Do Washington State Democrats Have A Labor Problem? Let’s Ask Jay Inslee

OK: so I’ve been working what is, on one level, a Jay Inslee story (Inslee is the Congressman from Washington’s 1st District, now running for Governor in ’12), and, on another level, a story of why Democrats are having all kinds of problems with what should be “natural” constituencies – and why those problems might not be going away anytime soon.

I thought the two elements of this narrative would come together last Monday, when I attended the “announcement event” that marked the beginning of the Inslee Gubernatorial Campaign, and in fact they did…but it wasn’t in a way I would have expected, and that’s why we have something to talk about today.

I reached out to some helpful outside voices, including Inslee himself; all of that will be brought to the discussion – and as another news organization famously offers to do, I’ll report, and leave you to decide.

Krusty the Klown: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Good evening. Tonight my guest is AFL/CIO chairman George Meany, who will be discussing collective bargaining agreements

George Meaney: It's a pleasure to be here, Krusty

Krusty the Klown: Let me be blunt: is there a Labor crisis in America today?

George Meaney: Well that depends what you mean by crisis...

--From “The Simpsons” episode S06E01, “Bart of Darkness”

So here’s what I know: Jay Inslee brings to the contest for Governor a Congressional voting record that could be great news for Washington State’s Progressive community: he’s generally supportive of LBGT and other civil rights issues, he seems to support the sort of elections I like (clean ones), he’s very much interested in a “next generation” energy and environmental policy, and he voted against the TARP Program (that’s the bank bailout that was passed in the last months of the Bush Administration) and the extension of the Patriot Act.

All good stuff.

But I also know this: if you are a State worker in Washington State, you are under attack, and you have been for some time now – and among the attackers are members of the Democratic Party – and the reason I’m so personally familiar with this fact is because The Girlfriend is one of those workers (she’s a nurse working within the Division of Developmental Disabilities, and she has been for more than 15 years), and I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.

And I know that for these workers, each year the question becomes: “This year’s wage cuts: in cash, by jacking the cost of health care, or through furlough days?”

This sort of problem extends to workers all across the State, as business interests target the State’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) and Industrial Insurance programs for attack, to give just two examples of recent legislative battles.

And the State’s Unions are reacting: I had a back and forth with Kathy Cummings (she’s the Communications Director for WSLC, the Washington State Labor Council), who confirmed what I thought I’d been seeing: that since 2009 there has been an effort by the WSLC to bring the fight to Washington State Democrats, including a successful effort to unseat State Senator Jean Berkey, who was targeted, according to Cummings, because of her votes on UI, public education and health care, pollution laws, and tax policy, which the WSLC viewed as favoring corporate interests.

2009, by the way, was a watershed year for this State’s Labor unions, as that was the year Washington Democratic leaders actually called in the State Patrol to investigate whether internal discussions about whether to withhold future campaign contributions if those Democrats didn’t get more cooperative was some sort of criminal act.

As a result, the WSLC formed the DIME PAC (DIME, of course, is an acronym; Don’t Invest in More Excuses, to be specific); this and other Labor-associated PACs are apparently acting as any PAC can, much to the chagrin of Democrats and business interests alike, including what appears to have been a controversial decision to promote a Republican in Berkey’s primary in order to knock her out of the contest early. (Washington uses a “top-two” primary system to determine who gets to the general election, and Berkey came in number three.)

And sure enough, Democrats do appear to be less than supportive: Unions held two rallies this spring at the State Capitol in Olympia, both of which I attended – and I couldn’t help but notice that Washington State Democrats weren’t up on the dais talking about how much they supported those workers gathered just outside.

In fact, the only elected Democrat I saw on either stage, in March or April, speaking to the crowds was State Senator Spencer Coggs…who is a Wisconsin State Senator. (Kathy Cummings helpfully points out that, despite what I thought, about 20 Democrats were introduced by name and were somewhere around the stage at various times during the April event to show support – and you’ll want to keep that in mind as we go along.)

So here’s what I’m thinking as I’m on my way to attend Jay Inslee’s announcement and presser last Monday: Inslee is presumably aware of this history, and if he were to become Washington State’s top elected Democrat he would presumably want to act in a manner that heals that rift…which would be a pretty good story to report to a Progressive audience.

That is not how it turned out.

ME: "I attended two Labor rallies in Olympia over the past couple of months; the only Democratic elected official who seemed to be able to get out and speak to the crowd was from Wisconsin, Spencer Copps, State Senator [which was an error; I should have said Spencer Coggs]. I wondered what you think about that and what are you going to do to try to change it?"

INSLEE: "Well, I'm not sure what you're referring to..."

ME: "Well, you mentioned honoring unions..."

INSLEE: "I'm sorry..."

ME: "Well, you mentioned honoring unions, these folks were out trying to promote union rights, but Democrats don't seem to want to get out and support union rights in person. Do you see that as a problem; how would you like to change it?"

INSLEE: "I don't see this as a problem, because I believe as I said I fundamentally believe in work, I fundamentally believe in workers, and I fundamentally believe that people have collective bargaining rights as an organized group, and I think what has gone on in Wisconsin is a travesty, and the reason it's a travesty is that, uh, Governor Walker, if he wanted to be angry at someone, he shouldn't have been angry at the first grade teachers, he should have been angry at the Wall Street investment bankers whose greed was responsible for the economic collapse, and yet I saw the Governor turn his sights on the middle class, and I don't believe an assault on the middle class, which is what happened in Wisconsin, is productive for economic growth, of anyone in our State, or our country. Now I've been pretty forthright in that regard, and, uh, I'll maintain that position."

Here’s the video:



Now let me be the first to say that I did not ask the best possible question. What I should have done was be more specific about how much of a rift there is between Labor and Washington State’s Democrats, and then specifically asked what steps Inslee would take, to, as I said earlier, heal the rift.

So normally what you do in a case like that is you go back to the campaign staff and send a follow-up question, and some helpful person who is doing the Candidate’s communications work will get you an official response.

But that’s where it gets weird.

If you try to go to the campaign website to locate the contract information, it is literally nothing, except for three links: give me money, get on the mailing list, or click through to facebook.

I posted a note “on the wall” at facebook, asking who the contact person was for the campaign for media inquiries, and not only did that get no response, the request was removed from the wall within minutes.

I sent follow-up questions to the originating address of the email that invited me to the Inslee event in the first place and to his Congressional office; those also went unacknowledged.

And that, right there, is pretty much the entire story as I know it: there is a significant and growing rift between Labor and Washington State’s Democrats, I tried to bring Inslee out on the issue (albeit clumsily), which he did not seem to want to address – and, oddly enough, there appears to be no desire on the part of the campaign to take the opportunity to follow up and affirm that an Inslee Administration would be a friend of Labor when it comes to things like protecting UI, and not balancing the budget while exempting corporate interests from taxation, and protecting workers from environmental hazards on the job.

Except there is one more thing.

I asked the WSLC’s Cummings this question…

Since the 2010 election cycle, have Democrats become more reliable partners, in the estimation of the WSLC?

…and she gave me a bit of a “tease”: the WSLC will release their 2011 Legislative Report, which will address that very question, just in time for their Annual Convention, which begins on August 4th – and we are told to stay tuned.

Inslee Running For Washington Governor, Supports Full Marriage Equality

Congressman Jay Inslee (WA-01) announced his candidacy for Governor of the State of Washington in Seattle Monday, and Your Erstwhile Reporter was present.

The candidacy was announced with a speech that focused on “process improvements” and the invocation of new technology jobs as an economic engine for job growth (and in fact the event took place at the headquarters of a company that has developed seed-derived biofuels that have been used to power military and commercial aircraft).

But that’s not the part that’s going to be the most interesting for the civil-rights supportive reader.

The most interesting part is that Inslee was quick to offer his support for full marriage equality in the State of Washington, should he find himself elected.

So before we get to the good stuff, let’s do a bit of historical review.

The Congressman has compiled a mixed record on issues that matter to the LBGT community during his time in Congress, and most of it can be considered supportive. He did vote to pass the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) repeal, and he co-sponsored the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act of 2009, which made it out of the House Oversight and Government Committee, only to die in the House Judiciary Committee. (The bill would have provided same-sex partners access to the spousal benefits of their Federal employee family members.)

An additional bill, HR 1024, would have given same-sex couples an expectation of equal treatment during immigration proceedings; this was also cosponsored by Inslee. (It also died in committee.)

However…when it came time in 2009 to try to repeal the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, the House got a bill together (HR 3567) that Inslee was not willing to cosponsor; it died, again, in House Judiciary.

Now here’s where I get a bit suspicious: a similar bill was introduced in the 112th Congress, on March 16, 2011, and of the 115 co-sponsors, virtually all signed on before April 6th. There are 5 who signed on later…including Congressman Inslee, who was one of two co-sponsors who all signed up on June 15th, which was just 12 days before his announcement.

The historical review complete, let’s talk about Monday.

I walked into the after-announcement “press availability” just in time to record this exchange:

REPORTER: "Congressman, would you address two social issues that are in the headlines these days. One, where do you stand on gay marriage, two, where do you stand on the legalization of marijuana?"

INSLEE: "Thanks for your easy question, sir, uh. Um, so I believe in marriage equality, and the reason I believe in that is that uh, I've been married for 38 years, and I fundamentally believe that no government, and no politician should deny any of my fellow Washingtonians the right to have what I have, which is a stable, committed, you know, meaningful relationship. So I'm gonna support, uh, the legalization of that equality in the State of Washington. And when we do that, uh, we will do it to make sure in a way that no religious organization doesn't have the right to have their own definition for their own purposes, under their belief of spirituality. This is a situation where we can have both equality, which is a quintessential Washington value. And I said I love the State, one of the reasons I love the State of Washington is we have been leaders in equality in so many different ways; this is another place where I think Washington should lead.

Uh, marijuana, there are two things I know we should do for sure. Number one, we have got to get the intention of the voters of the State of Washington to be honored, which does allow the use of medical marijuana in the State of Washington...and right now, that intent of the voters is being frustrated by the Federal government, which is threatening the Federal--uh, State government any time you try to enforce the will of the people. So we need some changes to frankly, get the Federal government off our backs when it comes to the ability of Washingtonians to have access to medical marijuana.

Second, I believe that we should stop wasting so much of our resources in our criminal justice system associweated--associated with mari--marijuana, particularly personal use of marijuana. This is something that is really does not bring value or--or reduce significant levels of crime, and we need to reprioritize our law enforcement away from chasing folks who are involved in--in marijuana; we got enough problems in our criminal justice system, I'm aware of that, I guess in part because my daughter-in-law is a forensic scientist at the crime lab I've got a sense of the challenges. Law enforcement's strapped; they got a lot of problems to deal with.

As far as total decriminalization, I'm not there yet at this moment. I'm a parent, I'm just not comfortable right now, uh, and that's my position."

OK, so that’s a pretty interesting story, and we could leave it right there – but there is one extra bonus to the thing that is so good, so deeply ironic…that you may remember the ending of this story long after you forget the lead:

I got a parking ticket, I did, attending the event, issued by a Parking Enforcement Officer with an amazingly appropriate name…and that ticket was issued to me for a violation that occurred one block over from Harrison Street in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood …which means I showed up to watch the leading Democratic contender for Governor in 2012 announce his candidacy…and when it was all over, Officer J. Hell had issued me a ticket on Republican Street.

And all that proves the truth of what I’m always saying:

Some days you don’t even have to write jokes.
You just have to harvest ‘em.

On Washington’s Primary, Or, It Might Be Time For Republicans To Worry

I’m supposed to be finishing another story tonight, but I’ve just come from Darcy Burner’s primary night party…and I have in front of me the results of the important races tonight in Washington’s newfangled “top two” primary.

It is unfair to extrapolate the results of elections in the “People’s Republic of Washington” directly onto a national map, but as I look as these results it seems fair to say that if any Republican strategists aren’t sweating bullets this morning it’s because they’ll be hustling for votes in towns like Maggie Valley, North Carolina (don’t forget to stop by Saratoga’s for the Wednesday night jazz…)…or, perhaps, Bessemer Bend, Wyoming.

For the rest of the Republican community, tonight’s events are not good news.

We have a fair amount to cover, so let’s get to it.

First, a few words on the unusual new primary system. The “top two” primary was brought to law through the initiative process after the United States Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of the old system.

How does the new primary work? Simple. The two candidates with the most votes in any primary election move on to the general. (There is an exception: judges are elected in this State; and candidates with “50% + 1” votes in the primary automatically win the election. They do not appear on the general election ballot.)

Odd results could occur. For example, there can be occasions where two Democratic or two Republican candidates are the top two finishers in a primary (or two of another party, theoretically…), which could leave either no Democratic or no Republican candidate—or potentially no Democrat and no Republican--in the general as a candidate for that position.

This will in fact happen in Washington’s Legislative District 7, Position 1 race, as four Republicans square off against each other today, with the top two Republicans making it to the general election ballot.

There is also great controversy over who can be a Democrat or a Republican; the current law allows the candidate to self-identify party affiliation, much to the frustration of both the Democratic and Republican Party establishments, who see the potential for considerable mischief in the arrangement. They also cite First Amendment “free association” issues and “branding” concerns.

All that controversy notwithstanding, about 75 well-wishers have shown up on a rainy night to see Darcy Burner, who is running for the second time against former Sheriff Dave (“I investigated the Green River Killer”) Reichert; each hoping to serve as the Representative from Washington’s 8th Congressional District in the 111th Congress.

She lost by about 7,000 votes to Reichert two years ago (out of 250,000 cast), and this race has attracted national attention as Reichert, naturally, is perceived to be vulnerable…and she is no longer perceived as unknown.

And judging by the results as they came in, she was again close…but she could not crack the 3% difference that was keeping them apart (47%-44%). In the King County voting she was only 462 votes behind Reichert, and the remainder of the difference is Reichert’s 2,100 vote lead in Pierce County.

Here’s the bad news for Reichert:

He’s a two-term incumbent from a district that has sent Republicans to Congress the past 8 elections—and he’s only leading by just those 2,600 votes—with lots of media money yet to come to the fight on the Democratic side and a public apparently ready to vote for change.

For the rest of Republican America…well, have a look at the Governor’s race:

Chris Gregiore (recently shortened from Christine) has the distinction of winning the closest gubernatorial election in American history (her margin, after two recounts and a lawsuit: 133 votes out of 2.8 million votes cast). She faces Dino Rossi, her 2004 opponent, again in this election…and you might expect the race would be just as tough for her. Rossi, and many others, certainly felt that was the case on August 14th.

It wasn’t. At the moment, with more than 98% of the primary vote counted, she’s leading by a 49% to 45% margin…suggesting the Don’t Know Dino ads are hitting the mark…and that the “fact check” response from the Rossi campaign is not.

Rossi issued this statement:

“We had a strong showing in the primary tonight. Current returns show we have received over 45 percent of the vote. To put these results into perspective, during the 2004 campaign I received just 34 percent of the vote in the primary and the General Election turned out to be significantly closer.”

Rossi’s name recognition will not be growing in this campaign, as it did during the ’04 cycle, and as a result he may have trouble growing his vote. Let me tell you, if your friendly fake consultant was working for Rossi, there’s a good chance that Prilosec might become part of the daily armor.

This is not the worst news for Republican strategists.

The worst news is found in the statewide “State Executive” positions that are partisan elected offices. For example…

…consider the State Treasurer position. “Treasurer-For-Life” Mike Murphy is not running for re-election, pitting two “zero name recognition” candidates against each other…and right now the Democrat, Jim McIntire, is losing by 29,000 out of 772,000 votes (44% to 40%), with only 24% of the voters showing up.

To make things a bit worse, the State’s three largest counties, with nearly 50% of the electorate between them (and counties that are often fertile ground for Democrats) are voting at less than the statewide average, suggesting turnout in Democratic-trending counties will be higher in November than it was today…especially with Obama at the top of the ticket.

…more downticket trouble for the Rs can be found in the Commissioner of Public Lands election, where Peter Goldmark (who might have been director of the State’s Department of Agriculture but still has no Statewide name recognition…) is running pretty much neck-and-neck with longtime incumbent Doug Sutherland, 50% to 49%.

Just so you know, Eastern Washington is fire engine red, electorally…and Western Washington’s more rural counties often provide the swing vote…which makes Goldmark’s success more surprising, as he’s an Eastern Washington Democrat.

…Democrat Jason Osgood, who previously worked with Washington Citizens for Fair Elections, pulled 33% of the vote in a Secretary of State race against the Republican incumbent Sam Reed, despite having no Statewide presence of any kind…or any name recognition, for that matter.

Of the nine Congressional Districts, the primary results suggest two safe Republican seats (WA-04 and WA-05), one uncertain race (the aforementioned WA-08), and at least six Democrats (WA-All The Others).

If Obama can raise turnout by an extra 3,000 new voters in WA-08, the resulting Delegation would be 7-2 Democratic…which would represent raising turnout by only 1% of the currently registered voters in that District.

…Spokane has two zero name recognition State Legislative candidates running for an empty seat, and the Democrat and Republican are running nearly even in a part of the State that should offer natural advantages to the Republican.

John Ahern, a 4-term Republican State Representative, also from Spokane, is also running in a near dead heat (50%-49%) against John Driscoll, who would be the first Democrat elected to this position since 1938.

In a Benton County race with no incumbent running (Conan O’Brien in the sun red, demographically), Carol Moser is stomping the Republican 40% to 18% in her Legislative race.

Incumbent Republican Jim Dunn is losing badly to Democrat Tim Probst (49% to 18%) in a Vancouver Legislative race that also would seem to favor Republicans.

I could go on and on, but this gives us a few general trends to examine:

Without Obama at the top of the ticket, Democrats are either staying close in Statewide elections—with no “name recognition” candidates—or grabbing the apparent lead in previously reliable Republican Legislative strongholds. In my quick search of the State Legislative results I could not find an incumbent Democrat who has fewer votes than a Republican challenger.

If Obama can bring enough new voters to the polls to raise turnout 1% WA-08 likely goes to Darcy Burner.

And finally, a Governor’s race that should have been much closer…ain’t.

There are several states (North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado…maybe even Indiana) where this trend could be a harbinger of very good things to come--and as I said at the top, outside of Maggie Valley and Bessemer Bend, the Republicans—especially downticket Republicans--might just be in a lot more trouble than they ever imagined.