The news in the new year is not good for rookie Governor Jay Inslee, with the annual pre-legislative session Elway Poll showing that the voters’ views of his job performance continue to decline.
According to Elway, “Jay Inslee’s job performance ratings have declined slightly every 6 months since his first anniversary in office. In rating his overall performance and each of four aspects of the job of Governor, a majority of voters in this survey said he is doing a ‘poor’ or ‘only fair.’ The biggest change since last July was a drop from 41 percent to 33 percent in the positive marks for ‘articulating a vision of the future of the state.’”
Even more troubling for Inslee – who never has seemed to be very concerned about the actual job of governing – is that his re-election numbers are also low. Again, Elway: “Governor Jay Inslee has a race on his hands. With only 39% of voters polled inclined to vote for his reelection… Every election is largely a referendum on the incumbent, and this one is starting out to be just that. The story early in this election year is Inslee’s apparent vulnerability.”
Inslee has been busy announcing executive actions lately – new Ecology rules to drive up energy costs, new gun rules to appeal to his liberal Seattle base, etc. – try and appear like he is leading. However, the fact that he hasn’t been able to get any of his priorities through even the Democrat State House signal just how weak he is in Olympia.
His fundraising weakness, as reported by Shift last month, is another problem for Inslee, as he has already spent half the money he has raised over the least three years.
Now we have 11 months to see if those undecided voters put as high a priority on talking about climate change as Inslee does.
