning grass­roots cam­paigns and tout the num­ber of small dol­lar donors they have.

Sec­ond, we have: Dave Reichert is looked at as the left-mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tive.

This is tru­ly an excel­lent can­di­date for oxy­moron of the year. I can’t recall hav­ing seen “left-mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tive” in a sto­ry before. I’ve heard “mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tive,” but not “left-mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tive.” If some­one is to the left of the imag­i­nary “mod­er­ate” cen­ter (which, by the way, is a very flawed and over­ly sim­plis­tic polit­i­cal mod­el), then they are inher­ent­ly not conservative.

I sup­pose what Bird actu­al­ly means is that Reichert is too far to the left of him and the ultra MAGA base to qual­i­fy for the label con­ser­v­a­tive. But only some­one who is extreme­ly right wing would char­ac­ter­ize Reichert that way.

Third, we have: He can­not win in King County…

This is amus­ing­ly a defen­si­ble state­ment, though prob­a­bly not in the way that Bird meant it. Why? Well, King Coun­ty is so Demo­c­ra­t­ic that Reichert isn’t going to be able to win it, even if Reichert runs a stel­lar cam­paign that per­forms incred­i­bly well. Bird will like­wise not be able to win in King Coun­ty, it’s far too Democratic.

Fourth, we have: nor can he win in East­ern Wash­ing­ton…

Our lat­est statewide sur­vey, released ear­li­er this month, found that Reichert is cur­rent­ly the lead­ing guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date in Cen­tral and East­ern Wash­ing­ton, so this is not a cred­i­ble claim. In our four-way guber­na­to­r­i­al polling, Bird received 18% sup­port in Cen­tral and East­ern Wash­ing­ton, while Reichert received 26%. Anoth­er 26% were unde­cid­ed. And 23% said they’d vote for Bob Ferguson.

That’s Wash­ing­ton’s most Repub­li­can-friend­ly region, and yet it favors Reichert.

Brun­ner’s sto­ry men­tions this research and links to it so Seat­tle Times read­ers can read our analy­sis of the data for them­selves, which we appreciate.

Final­ly, we have: The only way Dave Reichert can win the pri­ma­ry is if I am not in the pri­ma­ry.

This is like­wise not a cred­i­ble claim — our polling shows that Dave Reichert is cur­rent­ly way ahead of Semi Bird among like­ly 2024 vot­ers, so he isn’t going to need Bird to drop out in order to reach the gen­er­al elec­tion. Reichert received 31% in our sur­vey, as did Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son. Bird only got 10%. He was­n’t hap­py to hear that, and prompt­ly made his feel­ings known.

It is impor­tant to note that unlike most states, Wash­ing­ton does­n’t actu­al­ly hold a pri­ma­ry to choose nom­i­nees for local or state-lev­el par­ti­san posi­tions. What the state and coun­ty audi­tors call a pri­ma­ry (and what Bird is ref­er­enc­ing) is real­ly a qual­i­fy­ing elec­tion in which the top two vote get­ters advance regard­less of party.

In a real pri­ma­ry, as defined by all major dic­tio­nar­ies that we’ve con­sult­ed over the years, vot­ers choose nom­i­nees. That isn’t what hap­pens in Wash­ing­ton. Here, we have a two-part gen­er­al elec­tion. In round one (the top two or win­now­ing round) vot­ers elim­i­nate all but two can­di­dates using first past the post vot­ing. Round two is a runoff in which vot­ers pick one of the final­ists to hold the office.

If Wash­ing­ton had a real pri­ma­ry, like Ore­gon to the south or Ida­ho to the east, then Repub­li­can vot­ers would be choos­ing from between Bird and Reichert as to who their nom­i­nee should be, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers would be choos­ing from between Bob Fer­gu­son and Wash­ing­ton State Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let. The vot­ers wish­ing to align with each par­ty would be pick­ing a stan­dard bearer.

But since Wash­ing­ton has a mul­ti-round gen­er­al elec­tion, Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can vot­ers don’t have the pow­er to fill a slot guar­an­teed to their par­ty. To get on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot, Bird would either have to get more votes than any oth­er can­di­date or get more votes than all but one of the oth­er can­di­dates. If he can’t get one of the top two spots, he does­n’t go on. And since Wash­ing­ton has a sore los­er law, he won’t be able to run an orga­nized write-in campaign.

Bird and oth­ers have been hold­ing up his endorse­ments from coun­ty Repub­li­can par­ties as evi­dence that the base prefers him to Reichert. The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty might fol­low suit and endorse Bird too — as Brun­ner notes, it has a con­ven­tion com­ing up in April and it could make an endorse­ment then.

But the peo­ple active in Repub­li­can par­ty pol­i­tics are only a sub­set of the base and the over­all Repub­li­can + Repub­li­can-lean­ing elec­torate in Washington.

Our research shows that more Repub­li­can vot­ers favor Reichert than Bird. Reichert got 59% of Repub­li­can vot­ers in our four-way ques­tion (see this post for the ques­tion text and method­ol­o­gy), while Bird got 22%. 11% weren’t sure.

That’s a more than 2‑to‑1 advantage.

And while Reichert has crossover appeal to Democ­rats and inde­pen­dents, our polling found that Bird has almost none. In fact, zero per­cent of Demo­c­ra­t­ic respon­dents expressed sup­port for him. Bird could improve his stand­ing with Repub­li­can vot­ers and still eas­i­ly lose the Top Two elec­tion next August.

Bird can say what­ev­er he wants about the strength of his can­di­da­cy, but so far, our pub­lic opin­ion research indi­cates his cam­paign has more hype than bite.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 10:30 AM

Categories: Elections

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Friday, November 24th, 2023

Steve Pool: 1953–2023

Today, the fam­i­ly of leg­endary KOMO 4 mete­o­rol­o­gist Steve Pool shared the sad news that Pool died this week due to com­pli­ca­tions from ear­ly onset Alzheimer’s. A fix­ture in the local media land­scape for decades, Pool was a tal­ent­ed, car­ing jour­nal­ist who was known for his opti­mism and excel­lent fore­casts. He will be deeply missed by many friends, col­leagues, and KOMO viewers.

His pass­ing was announced in a note post­ed by his fam­i­ly on Face­book.

Dear Friends,

I am here to share the sad news that my dear hus­band, my love, has passed away from ear­ly-onset Alzheimer’s dis­ease. He fought this ter­ri­ble dis­ease pri­vate­ly for sev­er­al years, and with every ounce of his being. He told me mul­ti­ple times to “nev­er count me out” and we nev­er did. This past week it became too much and he passed away peace­ful­ly. We are so blessed to have had him in our lives. He was an extra­or­di­nary man, hus­band, father and good friend to many. Please know that he tru­ly loved his job and this com­mu­ni­ty and felt so priv­i­leged to be a part of your lives. You were all so good to him and there­by good to us. Our hearts are irre­triev­ably bro­ken. Please say a prayer for him and our family.

Much love, Michelle and our daugh­ters Lind­sey and Marissa

Our con­do­lences to Michelle, Lind­sey, Maris­sa, and the Pool family.

Portrait of Steve Pool

A por­trait of Steve Pool, shared by his fam­i­ly (Via Facebook)

Born Novem­ber 5th, 1953, Pool grew up in West­ern Wash­ing­ton. He went to Tyee High School in SeaT­ac and served his peers as stu­dent body pres­i­dent. He went to col­lege at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and became a KOMO intern dur­ing those years. After he grad­u­at­ed in 1978 with a major in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, he was hired to work at the sta­tion full time as a reporter, cov­er­ing hard news and sports.

A few years lat­er, in 1984, when the sta­tion need­ed some­one to take over the weath­er beat, Pool assumed his icon­ic role as KOMO’s chief fore­cast­er, after return­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton to study the atmos­pher­ic sci­ences. He would remain in that role for over three decades until his retire­ment in 2019.

Even when the weath­er was bad, watch­ing Pool deliv­er a fore­cast was very enjoy­able. His reas­sur­ing pres­ence was some­thing KOMO view­ers could rely on.

In this clip cre­at­ed by our team at NPI from our local broad­cast tele­vi­sion media archives, you can see Steve at his best, deliv­er­ing a fore­cast on a beau­ti­ful, sun­ny May spring day back in 2013, with a lead-in from anchor Dan Lewis.

Although Pool spent his career at KOMO, he was also nation­al­ly renowned thanks to his work fill­ing as a guest fore­cast­er on ABC’s Good Morn­ing America.

“His awards include Sev­en Emmy Awards, a Sig­ma Delta Chi Soci­ety of Pro­fes­sion­al Jour­nal­ism award, New York Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val Gold and Bronze Medals, Nation­al Acad­e­my of Tele­vi­sion Arts and Sci­ences, Amer­i­can Scene Award, a “Tel­ly” Award, the pre­mier award hon­or­ing out­stand­ing local, region­al, and cable TV com­mer­cials and pro­grams, and an Acad­e­my of Reli­gious Broad­cast­ing Life­time Achieve­ment Award,” his offi­cial biog­ra­phy notes.

“He has appeared more than sev­en­ty times on ABC’s Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca and is also part of the news team that was the 2001 and 2008 win­ner of the Edward R. Mur­row Award for the best news­cast in Amer­i­ca. In 2004 he was induct­ed into the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Hall of Fame.”

Pool’s col­leagues dur­ing his more than forty years at KOMO includ­ed Lewis, Kathi Goertzen, Ken Schram, Lynn Espinoza, Elisa Jaffe, Bruce King, Bryan John­son, Mary Nam, Con­nie Thomp­son, Mol­ly Shen, and Eric Johnson.

The full list is much, much longer.

John­son filed a sto­ry a few weeks ago remem­ber­ing what he con­sid­ers the “Dream Team” — Lewis, Goertzen, Pool, and King.

Lewis is now the only liv­ing mem­ber of that quartet.

John­son, who suc­ceed­ed King on the sports beat and remains with KOMO today, remem­bered his time work­ing with Pool very fondly:

Steve Pool start­ed work­ing full-time at KOMO TV in 1977, although he’d already done some work for them as a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.

He start­ed with sports, did some straight news, and even­tu­al­ly set­tled on weath­er. His smooth, easy charis­ma lit up the TV screen for more than thir­ty years.

The old tapes don’t lie. He was a natural.

“Steve Pool is such a like­able guy,” Dan says.

“One of the most tal­ent­ed peo­ple I’ve ever known. I mean, beyond his great work with the weath­er, he was fun­ny, he could sing.

Steve, I think, was a born entertainer.”

We talked a lit­tle about just how good he was.

So good that he filled in on Good Morn­ing America.

So good that peo­ple were drawn to him like a magnet.

“Peo­ple love Steve Pool, man, and I love Steve Pool,” Dan says. “He was such a fun guy to work with.”

And a fun guy to get weath­er updates from.

When the Apple Cup rolled around each autumn, the game fre­quent­ly became an object of ban­ter among the mem­bers of the Dream Team. Goertzen, a diehard Cougar fan, delight­ed in spar­ring on-air with Pool, a proud Husky.

The last Apple Cup of the Pac‑8/10/12 era will be played tomorrow.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton offered this trib­ute: “RIP to UW alum Steve Pool, ’77. Always a sta­ple in our Puget Sound com­mu­ni­ty, Steve will be deeply missed. Steve’s leg­endary career with KOMO news spanned more than four decades, serv­ing as one of our region’s most trust­ed weathermen.”

Seat­tle May­or Bruce Har­rell wrote: “A Seat­tle news leg­end and pio­neer, Steve Pool was kind and authen­tic – he epit­o­mized pro­fes­sion­al­ism. I join in mourn­ing his pass­ing and send my heart­felt con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly. Steve’s lega­cy will live on through the peo­ple and caus­es he supported.” 

Essex Porter, one of our favorite reporters of all time, wrote: “Steve was already anchor­ing when I arrived in Seat­tle in 1982. His excel­lence and ele­gance helped to open the door and hold it open for me and all the oth­er Black tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ists in Seat­tle. A leg­end. Con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly and friends.”

Jesse Jones, anoth­er Seat­tle broad­cast tele­vi­sion icon, wrote: “RIP Steve. What an incred­i­ble man. Could have worked at any lev­el any­where. And yet, he stayed to serve our com­mu­ni­ties. Legendary.”

“Steve Pool’s excel­lence is a crit­i­cal exam­ple for the mis­sion and cred­i­bil­i­ty of SABJ [the Seat­tle Asso­ci­a­tion of Black Jour­nal­ists],” said Jer­ry Brew­er, SAB­J’s Pres­i­dent. “He was too good, too cool, too classy and too gen­uine to be denied. We’ll nev­er for­get that we stand on the shoul­ders of an incred­i­ble jour­nal­ist whose tal­ent was matched only by the kind and unselfish way he went about doing the job.”

Pool main­tained his ties with KOMO, now owned by Sin­clair, after con­clud­ing his employ­ment there. “Steve con­tin­ued to make con­tri­bu­tions to KOMO 4 even in retire­ment,” the sta­tion explained. “He came up with the idea for the doc­u­men­tary How Seat­tle Changed The World, which pre­miered on KOMO 4 in Feb­ru­ary 2023. The doc­u­men­tary shares how peo­ple in the Seat­tle area cre­at­ed new prod­ucts, ser­vices, and inno­va­tions that made life eas­i­er and bet­ter for peo­ple all over the world. The doc­u­men­tary was ded­i­cat­ed to Steve Pool.”

Steve Pool epit­o­mized the best of Cas­ca­dia. He was a first-rate broad­cast­er, but more impor­tant­ly, he was a good per­son. A true role mod­el who treat­ed oth­ers with kind­ness and respect. That is what our world des­per­ate­ly needs more of.

Thank you for every­thing, Steve.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 5:00 PM

Categories: Appreciations & Remembrances, Media & Culture

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