Aberdeen’s Rep. Jim Walsh was among the first Republican lawmakers to decry Washington state’s new COVID-19 vaccine incentive program, the “Shot of a Lifetime” lottery.
Gov. Jay Inslee announced the program on Wednesday, saying the $2 million in prizes — which mirrors programs in other states — would encourage Washingtonians to get the vaccine and ultimately stifle the pandemic.
But Walsh, an outspoken conservative, called the idea “inappropriate,” “condescending,” and “embarrassing to the state.”
He also compared the program to the “The Hunger Games,” where “an out-of-touch political elite tries to use a vulgar prize scheme to manipulate the masses.”
In the young adult trilogy, a government uses a lottery system to force children aged 12-18 to fight to the death.
Walsh also condemned the use of the state’s medical database.
“Did the Washingtonains who got vaccinated agree to be added to such a database and have their personal medical information used in this way?” he wrote in a news release. “People’s medical status and health care choices are serious, personal matters … They should not be cheapened and exploited in a crude carnival huckster’s scheme.”
