In case you all forgot, we have a primary race for Governor going on in Washington state.
Many Democrats are dispirited after eight years of our current governor. The Locke administration has struggled in an environment where business, dressed up in orphan's tatters, successfully presses its claims to tax breaks and subsidies. Meanwhile the legislature treats our schools, roads, streambeds and clinics like they are grasping landlords, selfishly seeking an annual rent increase. To be sure, Locke didn't want this scenario, but he really hasn't done much to change it.
After eight years, Washington Democrats yearn for someone who will lift our hearts and lead us to a fairer politics, someone who can inspire the faithful, convince our fellow citizens distrustful of government that bold solutions can work, and show courage in leadership.
Nevertheless, if the polls are to be believed, many Democrats are apparently ready to settle for much less than their hopes. Gregoire leads in the polls, although the lead is the only reason most people name when they say they support her. The race has devolved to electability, that weed imported from the national democratic race. That plant strangled several interesting candidates in the national race to the nomination so that the Democratic party could stand united against the truly grave threat Bush poses to the nation. But Dino Rossi is not George Bush. Granted, he's a superficially more attractive candidate then the Republicans have run for years, but he's not such a threat that Democrats have to get unite behind an opponent early. Both Sims and Gregoire can beat him. So, it's a bit of a puzzle why this notion has taken such root here.
Partially it's because the national race has consumed the electoral oxygen in the state. Democrats have not had the time to focus on this race so the only thing they know about the issues is what the polls say. That focus should turn now that the national race is settled and the Legislature is in recess. As to the inevitability of polls, if Democrats should have learned anything at all this primary season, it is that front runners fail. Any Democrat who thinks that early polls predict winners need only peel back their Kerry campaign signs to the Dean, Clark and Edwards posters underneath. Finally, part of the lead she owes to Paul Berendt, who, as head of the state party, took sides early on, just as he did in the national primary campaign. Flipping between Dean and Gregoire must have given him ideological whiplash. But that is a growing story for another day.
We still have the opportunity in this primary to decide what qualities of leadership we want our governor to hold. So let's have a debate about this.
Inspiration: Ever heard Gregoire speak? Ever heard Sims speak? Case closed for Sims as the winner of the inspiration race. At a time when initiative after initiative and poll after poll reveal the extent to which the public does not trust government, a candidate's ability to inspire the public will be critical to forging a new consensus about the state's priorities.
Innovation: During a time of extreme budget cutbacks in King County, Sims encouraged city governments to take over park functions and devised and implemented the parks levy. It kept a vital service open to the public and funded, while honoring the public's desire to vote on new taxes. Over the same time he reduced the staff at Metro while increasing the numbers of buses and extending routes into unserved areas of the county. His policies saved Snoqualmie Falls from development. Recognizing that the rate of growth of health care costs at 19% per year is unsustainable for county government, he's joining with unions to develop a new approach to provide health care to county workers while containing costs.
Courage: Sound Transit should be Sims' ticket. Yes, it is over budget. It's not going as far, or as soon, or as cheap, as everyone expected years ago. It has always been a controversial project with many detractors. But Sims is convinced that the public was right when it passed this measure. A regional mass transportation system is critical to the future of the region. When there were missteps along the way, he saw to it that they were fixed. For this he has taken huge personal abuse. He has given back the energy, diligence and patience necessary to keep it on track.
Thirty years ago, politicians shrank when the public first registered sticker shock with a mass transit system. Had Ron Sims been County Executive then, we would have a fully functioning mass transit system like San Francisco's BART for a fraction of today's cost. We cannot repeat this mistake, and he has not let us. So even if you are among those unhappy with some aspect of this massive transportation project, consider the leadership it has taken to guide it to groundbreaking, and understand this: groundbreaking has taken place. Who else would have stayed the course? Wouldn't it be fine idea to have some of that persistence at the state level?
Sims supported gay and lesbian rights long before doing so was popular among Democrats. Almost 20 years ago when he on the King County Council, he was a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to stop the county from accepting a fraudulent referendum petition against the county fair employment ordinance that included protections for sexual orientation. Today he supports a proposed county ordinance requiring county contractors to make domestic partnership benefits available to their employees.
In the midst of the hottest civil rights issue of our time, all the Democratic candidates for president hide behind civil unions while Bush backs a constitutional amendment banning any recognition of gay relationships, both marriage and civil unions. In contrast, Sims supports full equality for gay and lesbian partners, including the right to have their marriages recognized by the state. Furthermore he has had the courage to back up his beliefs by helping start the efforts to have the state's discriminatory marriage law declared unconstitutional.
Gregoire is a good person. She's good attorney. But nothing about being Attorney General is a test of executive leadership. The chief attorney of a state enforces its past policies. The duties of that office shed no light on how well she will advocate new policies, reach political consensus in the public and the legislature to pass them and then to administer them. The job requirements of the King County Executive, on the other hand, are quite similar to the governor's. He has to deal with a legislature that is in and out of the control of the opposite party, administer county programs, and be the county's chief law enforcement officer. King County is the 12th most populous county in the nation. Within its border live 1.7 million people. Almost half of Washington state's private nonfarm jobs are here. By contrast the population of the entire state of, say, Vermont, is only 613,000.
As for her politics, Gregoire's a candidate in the tradition of Joe Lieberman. She's a fiscal conservative. She wears the label proudly. She says the state should not raise taxes, but she won't say what programs are on her chopping block. She's a feminist, but in 1985, she opposed comparable worth. In 1988 she was the pro-business candidate appointed to be Director of the Department of Ecology in order to eviscerate the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority, playing Doug Sutherland to Jennifer Belcher. Today, Gayle Norton, Bush's decidedly environmentally unfriendly Director of the Interior, introduces her around the country. She started her career under Slade Gorton, and to this day her office continues to reflect many of his policies toward Indian Country. She does not support the state's efforts to compact with Indian tribes and her office has opposed numerous Indian sovereignty issues, although she seems to have pivoted recently since she started running for Governor. Gregoire's only response to the gay marriage debate has been a press release stating "now is not the time" for gay and lesbian people to have their relationships recognized before the law.
Given her stand on the issues, it's probably not surprising that, when liberals discuss her candidacy, you don't hear anyone saying "Chris has done a great job managing the Attorney General's office." You don't hear "I really like the position she took on X" You never hear anyone explain how she's going to resolve the deadlock in Olympia, or how she'll move the public to a new trust in government. If you hear about anything other than the polls, it's the tobacco settlement and she's a woman.
She did help negotiate the tobacco settlement. It showed good negotiating skills with an industry backed, by others, into the position of having to negotiate. But it's not clear how those skills relate to the governor's office. The legislature isn't cornered like the tobacco industry was. While her campaign intends to use the settlement to pose her as the "Big Tobacco" Slayer, the settlement didn't even put a dent Big Tobacco's current coffers. The money will come from profits over future years that the industry will make off heavy smokers, an irony apparently lost on anti-smoking advocates describing the negotiations as a model. Two years ago, the legislature swooped down and grabbed up the proceeds to rescue the general fund. Fully one-third of the health projects the settlement was supposed to create will not be funded as a result. That was not her fault, but how much of a fuss do you remember her making about it?
In fact, her failure to vigorously oppose that raid is emblematic of the difference between these two candidates. The critical question for Gregoire that people ought to ask in this primary is this: Can you think of one politically difficult stand she has ever taken? If she's never done it in the past, why does anything think she'll start doing it as governor? Doesn't this remind you a lot of the last eight years?
Some people say Sims can't win eastern Washington. Is that code for an African American can't win in eastern Washington? Does anyone have any facts that support this conclusion? If it's a fiction, is it one any Democrat should be advancing? Anyway, the fear of a blowout there is totally misplaced. Sims grew up in Spokane. He went to Central Washington college. He's maintained his ties there. In his race against Gorton he polled well in Spokane. Statewide races in Washington are still won in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap Counties. At last count, those counties were still well within the liberal crescent of Puget Sound.
It is true that Gregoire has won three statewide campaigns and Sims hasn't. Bet you can't name one of her opponents. Only the first of her races for attorney general was even against a credible opponent and she's hasn't increased her vote margin since. Ok, Norm Maleng, by 55% margin in 1992, Richard Pope (Richard Pope? Who is Richard Pope?), by 60% in 1996, Richard Pope again in 2000, back down to 55%. If you look at the county-by-county totals she lost a lot of eastern Washington counties.
During the 1994 Republican sweep, Sims lost his only statewide campaign for the U.S. Senate against Slade Gorton. It is this experience people recall when they say he can't win in eastern Washington. Well, neither could any white Democrat that year. That was the same year that Tom Foley and four other Washington Democratic representatives lost their seats to Republicans. Sims did better than any other Democrat in the country that year running against an incumbent senator. Maria Cantwell lost her seat in that race; she came back eight years later to win a statewide race. While it is no doubt true that Gregoire is a candidate more congenial to the typical eastern Washington voter, that hardly seems like a qualification liberals would choose for a governor.
So the primary race comes down to this. We have a choice between two styles of leadership: one daring to speak to our hopes and our hearts, the other four more years of the last eight years. I want a Governor who inspires me, who has shown that he is not afraid to suggest bold solutions for our state's problems, who will put his career on the line to see to it that they prevail. That's why Ron Sims has my vote.