For your convenience, we have all of Shift’s Newsmaker Interviews with legislative candidates on one page. Our readers often tell us they appreciate the interviews with Republican contenders Shift has posted since the old guard media cannot be bothered with providing in-depth coverage of candidates before an election. Every Friday since the end of the legislative session, Shift has posted an interview with one of the GOP candidates who is either running against an incumbent Democrat legislator or for an open seat. These are the races the Republicans will need to win in November to take control of the Washington Legislature. Republicans will need to win nine seats in the House and four seats in the Senate.

Thus far, we have 14 interviews posted (12 House and two Senate). We will continue to feature candidates until the November general election, including this Friday, when we have scheduled an interview with one of the top Republican contenders to take back a seat currently controlled by the Democrats. (Collection of Shift candidate Newsmaker Interviews)

This is likely the hundredth time today you will be reminded of this – please return your primary ballot to a drop box before 8:00 PM tonight. Please click on the link to find a ballot drop box near you. (Secretary of State ballot drop box locations)

You know Republican operatives must be at the top of their game if even loyal liberal reporter Joel Connelly says something positive about your work.  In a recent Post Alley column, the longtime political reporter for the Seattle P-I wrote about the candidate recruitment effort performed by House Republican leader JT Wilcox and the staff of the House Republican Caucus. “Wilcox has done his job on House recruiting with a statewide range of candidates that includes women, minority women, successful businesswomen, and police officers. It’s the party’s best legislative ticket in years.”  You can read interviews with many of these candidates on a new page created on the Shift website. Since Joel is being complimentary, we will not give him too much grief over a couple of significant factual errors he made in his column. He incorrectly wrote that the House of Representatives has 96 seats. It has 98, two from each of the state’s 49 legislative districts. He also twice misspelled the name of 39^th legislative candidate Sam Low (yeah, that is a tough name to misspell).  (Post Alley and Shift’s Newsmaker Interviews with legislative candidates)

Governor Jay Inslee and the Democrats in the Washington Legislature are quickly becoming the lone holdouts in the country who stubbornly refuse to suspend or reduce the gas tax to help lower and middle-income workers. Other states (even those completely controlled by big government liberals) have passed tax relief measures to help those struggling due to inflation and skyrocketing fuel prices.  In late June, Democrat President Joe Biden called for a three-month suspension of the federal 18-cents a gallon gas tax. Liberal Democrat Congressman Derek Kilmer (who represents the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas and parts of Tacoma) stated in an Aberdeen Daily World op-ed that he also supports suspending the gas tax. He wrote, “consumers would save some money at the pump if Congress passed a gas tax holiday.”

Meanwhile, Governor Inslee and the legislative Democrats refuse to understand the financial struggles that have suddenly hit many Washington workers. These struggles come down to inflation caused by reckless Democrat economic policies and the cost of gas due to Biden’s energy policies which left our country vulnerable when Putin invaded Ukraine. Maybe the governor and his Democrat colleagues in the Legislature are unaware of this pain. After all, they gave three pay raises in two years (with another one likely soon) to his major campaign contributors in the state government employee unions and their wealthy urban environmentalist friends. They are also driving around in $50,000 – $120,000 electric vehicles they purchased with the governor’s tax breaks. (Aberdeen Daily World, Q13 Fox News, and CNN)

The Seattle City Council will vote on a couple of pandemic-related business measures as it seeks to increase its powers by determining workers’ wages and how much a business can charge for its services.  Since the council’s policies on homelessness, drug addiction, crime, and housing have been such a great success, the anti-free market members of the Seattle City Council used the COVID pandemic as an excuse to further extend the city government’s powers by determining employee wages and business’ fees. The council will be deliberating and possibly voting today on whether to extend its $4 an hour “hazard pay” to grocery store workers and whether to remove the 15% limit it placed on food delivery businesses.

It was interesting to read the retroactive justification a spokesperson for Mayor Bruce Harrell gave for why the city gave grocery store workers their hazard pay increase in January of 2021 (10 months after the pandemic first hit). The spokesperson stated it was because “many other food-based businesses and nonprofit providers were closed.” This is simply not true.  Nearly all food banks had developed safe procedures to continue their operations, and most restaurants (both fast food and sit-down establishments) were safely providing meals to go. There was also no difficulty obtaining food at convenience and drug stores. All grocery stores had previously imposed multiple safety measures to keep their workers and customers safe before the “hazard pay” was imposed. The truth is the city council members caved into the demands of the powerful UFCW labor union to use COVID as an excuse to raise workers’ pay (and the dues the workers must pay to the unions). (Seattle Times)

The negative impact of the Democrats’ soft on-crime policies continues to cause the number of violent crimes to increase in Washington State.  Homicides in Tacoma have increased 50% from the same time period (January thru July) in 2021. The number of murders in Tacoma before July 31, 2022 was 27 versus 18 during the same months in 2021.  It is evident from the Democrats unwillingness to fix the state’s pursuit laws (SB 5919) during the 2022 legislative session that a drop in the number of crimes will not occur while those who are currently in office (who seem unconcerned about their responsibility to improve public safety) remain in power. (Q13 Fox News and Washington Legislature Bill Summary)

Small Tacoma employers are expressing frustration over the Sound Transit construction delays’ negative impact on their businesses.  One restaurant owner stated that, for over three years, the construction has impacted his businesses. “They broke ground in front of my shop in summer of 2019. Fast forward three years, they’re still closing roads here all around my shop. They still got construction materials and construction vehicles strewn about alongside road signs, closures. They are still digging up parts of the rail that they already installed.” The project is expected to be completed in September.  (MyNorthwest)

The battle over the inappropriately named “Camp Hope” continues as moderate and conservative lawmakers in Spokane seek to clean up the large homeless encampment on Washington State Department of Transportation property near I-90.  Meanwhile, liberal councilmembers continue to push for large government programs before they are willing to end the suffering of those in the encampments.  Two moderate/conservative councilmembers (Jonathan Bingle and Michael Cathcart) have offered proposals to regulate “urban camping.” Mayor Nadine Woodward supports the proposal.  Yet the liberal majority on the council has refused consideration, and the proposal is essentially dead.

Liberal Council President Breean Beggs stated that the proposal would bring about legal trouble since he believes it conflicts with the Martin v. Boise case, where a federal judge determined that a city cannot remove a homeless person from camping on public space unless it provided an alternative shelter space.  Yet Councilman Bingle contends legal research on the Martin case finds that a city does not need to have shelter space available for all who are homeless. Still, they can enforce health and safety laws so long as they are not seeking to ban all homeless individuals from their community.  Bingle contends that judges have allowed communities working towards providing shelter to enforce regulations on where and when people can camp and enforce public health regulations. (CenterSquare)

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