When Jay Inslee first ran for governor, he made a no-new-taxes promise. We know how that turned out.
The many tax bills Inslee has supported and signed have taken billions of dollars from Washington families and employers. They also have enabled state spending to more than double during his time in office.
Now, Bob Ferguson is finally getting his chance to run for governor, after having to stand aside while fellow Democrat Inslee pursued a third term in 2020.
In a television campaign ad, the attorney general makes a lot of promises about what he would do if promoted to the governor’s mansion. But a look at his record offers no reason to trust he will keep them.
For instance, he declares he will “hire more police officers” — which would be done through a $100 million grant program to help local governments provide financial bonuses.
While that idea has potential, it’s not nearly as good as what the Senate Republican Caucus offered in 2022. Our Senate Bill 5841 would have designated about $250 million a year to help cities and counties hire officers.
Had Ferguson bothered to speak in favor of our proposal when it came up for a public hearing in the Senate Ways and Means Committee that year, maybe his fellow Democrats would not have been so willing to let the bill die.
Ferguson was just as silent these past two years as both Senate and House Republicans put similar pro-officer bills on the table — again, to no avail.
What voters should know is that Ferguson, despite professing his interest in hiring more officers, is proudly in league with an organization that disparages police officers.
Two months ago, Ferguson crowed on his X feed about being endorsed by the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. On the surface, this group purports to be about reducing gun violence.
However, a statement posted on the alliance’s website also declares that today’s police structure “dates back to slave patrols in colonial America and has evolved into the institution that disproportionately stops, arrests, harasses and wields violence against Black people.”
Talk about your political double-speak: Ferguson brags about his support from a group that all but labels police officers as a bunch of racists, yet wants voters to believe he is sincere about hiring more officers.
The law enforcement leaders who supported the Republican effort to strengthen police agencies are understandably tired of our state continuing to be dead-last in the nation for the number of officers based on population. Washington consistently ranks 51st, meaning even the District of Columbia does better.
Compensation issues are certainly part of why communities have trouble recruiting and retaining officers.
However, the larger reason is the pervasive disrespect shown to our law-enforcement community by people like Ferguson’s comrades at the Alliance for Gun Responsibility (which, it should be noted, also declares the Second Amendment has a history of being used “as a tool of White Supremacy”).
Of course, Ferguson won’t stand up against this group’s anti-police claims — not seeing how he has used the power of his office to do the bidding of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility.
The laws passed since 2022 to ban certain firearm magazines, ban certain semi-automatic firearms and effectively end the retail sales of firearms in our state all are part of the alliance’s agenda, and each began as a bill requested by Ferguson.
If Ferguson is sincere about combating crime, as his TV ad also claims, he could have gotten behind Republican bills to deter the theft of firearms, or increase penalties for the use of firearms in committing crimes.
Instead, the priority for the attorney general and his allies has been on treating law-abiding firearm owners like they’re the criminals.
In his TV ad, Ferguson also vows to “get those in crisis the care they need.” That’s code for people whose lives have been turned upside down by drug use. It’s also more double-speak.
In 2021, Ferguson had called for decriminalizing the possession of drugs for personal use, calling it a “bold but necessary step.”
A majority of our Democratic colleagues shared his view. That year, they enacted a policy change that enabled abusers of fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin and other hard drugs to avoid court-ordered treatment. Drug overdoses have since become the leading cause of death for Washington residents age 60 and younger.
Conveniently, Ferguson now doesn’t admit to voters that more people are “in crisis” because a drug policy he wanted put them there.
Ferguson is far from the only Democrat with a public-safety problem. Democratic state Sen. Manka Dhingra, who wants to succeed Ferguson as attorney general, was a leader of the opposition to restoring the ability of police to pursue suspected criminals.
Thankfully, Washington voters overcame the resistance from her and many other Democrats by putting Initiative 2113 before the Legislature, and helping Republicans successfully press for its passage in March.
Senator Dhingra was also prime sponsor of a bill that would have immediately given more than 125 offenders serving time for aggravated murder or first-degree murder an opportunity to seek a commutation of their sentences.
Gary Ridgway, the “Green River Killer,” was not on that list because of specific wording in his sentencing agreement — but other heinous murderers would have been.
Amazingly, that bill (Senate Bill 5036) was passed by Senate Democrats not only in 2021 but again in 2022. While the House Democrats didn’t go along either year, we’ve seen some equally criminal-friendly proposals come from that side of the Capitol Rotunda.
In the past two years alone, House Democrats have pushed legislation to reduce prison sentences, allow felons to serve on juries while behind bars, and let sex offenders off of community supervision.
At the same time, they won’t join Republicans to clamp down on adults who endanger helpless children by exposing them to fentanyl.
Public safety has been a pillar of the Senate Republican legislative agenda for years. Only now is Bob Ferguson acknowledging that crime is rising in Washington, and professing that he wants to “make our state safer.”
I recently accused Jay Inslee of being willing to say anything to achieve what he wants. Voters who haven’t watched Ferguson closely need to know that — unlike Republican candidate Dave Reichert — nothing in his record as attorney general supports the claims he is making about increasing public safety and combating crime.
Public safety should be everyone’s top priority. But in general, Democrats have a public-safety problem. Republicans will do better for our state.
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Sen. John Braun of Centralia serves the 20th Legislative District, which spans parts of four counties from Yelm to Vancouver. He became Senate Republican leader in 2020.
