State Superintendent of Public Instruction – and former Democrat State Representative – Randy Dorn said he is contemplating running for governor as an Independent. Dorn believes that “neither Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee nor Republicans are living up to their duty to fund public schools.” His candidacy would be “to prod Inslee and Republican challenger Bill Bryant on education funding.”
Bryant’s campaign argues that Dorn’s claims are simply untrue. Bryant is running on a platform to make fully funding education our state’s first and top priority— something that, unlike Democrats, GOP lawmakers in the Senate majority have proved over the last few years they could be trusted to do.
Dorn’s accusations concerning Inslee’s [failed] leadership on education certainly hits closer to the mark. Dorn said of our green governor, “If it comes to global warming, ocean acidity, carbon, he’s all-in no matter what. But it’s not the paramount duty as a governor to solve global warming.”
There’s no way for Inslee to dodge Dorn’s line of attack. Placing his extreme “green” agenda ahead of actual priorities is what Inslee has done his entire first term as governor. The Seattle Times points out,
“In 2015, Inslee tried to meld the issues of education and climate in proposing a cap-and-trade system that would have raised $1 billion a year by selling pollution permits to large carbon emitters. A portion of that money would have been devoted to schools. The plan died in the Legislature.”
Democrats do not place K-12 funding at the top of their list of priorities. As Shift will continue to point out, even if the mainstream media will not, it is Democrats who have underfunded public education and higher education spending for a generation.
Democrats have controlled at least one house of the Legislature in 30 of the last 32 years – and had complete control of the Legislature in 14 of those years. A Democrat governor has signed every state budget since 1985. Under these heavily Democrat-controlled budgets, new spending for bigger state government has outpaced new education spending by a 2-to-1 ration.
The fact that Jay Inslee followed the trend set by his party predecessors, holding public education spending hostage to other big-government priorities, should come as no surprise. Inslee’s first priority was, and remains, his extreme “green” agenda.
Dorn is absolutely correct. Not sure if he has the leadership capabilities to be governor because he is also part of the problem about education: he is totally in bed with the WEA. No matter what level of funding the legislature puts forward, WEA will be there to get their pockets lined with taxpayer dollars at the expense of quality education for our children. So, at the end of the day, fully funding education is really a myth because there will never be enough for WEA and plaintiffs attorneys filing lawsuits like McLeary.
If Inslee make education the top priority, you’d attack him for that. All you do in this blog is attempt to make Inslee look bad. He and Obama have finally learned, the extreme right does not want to find common ground, they just want to get rid of the Dems.
Inslee makes himself look bad. He doesn’t need any help.
Your response is really kind of humorous and only shows your partisanship. If anyone criticizes a democrat, they just, in your own words, ‘they just want to get rid of Dems’. Actually, everyone, including Dems, just want solutions not more partisan rancor and chronyism. Do what’s best for the state, Washingtonians and not what is best for the special interests and you won’t get criticized. Until then, you get criticized-by the way: the criticism comes from all political angles when it comes to this hapless governor, including Dems.
Don with your support of socialism you fit right in with the extreme left progressives like Inslee and Sanders.