When a Seattle Democrat who helped pass a 9.9% income tax gets accused of being too moderate, you know the Overton window has left the building.
Seattle’s Far Left Wants to Out-Left the Left
State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen is facing a challenge from the left in Seattle’s 43rd Legislative District, where labor activist Hannah Sabio-Howell argues the longtime Democrat has become too much of the status quo for a district that already leans heavily progressive.
Sabio-Howell isn’t running as some ideological outsider demanding that Seattle suddenly become conservative. She supports Pedersen’s new 9.9% “millionaires tax”—she just thinks taxing millionaires isn’t enough. She wants corporations taxed more, too, and says Pedersen hasn’t done enough to address housing, rent and childcare costs.
Pedersen, who has represented the district for nearly 20 years, pushed back on the suggestion that he’s insufficiently progressive. His résumé includes gun-control legislation, marriage equality, tax reform and the new millionaires tax. In other words, the guy who helped create Washington’s latest tax is now being told by the left that he needs to move further left.
The Democratic establishment is split: Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson endorsed Sabio-Howell, while Gov. Bob Ferguson backed Pedersen. Pedersen won about 66% of the primary vote compared with Sabio-Howell’s roughly 23%, but the challenger argues higher general-election turnout could help her.
And despite their differences over who is sufficiently progressive, both candidates agree on who they want to defeat: conservative initiatives backed by Brian Heywood’s Let’s Go Washington. Read more at KUOW.
Oops: The Supreme Court May Have Created a Problem for Olympia’s Tax Bill
The Washington Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision striking down I-2066 over the constitutional single-subject rule could have consequences far beyond natural gas. The court ruled that the voter-approved initiative improperly bundled natural-gas access, building codes, utility rates and Clean Air Act provisions into one measure.
Now the obvious question is: what about Olympia’s own legislative grab bag?
The state’s new income tax was buried inside ESSB 6346 alongside changes to the B&O tax, sales-tax provisions, an expansion of the Working Families Tax Credit and other spending provisions. As Shift WA previously pointed out, the Washington Policy Center has put forward the argument that if the Supreme Court’s newly reaffirmed single-subject standard applies equally to legislation, the income-tax package could face scrutiny too.
Greg Lane of the Building Industry Association of Washington says the ruling has opened a “can of worms” for lawmakers because legislation could now have to meet the same standard the court applied to I-2066. In other words, Olympia may have just received a constitutional reminder that “let’s throw everything into one bill and vote on it once” isn’t necessarily a legal strategy.
Republican Party Chairman Jim Walsh is also questioning whether the ruling could eventually affect I-645, the November initiative seeking to repeal the income tax. Washington Policy Center’s Ryan Frost notes that I-645 was drafted narrowly to repeal the income tax while leaving other tax relief provisions intact, potentially avoiding the same single-subject challenge. Read more at The Center Square.
Jayapal Accidentally Gives Washington Voters a Handy “Who to Avoid” List
Rep. Pramila Jayapal emailed supporters a list of 45 candidates she wanted elected in November, including nine Washington candidates. The fundraising email pushed Medicare for All and asked supporters for money.
Then came the correction.
Jayapal’s campaign acknowledged Tuesday morning that the endorsement list was incorrect, saying every candidate on the original list had been endorsed by Jayapal but only the candidates on the corrected list had committed to supporting Medicare for All in Congress.
As Seattle Red’s Jason Rantz points out, the original email is riddled with cringeworthy mistakes. It misspelled Washington Supreme Court candidate Jaime Hawk’s first name, put King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda in the wrong district, and promised that even candidates running for supposedly nonpartisan Supreme Court seats would fight Big Pharma—raising questions about how that squares with judicial impartiality.
The corrected list shrank from 45 candidates to 30, with all nine Washington names disappearing. Rantz lays out those nine candidates, including several state legislators, a King County councilmember and three Supreme Court candidates, and notes that Jayapal herself says she is working to elect “progressive fighters” around the country.
Jayapal’s campaign is trying to build a national progressive movement while apparently struggling to keep its own endorsement spreadsheet straight. Read more at Seattle Red.
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