State Rep. candidate in the 19th district, Jeff Wilson speaks at a Republican Forum in Lewis county in September.
Dean Takko
The two candidates for District 19’s state Senate race — Democratic incumbent Dean Takko and Republican challenger Jeff Wilson — squared off in a virtual debate Tuesday night hosted by both the Wahkiakum County Democrats and Republicans.
The debate lasted an hour in total and followed a traditional format. Both candidates were posed a question and were given two minutes to respond followed by 30-second opportunities to respond to the other candidate’s remarks.
After the candidates made their opening statements introducing themselves and providing some background on how they ended up in politics, the candidates were asked what is their biggest goal and how it would be implemented if elected.
Takko began by saying it’s hard to point to any one project as his biggest goal, but among a few items on his shortlist was expanding broadband internet throughout the 19th District by allowing public utility districts to have retail authority for providing broadband internet to houses and businesses.
“I know there are a number of us that are going to take off the retail moratorium for retail authority for PUDs to offer broadband,” Takko said.
Wilson stayed true to the question and laid out his biggest concern with the state’s government: transparency. Particularly Wilson would like to see the end of title bills, sometime known as ghost bills, which he says is “skullduggery” that pushes through legislation under the radar of the public.
Wilson also accused Takko of being one of the state’s lawmakers who uses title bills.
“I haven’t heard Senator Takko ever at one time say, ‘Look I’m going to surrender using that skullduggery, that kind of political tactic,’ … there is nothing transparent about a ghost or title bill and I don’t really care who uses it,” Wilson said.
Takko replied by saying he has not used a title bill for “some time.”
“We don’t use those anymore, it’s been some time before we’ve had a title-only bill, so if you want to ride that to the capitol, feel free,” Takko said.
Both candidates took two minutes to talk about their thoughts on the state budget, whether it was better or worse than they predicted in July and what they would be advocating for in the budget during the next legislative session.
Wilson said he took issue with the “unsustainable” spending on the part of Takko and that taxing more Washingtonians would not be the solution, noting his staunch opposition to any sort of income tax.
“I’m subject to the information I do have, and that is we’re jumping up and down and we’re all excited that instead of an $8 billion hole, we’ve only got a $4 billion hole, and that is a very, very serious problem,” Wilson said.
Takko responded directly to Wilson’s claim that the unfunded balance was $4 billion, saying that it is actually half of that.
“Jeff has a little trouble with numbers, our unfunded balance is about $2 billion, not $4 billion and when he had an ad in the primary on the radio he said our budget actually was $59 billion when its $52.5 billion, so if you’re going to throw numbers around, you ought to be accurate,” Takkso said.
Takko added that it would be irresponsible to leave any options off the table including new sources of revenue, budget cuts and fund transfers into the operating budget, noting that he felt the former option had success in the 2008 recession.
As to whether he would support an income tax, Takko said, “I’m not going to vote for an income tax, the Supreme Court has already ruled that an income tax, based on the uniformity clause of the constitution, is not unconstitutional … it doesn’t matter whether you vote for it or not, the courts are going to throw it out, it’s pretty obvious.”
The candidates would touch on a variety of topics throughout the debate including their stances on the comprehensive sex education law, the security of food distribution systems, wearing face masks, homelessness, minimum wage and others.
The full debate can be viewed on YouTube on the Wahkiakum County Democrats and Republicans channel called “RandDteam” or you can go to the debate directly from this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vm6kZaF3MU.
