The good, the bad, and the ugly v.2020

It's the 2020 version of Jabe's voters' guide! If you find this useful, please forward/post it far and wide, especially if you have some undecided friends willing to think about the recommendations. (Even better are undecided friends willing to blindly follow the recommendations.) The fine print:

The views expressed here are mine and mine alone, etc., etc..
I focus on ballot measures (though there are few this year), but sometimes comment on a few important/interesting candidate races.
If you want my half-informed opinions on other races (or just want off this list) send me an email.
For details and generally good summaries, check out the State and King County Voters' Pamphlets.
For generally very good candidate and issue summaries and links, check out the most excellent Fuse's Progressive Voters Guide. (I call out one race where I disagree with them at the bottom.)
The following will make a lot more sense if you have your ballot in front of you.

Thanks!

Only have 60 seconds? The Reader's Digest version:

Referendum 90: If only Supreme Court nominees learned this in school… Vote APPROVED!
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Speaking of R90... Vote for Reykdal!
Advisory Vote #32-35: Long after Eyman dies... Vote MAINTAIN on all!
Senate Resolution 8212: Cash under the mattress is so 19th century. Vote APPROVED!
King County Charter Amendment 1-7: Mostly no-brainers. Vote YES on all!
King County Prop 1: Pray you don't need Harborview, thank the heavens for it if you do. Vote YES!
See below for recommendations on a few select candidate races or just... Vote for Inslee, Tarleton, Doglio, and...!

Have 20 minutes? Here's some more detail.

Referendum 90: If only Supreme Court nominees learned this in school… Vote APPROVED!

First, the mechanics. The legislature passed a bill, mostly along the predictable party lines, to change sex education in school districts from optional to mandatory. Conservatives, predictably unhappy with this bill (and evolution, and climate change, and epidemiology, and just a whole bunch of stuff), got Referendum Measure No. 90 (the full name) on the ballot, hoping, rather confusingly, that the voters would reject it. Why? Because if R-90 is approved, then the bill passed by the legislature gets enacted, while if R-90 is rejected, then the bill dies and we revert to our previous law where school districts could choose to do no sex education.

Counter to what sex education opponents imply, the new bill leaves in place previous law that: allows parents to excuse their children from such instruction if they so wish; requires that the education be age appropriate; and requires that any education not be abstinence-only. What the new bill does, besides requiring all districts to offer sex education, is be more specific about the attributes the curricula must have, while still leaving great discretion and control over details to individual districts, again, counter to misleading arguments from sex education opponents. In particular, the curricula must touch upon six topics, for example these two: "health care and prevention resources" and "affirmative consent and recognizing and responding safely when violence, or a risk of violence, is or may be present". Not particularly radical.

Here are the questions it raised for me.

First, does such education work? Studies show the answer to be yes, though it's not like it's going to prevent all unwanted pregnancies, date rapes, and such, just like teaching algebra doesn't mean everyone graduates actually able to solve a quadratic equation. And it matters what the curriculum is, e.g. abstinence-only and so-called 'abstinence-plus' programs, unsurprisingly, don't work. But science and data-informed curricula do. I found this 538 article pretty balanced.

Second, is there any evidence that such curricula lead to increased and earlier sexual activity? There are zero studies suggesting this that I could find.

Third, is the sex education going to come at the expense of "fundamental learning" as the opponents claim in the state Voters' Pamphlet. This is just a ridiculous claim. If you read the bill, its time requirements are very limited and whether we teach/assign 200 hours of, say, algebra in a year or only 190 has exactly zero to do with the quality of our algebra outcomes. And you don't have to avoid many unwanted and teen pregnancies or date rapes in order for the time spent on this to be worthwhile.

Another point not often mentioned but a weakness in the "it should be up to families to teach this" argument is that, as with driving, there are often innocent victims involved – overwhelmingly girls and women – when boys and men don't get exposed to these issues at a young age. We don't leave drivers ed up to families exactly because bad drivers kill not just themselves but other people. And, finally, there is the irony that the families arguably least likely to teach this stuff at all, let alone well, are the ones wanting to leave it up to the families.

All of that which leads me to say "Suck it up social conservatives. Your kids and our future Supreme Court justices will be better for it." Or, as my initial sub-title said (before rejection by my kitchen cabinet), "Boys should learn how to use their pric*s so as to not become pric*s." 🤣

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Speaking of R90... Vote for Reykdal!

I don't normally dive into candidate races till the end but this one is directly related to R90. The incumbent Superintendent is the quite capable and competent Chris Reykdal. On her website, his opponent, Maia Espinoza makes a bunch of totally vague generic comments about what we want from education – yes, better use of technology would be a good thing, yes, we want our kids to be life-long learners, yes, they need essentials skills – but doesn't anywhere offer any ideas on how to do any of that. Why? Because she's not really interested in solutions to those things, it's not why she's running. She's running – and being backed – because she believes that mandatory sex education "takes away local control and exposes our children to inappropriate material like teaching 4th graders about sexual positions and teacher-led role play." The hyperbolic bolding is hers. What crap! While it is certainly to be hoped that R90 will result in 4th graders – who are 10 years old, not 4 – learning that babies come from inserting tab A into slot B, no, it doesn't require instruction on particular positions for doing so. (And, hey, if you really favor abstinence, I can think of nothing as sure to encourage that as learning what your mom and dad did to make you and what positions they used. 🤣)

Advisory Votes #32-35: Long after Eyman dies... Vote MAINTAIN on all.

Long after Eyman dies we will still probably be having these stupid votes. As our readers will recall from every single past edition of this guide...

As a result of Eyman's 2007 initiative 960, the legislature can't even perform its constitutionally mandated job, and eliminate an unjustifiable tax exemption or extend an existing fee, without also asking the public for their non-binding, purely-symbolic, time-wasting, money-wasting opinion. It even requires misleading "black is white and night is day" language referring to increases in state revenues as "costs".

This year I happen to like all the bills passed by the legislature. Some of it was passed along party lines, some with bipartisan support. But it doesn't matter. The outcomes of these advisory votes will have zero, zip, zilch impact on anything. So I'm voting Maintain on all because I believe in letting the legislature do its job.

As I have limited time this year, I will borrow liberally from the Fuse Progressive Voters Guide to describe the underlying legislation that we are asked to cast meaningless votes on:

Advisory Vote #32 on Senate Bill 5323: Senate: Yeas 33, Nays 15; House: Yeas 67, Nays 29. From Fuse: "5323 ... prohibits the use of thin plastic bags at all retail establishments.... Thirty-eight municipalities throughout the state have already banned the use of thin bags in stores; bags for damp grocery items and produce bags are exempt from the ban. Paper and thick plastic bags would still be allowed but customers would be subject to an $.08 pass-through charge. People using benefits... will not be subject to this charge. Washington residents use an estimated 2 billion single-use plastic bags a year, which are a huge source of pollution in rivers and oceans, and end up ingested by scores of marine wildlife. Plastic bags also cause significant mechanical and contamination issues at recycling and compost facilities. Washington will become the eighth state in the nation to take this step to protect our health and ecosystems."
Advisory Vote #33 on Senate Bill 5628: Senate: Yeas 48, Nays 0; House: Yeas 53, Nays 44. OK, I give up, I have no clue what the net tax impact of this is – it raises one tax and exempts another. This is why we have a legislature and why the public shouldn't be weighing in on this stuff in this way. I guarantee you that at most 0.01% of the population have an even slightly informed opinion on this one and I am not among them. From Fuse: "This legislation provides a property tax exemption to heavy equipment rental property when owned by a heavy equipment rental property dealer. ... Additionally, beginning on January 1, 2022, a 1.25% heavy equipment rental tax will be levied to heavy equipment rental, to be distributed evenly between the multimodal transportation account and the motor vehicle fund created by the legislation."
Advisory Vote #34 on Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 6492: Senate: Yeas 28, Nays 21; House: Yeas 52, Nays 45. In 2019, the Legislature passed a bill to make public colleges more affordable, instituting a B&O tax to reduce costs for Washington's students. From Fuse: "6492 builds on the 2019 legislation by establishing the seventeen-member board, which will be filled by business leaders, students, labor leaders, and others to provide guidance to the Legislature on which workforce education priorities should be paid for by the fund. The bill also clarifies the complex 2019 legislation to make clear which businesses will be taxed, exempting more than 70,000 small businesses and setting a rate of 1.75% for businesses grossing more than $1 million annually."
Advisory Vote #35 on Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 6690: Senate: Yeas 45, Nays 4; House: Yeas 73, Nays 24. Passed overwhelmingly by both chambers, "6690 seeks to bring the state's business and occupation tax rate on the aerospace industry in line with the world trade organization's ruling. The Legislature originally passed this controversial tax break to incentivize Boeing to keep jobs in the state, though some progressives have since said they regret their vote. However, the current B&O tax rate of 0.2904% violates the World Trade Organization's rules. With the support of the aerospace industry, the Legislature repealed the preferential B&O tax for the aerospace industry and brought it back to the regular rate of 0.357%. This change should bring the state and the nation into compliance, and end the threat of retaliatory tariff threats against Washington industries such as fish, wine, and intellectual property." Who the frick were the nays on this one?

Senate Resolution 8212: Cash under the mattress is so 19th century. Vote APPROVED!

Passed by overwhelming margins (45-3 in the Senate, 96-1 in the House), "8212 would give the Washington State Investment Board more options to responsibly manage Washington's Long-Term Care Trust Fund in order to ensure every elderly Washingtonian can rely on and afford the long-term care services they need, when they need it. By giving the state investment board the ability to invest the trust fund, more families in Washington will be able to receive funding for care, with a benefit of up to $36,500 indexed to inflation. The state already invests pensions for frontline workers like our teachers, police, and firefighters in this manner, allowing the funds to responsibly grow in value over time. The Long-Term Care Trust is overseen by a trusted, independent commission and will begin paying out benefits in 2025, offering seniors in Washington the care they need." The constitutional prohibition on investing public funds in private companies was well-intentioned but is anachronistic in the 21st century. We still need, and have, an investment board with restrictions on what risks they can take, but complete prohibition is just fiscally unsound.

King County Charter Amendment 1-7: Mostly no-brainers. Vote YES on all!

These are mostly no brainers, usually with no "Statement in opposition" even submitted to the King County Voters' Pamphlet and I'll just quote the proposed amendment. But I found 5 & 6 worthy of some discussion.

Amendment 1: "Shall King County Charter Section 895 concerning mandatory inquests be amended to: (1) clarify that an inquest is required when a member of a law enforcement agency's action, decision, or possible failure to offer appropriate care might have contributed to an individual's death; and (2) to provide an attorney at the county's expense to represent the decedent's family in the inquest proceeding?"
Amendment 2: "Shall Section 230.10.10 of the King County charter be amended to remove a charter restriction on the county's authority to transfer, lease or sell real property for less than fair market value when the property will be used for affordable housing?"
Amendment 3: "Shall the Preamble and Sections 260 and 800 of the King County charter be amended to replace the word “citizen” with “public,” “member of the public” or “resident,” as applicable?" It's worth noting that, as the Voters' Pamphlet explains, this isn't just wordsmithing, there is an important distinction here: "The county serves everyone, including residents who do not have citizenship. Our county charter currently refers to people mostly as “public” or “residents”; in just a few places does it use “citizen” where it isn't necessary to make that distinction."
Amendment 4: I best most of us thought that the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight already had this completely common sense ability: "Shall Section 265 of the King County charter be amended to authorize the office of law enforcement oversight to subpoena witnesses, documents and other evidence related to its investigations and reviews of county law enforcement officers?" How else are they supposed to be able to actually provide oversight?
Amendments 5 & 6: These two are related, with the same opposition (and if you can judge a measure by its enemies, then these are both good measures). Democracy is great and all, but not every position should be elected. For example, as much as I dislike recent Supreme Court nominees, I don't think electing them would result in a higher quality court; I'd rather see progressives get their political act together and win the White House, make constitutional changes to the Senate so that the majority wasn't determined by a surprisingly small minority of the population; and not make them life-time appointments.

Likewise, I would much rather that the county sheriff be chosen by a representative, fairly diverse, fairly large elected body like the King County Council than by a low-information popularity and money contest. Amendment 5 would make the sheriff an appointed position, as it was from 1969 to 1996.

Meanwhile the sheriff's duties are currently determined by state law, not county ordinance, and the council is prohibited from decreasing the duties of the sheriff's office. Amendment 6 strikes that prohibition and gives the council greater say in the structure of the sheriff's office and the office of public safety. Mind you, I am not a fan of the understandable but "blunt instrument" calls for defunding the police. I'd rather, for example, see police officers paid more in exchange for a significantly decreased role of the union in hiring, firing, investigations and discipline. But I am a fan of rethinking what public safety really is and the best way to achieve it and giving a representative elected body the power to do that.

I'd encourage you to read the actual amendments as well as the statements for and against 5 & 6 here. Personally, I found the 'statements for' to be reasonable and, more so, the 'statements against' to be the usual knee-jerk fear-mongering ones from the usual suspects.
Amendment 7: Back to "Duh!" with, again, no submitted "Statement of opposition": "Shall Section 840 of the King County charter be amended to prohibit discrimination in county employment and in county contracting with nongovernmental entities on the basis of status as a family caregiver, military status or status as a veteran who was honorably discharged or who was discharged solely as a result of the person's sexual orientation or gender identity or expression?"

King County Prop 1: Pray you don't need Harborview, thank the heavens for it if you do. Vote YES!

This property tax of $0.09 per $1000 of property value helps maintain and improve Harborview, the only Level 1 trauma center serving AK, ID, MT and WA. Harborview is already near capacity while the population of the region it serves, especially King County, continues to grow. Note the total absence of any "Statement in opposition" in the Voters' Pamphlet. They couldn't even get Eyman to write one.

Other races where I have strong recommendations.

I've got a relatively small number of candidate recommendations this year. But email me if you know me and want to ask about specific races. Or, better, just consult Fuse's Progressive Voters Guide.

Governor: I'm hoping no one on this distribution list is seriously considering voting for the completely, utterly, unqualified Culp. I'm not an Inslee fan-boy. I'd give him only a B+ for his handling of COVID-19. Specifically I think he didn't talk enough (and arguably didn't do enough) about the economic impacts of COVID-19 (which have very real long-term health impacts that might end up being greater than the also very real direct health impacts of COVID-19) and I think he was insufficiently sensitive to the very different economies of places like Wenatchee and Yakima versus Seattle and Tacoma. But overall his handling of COVID-19 and, as a consequence, our state's infection stats and trajectory, have been among at least the top quartile in the country. Meanwhile, on other issues like climate and economic justice, he is outstanding (and to the extent to which he hasn't gotten as much done as we'd like, look to either elect more D's to the state Senate or un-elect the few lame D's, like Mark Mullet).

It's not just that Culp is unqualified and couldn't muster up enough interest in or knowledge of policy to submit more than a content-free one paragraph statement to the state Voters' Pamphlet. It's that he would appear to not know anything about anything. Go to his web site and see if you can find, under "Loren's Solutions", any mention at all of climate, for example. I couldn't. Seriously? We're a fire-ravaged state with snow-pack dependent energy and agriculture systems. His submission on his experience to the Voters' Pamphlet says it all – nothing:

Secretary of State: Vote for Gael Tarleton! It drives me crazy that Kim Wyman gets credit for any part of Washington's truly great election system despite having had almost nothing to do with it. As Secretary of State she dragged her feet on the Washington Voting Rights Act, same-day voter registration, and postage-paid ballots. Most of what has improved about our voting system under her tenure was forced upon her by the state legislature, yet she proudly takes credit for it (while financially supporting the campaigns of blatant disenfranchisers like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger). Gael Tarleton is the clear choice here. This admittedly very biased blog post is nonetheless a worthwhile read.

US 10th Congressional District: Vote for Beth Doglio! Here's a better reason to vote for her than my endorsement: US Rep Pramila Jayapal is endorsing her. I want more people like Pramila representing our state and running our country. And while we need more women of color in DC – demographics that Marilyn Strickland shares with Pramila – they are not, by themselves, sufficient qualifications. What makes Pramila so outstanding is that she is a tireless, fearless, and whip-smart progressive. So is Beth. Marilyn? Not by a long shot.

I find it ironic that the top two items on Marilyn's web site's Priorities are an "Inclusive Economy" and "Climate Change". Let's start with climate. The things she did as Tacoma mayor were mostly green-sounding but symbolic and toothless like "committing Tacoma to the Paris Climate Accord". She did face one issue in Tacoma with huge climate implications – the proposed emissions-disaster methanol refinery – and she was on the wrong side of it. At first she consistently supported it with the usual "it creates jobs and that's all that matters" framing used so successfully by so many industries (coal mining, asbestos mining, weapons exports, ...). But then, once the public sentiment started to change, she tried to distance herself from it. As one of the lead warriors against the facility put it, "she's a skilled politician, she pretty quickly tacks to the political center".

By contrast, while the hugely successful (but on-going!) campaign to stop the new coal and oil infrastructure in WA & OR has lots of heroes, if there is a Nobel prize given to just one of them, it would certainly be awarded to Beth Doglio, who led the Power Past Coal coalition before serving in the State House. Better still, Beth is one of the few hard-core climate champions who understands the economic and technical realities of really getting to carbon neutral. It's great that we have Green New Deal advocates in DC, but what we need there even more are people who understand the real barriers and solutions to achieve it as deeply as Beth.

That explains why the two environmental organizations in WA that make political endorsements – Sierra Club and Washington Conservation Voters – endorsed Beth, and only Beth, not Marilyn.

As for an "inclusive economy", the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, of which Marilyn was most recently the President and CEO, is a rather odd place to go work if you really cared about that particular issue. You'll recall that in 2019, the Chamber poured an obscene amount of money into the Seattle City Council races to try to elect people who wouldn't tax them. When she called me to ask for my support of her race in the 10th I asked her about this. The conversation, as best I can recall it, went like this:

Do you think that the Chamber PAC should be spending millions when the city is trying to reform elections to get money out? Doesn't that make sort of a mockery of Seattle's efforts at making elections fairer through public funding? She said she wasn't really involved in the PAC. Lame answer, you've got a voice, use it.
There are some reasonable arguments against the head tax but do you have any other ideas for how one could raise needed revenue in a non-regressive way, given the homelessness crisis and the exploding population of Seattle? She didn't offer up any. Great, complaints without solutions.
The thing that bothered me most about the PAC ads wasn't their opposition to a head tax, it was their "our taxes are already too high, taxes are bad" anti-tax framing that would have delighted Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich. Couldn't you have used some messaging that actually focused on what you thought was unfair without just doing the work of the right? She explained that since she didn't live in Seattle she hadn't see those mailers. Seriously, you run the Chamber and you didn't once see any of the mailers? Lame, lame, lame answer.

Our state's "most regressive in the country" tax system is both one of the worst symptoms and causes of an unfair economic system. Marilyn offered zero ideas in our conversation about this issue while, meanwhile, Beth was down in Olympia trying to pass progressive tax reform. Such tax reform might pass this session if the 2020 elections go well but it stalled in 2019 not because of Republican opposition (though they of course opposed it) but because of the cowardice of a few D Senators who "tacked to the political center".

That's not what we need in DC. We need another Pramila. Pramila would seem to think that is Beth. So do I.

King County Superior Court Position 30: Vote for North! I added this only after 5 viewers asked me about this race. The environmentalist lawyers I trust the most all say that North is the strongest environmental voice and vote on the King County Superior Court. But Fuse, while endorsing both North and his opponent, Carolyn Ladd, gave a slight nod to Ladd specifically because of an incident in 2015 where North made an undeniably racist comment in court. What struck me was that the only organization listed on Fuse's website offering an endorsement for either candidate over the other was the Stranger, that unwitting caricature of Seattle political correctness, especially in matters of social justice. And they endorsed North!! They make the case that North really took the incident seriously and worked to learn from it. Meanwhile, as they wrote: "Carolyn Ladd spent most of her career as in-house counsel at Boeing, which the Boeing machinists union apparently didn’t find too impressive—they endorsed North over Ladd." (It's also bizarre that in this day of greater awareness of who our cultural biases benefit versus disadvantage, her web site highlights that "I have made it a point to create pathways for women to succeed in law wherever I can. As a former Miss Oregon, I mentor young women who compete in the Miss America Pageant and go on to become lawyers." Surely there are more disadvantaged groups of women to be mentoring. But I digress, back to North.) If we believe that every racist incident is a forgivable aberration unrepresentative of underlying character, we are naive. But if we believe that people can't learn and change, then we are both wrong and totally screwed. So after talking to a bunch of pretty damn politically correct Seattle lawyers who have worked with him, I came to the conclusion that North was a good guy with a very strong environmental record who revealed a genuine racial bias and took ownership of it and has worked on it. If the Stranger can forgive and support him, I can. And he's the better candidate.