Podcast appearances and mentions of Rob McKenna

Casey McNerthney with "Crime and Punishment" a weekly check on crime in the county // Rob McKenna on the legal battle between Harvard University and the Trump administration // Bill Harwood on the latest SpaceX rocket launch // Robert Sherman on President Trump's displeasure with Russia's Vladimir Putin // Alexander Tin on RFK Jr. removing COVID vaccines from the CDC immunization list // Gee Scott on Turkish Airlines new policy charging passengers for standing up during flights

Chas Henry with his harrowing tale of the Fuji Fire // Joe Mantegna on his acting career and the National Memorial Day Concert this year // Rob McKenna on religious rights under examination in the US Supreme Court // Jeff McCausland on the "Golden Dome" Defense System from the Trump Administration // Gee Scott on the rapidly rising rent costs in Seattle

Carter Evans on the re-sentencing of Erik and Lyle Menendez // Rob McKenna on the Supreme Court hearing tomorrow regarding birthright citizenship // Alex Gangitano on the deal between Qatar Airlines and Boeing // Luke Duecy on the physical therapy center Pushing Boundaries remaining open thanks to donations // Ashleigh Fields on the meeting in front of the House subcommittee regarding the FAA // Gee Scott on the re-sentencing of Erik and Lyle Menendez

Barry Manilow on his career and his final performance in Seattle // Rob McKenna on the latest update with Kilmar Arbrego Garcia // Sabina Castelfranco on the Papel Conclave in the Vatican // Olivia Rinaldi on the meeting between President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney // Gee Scott on the national media's low rankings for the Seahawks

In this episode, Mark Ledlow and Dr. Rob McKenna, a psychology expert and leader of WiLD Leaders. They discuss leadership, trust, and development across generations. Dr. McKenna highlights the importance of clear metrics, inspired by his gaming experience, to motivate and manage the younger workforce. The conversation covers the necessity of trust in organizations, the impact of emotional maturity on leadership, and the challenge of managing cultural polarization. McKenna emphasizes the importance of intentional development and strategic goal-setting to foster a productive and harmonious workplace.Learn about all this and more in this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYSIntentional Leadership Development: Organizations must focus on developing leaders intentionally through measurable goals and systems.Trust and Measurement: Trust is foundational for organizational performance, revealed through consistent and transparent metrics.Conflict Management: Effective conflict management is crucial for innovation and team cohesion, requiring both clarity and empathy from leaders.Succession Planning: Preparing for succession should be part of a long-term leadership development strategy, rather than a desperate last-minute solution.Gaming Insights: Insights from gaming, such as metrics and motivation strategies, can be applied to organizational development to enhance performance.QUOTES"Trust is something we have to continue to work at day after day after day.""You can't make everybody happy without lying to somebody."Succession planning is leadership development after you've become desperate.""When trust is present, it's like a natural lubricant, but it takes maintenance."Get to know more about Dr. Rob McKenna through the link below.https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrobmckennaTo hear more episodes of The Fearless Mindset podcast, you can go to https://the-fearless-mindset.simplecast.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also subscribe to the Fearless Mindset YouTube Channel to watch episodes on video.

Rob McKenna on Harvard's lawsuit against the Trump administration over a freeze in federal funding // Representative Mari Leavitt on the BEAM act cracking down on repeat dangerous speeding drivers // WA GOP Chairman Jim Walsh on his disagreement with Democratic led tax proposals and his support of Trump tariffs // Matt Markovich with a legislative update // Gee Scott on the complication of open relationships

Chris Sullivan with a Chokepoint: New Checkpoint coming to SeaTac // Alexander Tin on the potential end food safety testing for the FDA // Darren Caves from Union Gospel Mission on what they are doing to help people who are unsheltered // Rob McKenna on California's lawsuit against the Trump Administration // Luke Duecy on Tacoma Police searching for a man who threated a State Trooper outside of his house // Heather Bosch on the impact of tariffs on goods in Washington State // Matt Markovich with a legislative update // Luke Duecy on hacked crosswalks across Seattle with Jeff Bezos voice // Gee Scott on torpedo bats and the Mariners' success with them

Rob McKenna on the GOP's turn on judges injunctions-LIVE // Nate Connors on the implementation of speed cameras in certain work zones // Colby Hall on the feud between the Trump administration and Harvard University-LIVE // Scott MacFarlane on why President Trump is not helping return a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador-LIVE // Luke Duecy on tariff impact being felt in Seattle and Tacoma-LIVE // Heather Bosch on FEMA's denial of the state's request for disaster relief after November's Bomb Cyclone-LIVE // Matt Markovich with a legislative update-LIVE // Luke Duecy on Seattle City Council's after hours ordinance-LIVE // Gee Scott on new regulations on hookah lounges and other after-hours establishments in Seattle

Rob McKenna explains the Supreme Court's decision to allow the Trump administration to continue mass deportations // Linda Gradstein on the return of violence in Gaza // Kellie Meyer on the global impact of the Trump tariffs // Chris Sullivan with a Chokepoint: Speed cameras are being tested on Washington highways // Matt Markovich with a Legislative Update // Gee Scott on the proposed tax on dating apps in Washington

In this episode, Mark Ledlow and Dr. Rob McKenna, from the Seattle Metro area and the creator of the WiLD Trust Platform, talks about the vital role of trust and leader development. They discuss the often overlooked chemistry of trust, how to foster it within organizations, and the importance of making a deep investment in people while providing clear operational expectations. Dr. McKenna shares insights from his longitudinal studies on leadership and addresses common generational misconceptions regarding work ethic. This episode emphasizes the need for a balanced approach to organizational management by combining strong operational systems with genuine people investment.Learn about all this and more in this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYSTrust is the most crucial currency in both personal and professional relationships.Trust has a detailed chemistry, comprising integrity, ability, reliability, strength, and truthfulness.Generational differences may often be more attributed to life stages rather than inherent generational traits.Developing leadership capacity involves creating a nuanced developmental story for each individual.Clear operational and job expectations, combined with personal investment, are essential for building trust and effective leadership.QUOTES"Trust is the most important currency in the world. Without it, nothing happens.""Nobody wants to be gotten to do anything. Let's create a better invitation for them to be seen.""Trust is more like a dimmer switch. It's questioned more often than it's broken.""To build trust, we must clearly define job roles and performance expectations.""Leadership equals trust. It requires integrity, ability, reliability, strength, and truthfulness."Get to know more about Dr. Rob McKenna through the link below.https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrobmckenna/To hear more episodes of The Fearless Mindset podcast, you can go to https://the-fearless-mindset.simplecast.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also subscribe to the Fearless Mindset YouTube Channel to watch episodes on video.

CBS Correspondent Willie James Inman on the fallout of Liberation Day // Chris Sullivan Chokepoint: Do you have a Real ID? // News Nation Correspondent Tom Dempsey on the legality of the Venezuelan deportations // Kevin Brassler with Checkbook.org on what to do when you lose your phone // Rob McKenna on due process and whether the Venezuelan deportations were legal // Gee Scott on Bellingham ICE raid

Shannon Drayer on Mariners Opening Day and what the season could look like // Chris Sullivan chokepoint on direct route into the Seattle International Airport from I-5 // Rob McKenna on how long judges could hold out against President Trump // Jeff Mcausland on the recent Signal chat leaks and what it means for our national security // Gee Scott on Cal Raleigh and hopes the Mariners will win world series

Rob McKenna on Washington state's ballot signature verification decision // Chris Sullivan with a Chokepoint: Grab bag including an updated toll scam, Washington's lack of maintaining roads, and a survey of worst commutes // Matt Markovich with a Legislative Update // Gee Scott on Seahawks free agent moves for two veteran players

Rob McKenna on the Supreme Court case concerning American guns in Mexico // Nate Connors with a Chokepoint: construction resumes on the Vantage Bridge near Ellensburg // Libbey Dean on the future of the Department of Education // Professor Harold Tobin on the potential of more earthquakes in the Northwest // Matt Markovich with a Legislative Update // Paul Holden on this year's Emerald City Comic Con // Gee Scott on DK Metcalf's trade request

Taurean Small on the incoming confirmation of RFK Jr. // SallyAnn Salsano, Executive Producer of "Police 24/7" on why they chose Kent Police as one of the offices that they are following // Chris Sullivan explains and answers questions about the Road Usage Charge potentially coming for Washington drivers // Kellie Meyer on the big federal worker buyout agreement // Rob McKenna on the legal pushbacks to President Trump's executive orders // Matt Markovich with a Legislative Update // Gee Scott on HB 1512 that would bar police officers from pulling over drivers for non-moving violations

CBS News Jeff McClausland Trumps plans for Gaza // Paul Holden on medication that could extend dog's lives // Rob McKenna on Washinton non-compete agreements for minimum wage workers // Matt Markovich legislative update // Gee Scott on tougher penalties to protect youth sports referees

Chokepoints: An industry loophole when it comes to securing loads // Frank Sumrall on this year's Oscar nominations // News Nation's Brooke Shafer on the Kohburger trial // Rob Mckenna takes a look at Trump's first week in office // Gee Scott recaps his busy week in Atlanta

Trust is the foundation of every thriving team, but how do you, as a leader, build and sustain it? In today's episode, Dr. Rob McKenna, CEO of WiLD Leaders, shares actionable strategies and insights to help you strengthen trust within your team and lead with grace, resilience, and intentionality. Find full show notes here: https://bit.ly/420drrobmckenna Share the love. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it on Apple Podcasts and write a brief review. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-flourishing-culture-podcast/id1060724960?mt=2   By doing so, you will help spread our podcast to more listeners, and thereby help more Christian workplaces learn to build flourishing cultures. Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on X https://twitter.com/allopus  Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allopus/ Email our host at al@workplaces.org

Rob McKenna on trans bathrooms on capitol hill // Dave Ross announces that he will be retiring from radio // Colleen announces that she will be leaving KIRO Radio // David Yaffe Bellany on how crypto influenced the election // Matt Markovich Commentary on facts vs.. opinions in politics // Chris Sullivan's Chokepoint on license plate covers // Claudia Balducci on her campaign for King County Executive-LIVE // Gee Scott on his 10 year anniversary at KIRO radio station and Dave and Colleen's eventual departure 

Lt. Robert McKenna,from Vermont State Police. Office of Professional Development and Training, joins Kurt & Anthony for the VSP monthly segment. Rob talks about how New England State Police Organizations work together and recruitment.

What’s Trending: The left will always lie about guns, and Rob McKenna on whether or not Seattle School Board President Chandra Hampson broke laws when she deleted critical comments on her Facebook page  Big Local: While homicides rise in the South Sound, Tacoma PD gets rid of the violent crime task force, Tulip festival is back in Skagit county, and a Shoreline senior accused of hate crime. Amazon workers vote against a union at an Alabama warehouse.

Who Will Lead Next? Succession Planning Done Right.   Trust is playing a huge role in the processes that leaders know they have to dial in on a daily basis. Most organizations get to a level of scale and they not only have to prepare their next President, they need to prepare their entire bench. Succession is happening all across the business we work with and we have found that as people are understanding certain things about themselves, and sharing with their teams, they are starting to trust each other. Then they begin to answer the questions that come up like, “Who are the leaders who have come up because of this person? And, is this person a developer of leader capacity?”  Join Dr. Rob McKenna in this WiLD Conversation Podcast as he gets deep and vulnerable into the story of succession planning done right with Steve Woodworth and Bryan Brown of Masterworks. Steve Woodworth - Steve brings a deep wealth of expertise in marketing, management, and organizational development - and leadership. He was instrumental in pivoting World Vision's direct marketing and donor services through a decade of annual double-digit growth - and if any of you are donors to World Vision - you have seen the power of their donor services. Since joining Masterworks in 1992, Steve has been instrumental in establishing it as the premier marketing agency dedicated to aiding hundreds of organizations in achieving their mission. Steve also gives back in so many other ways. His influence is profound.   Bryan Brown - Bryan serves as president of Masterworks. He is committed to accelerating the growth of his organization, bringing industry-leading technology across the business, and expanding The Masterworks vision for direct response marketing and fundraising. Bryan previously served at Masterworks as the ' VP of Experience Design and as COO. Bryan has been Chief Marketing Officer, a chief Technology officer - so he's got an incredible breadth of experience alongside the depth. Prior to joining Masterworks, Bryan led the digital division and ad network of one of the world's largest cross screen media companies (that means connecting all the screens in your house - and someone had to do that for us - apparently Bryan helped with that). And, he's got a Master of Divinity - so he's a business person with the heart of a pastor. Most importantly - these two have been through a succession process together as Bryan is and was Steve's successor at Masterworks.   For more on WiLD Leaders visit: https://www.wildleaders.org For more on Masterworks visit: https://www.masterworks.agency  

Rob McKenna on President Biden dropping out of the Presidential race // Dr. Gordon Cohen on the health properties of GLP-1 drugs // Casey McNerthney with "Crime and Punishment" – a local crime report // Jill Schlesinger on why many investors are firing their financial advisors // Daily Dose of Kindness: A Kirkland woman uses her talent to help the community // Gee Scott with his reaction to the dropping out of President Biden from the 2024 race

Voters statewide have big choices coming their way: They're getting their ballots for the August primary starting next week, and there are a lot of candidates to decide between. Over the last week, Soundside host Libby Denkmann has been interviewing the top candidates in the race for our state's next Attorney General.  Now, KUOW politics reporter Scott Greenstone, and former Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna are chiming in on the race so far. And later, Greenstone will take a deeper look at whether Washington Democratic voters, and donors, are still behind President Biden.  Guests: Scott Greenstone, KUOW politics reporter Rob McKenna, former Washington Attorney General Related Links:  How Washington's lawmakers, donors, and delegates could influence the Biden conversation The race for WA Attorney General: Pete Serrano The race for WA Attorney General: Manka Dhingra The race for WA Attorney General: Nick Brown  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rob McKenna with a breakdown of the Supreme Court's decisions // Bob Kettle with Seattle City Council's proposed ordinance to combat street racing //  Linda Gradstein with an update on Gaza and protests on the hostage situation // Daily Dose of Kindness: Seniors in PA are getting free fans from the local government // Gee Scott with a hot take on ultra-processed foods warning labels

On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Andrew Villeneuve, founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute! Crystal learns about the Northwest Progressive Institute's (NPI) work to advance progressive policies through their focuses on research and advocacy, what's covered in NPI's long form blog The Cascadia Advocate, and the importance of reframing in progressive politics. Andrew then describes how six initiatives bankrolled by a disgruntled wealthy Republican are designed to cause a lot of damage to Washington, how NPI's careful approach to polling has led to successful results, and why NPI is advocating for even-year elections to improve voter engagement and participation. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Andrew Villeneuve and the Northwest Progressive Institute at @nwprogressive and https://www.nwprogressive.org/   Resources Northwest Progressive Institute   The Cascadia Advocate | Northwest Progressive Institute   Stop Greed   “Initiative 2113 (allowing dangerous police pursuits to resume) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Reject Initiative 2113 to keep reasonable safeguards on police pursuits in place” by Sonia Joseph and Martina Morris for The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2117 (repealing Washington's Climate Commitment Act) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2081 (jeopardizing student privacy) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2109 (repealing billions of dollars in education funding) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2111 (prohibiting fair taxation based on ability to pay) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2124 (sabotaging the Washington Cares Fund) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   Coalition for Even-Year Elections   SB 5723 - Giving cities and towns the freedom to switch their general elections to even-numbered years.   HB 1932 - Shifting general elections for local governments to even-numbered years to increase voter participation.   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, today I'm thrilled to be welcoming Andrew Villeneuve from Northwest Progressive Institute to the show. Welcome! [00:01:00] Andrew Villeneuve: Thanks, Crystal. [00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Happy to have you here. For those who may not be aware, Andrew is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute and its sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He's worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. A recent focus of his research and advocacy work has been electoral reform. With Senator Patty Kuderer, Andrew and the NPI team developed the legislation that successfully removed Tim Eyman's push polls from Washington ballots - I'm a huge fan of that legislation. And with Councilmember Claudia Balducci, Andrew and the NPI team developed the charter amendment that 69% of King County voters approved in 2022 to move elections for the Executive, Assessor, Elections Director, and Council to even-numbered years - here's to also doing that statewide for municipalities - when voter turnout is much higher in even-numbered years and more diverse. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Welcome - really excited to have you on and talk about everything that you're doing. [00:02:15] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here and can't wait to dive into the conversation. [00:02:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So starting off, what is the Northwest Progressive Institute and what do you do? [00:02:25] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, the Northwest Progressive Institute is a 501(c)(4) strategy center that works to lift up everybody. We try our hardest every day to advance progressive policies that will enable people to lead happier, healthier, more prosperous lives. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary last August, and we have had a lot of success moving policy over the last two decades. We're particularly adept at using research to show people why we need a particular policy - so that could be health care, it could be environmental protection, it could be more education funding. We're not confined to just one issue - we think across issues. But that does mean, of course, that we see all of the places where we're held back. So we look for areas where we can move issues forward simultaneously and that has led us to do a lot of work on tax reform, election reform, and media reform - because those three issues are connected to every other issue. So that's why you'll see us doing a lot of work on fair revenue. on trying to address media concentration, and trying to make sure that elections are fair. Because ultimately, those things do have results, impacts for environmental protection, healthcare, education, foreign policy, every other issue that we care about. I think we're all frustrated by sometimes the slow pace of progress, and so any area where we can link up with another area and make progress at the same time - that's a real opportunity for us. And there's actually a term for this - it's called "strategic initiatives" - comes from George Lakoff. We're big fans of his work. We also do a lot of efforts on reframing. We try to help people understand what frames are and how to use successful arguments so that you don't fall into the trap of debating the other side on their terms. Because we all know when that happens, the best you can do is lose an argument gracefully - you're not going to win the argument. Reframing is key, and we believe that everybody who works in progressive politics needs to understand how to do reframing. So we're always trying to help people figure out - okay, how do we use words that evoke our values and our policy directions and not the other sides'? So that's sort of a taste of what we do. Of course, we could talk for hours about all the specific projects we've worked on, but that is an overall view of what NPI does. [00:04:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also under the NPI umbrella is The Cascadia Advocate, a publication that I recommend everyone listening follow - very informative. What has been your approach with The Cascadia Advocate and what do you cover? [00:04:55] Andrew Villeneuve: The Cascadia Advocate is a long form blog. It was founded in 2004 in March, and so that means it's going to be celebrating its 20th anniversary itself this spring. And what it is - is it's a place where you can find progressive commentary, sometimes even breaking news, on a daily basis. So if you want to find out why we should pass a particular bill in the legislature, or you want to find out what's happening with Bob Ferguson's latest lawsuit - for example, he just sued Kroger and Albertsons because they're trying to merge and create a giant grocery store chain - we cover those things on The Cascadia Advocate. We publish guest essays. We cover a lot of things that the mass media cover - so we'll sometimes critique how they're covering things, but we'll also provide our own original commentary in addition to just critiquing others' coverage. There's a whole mix there. So you're going to find research findings, media criticism, you're going to find book reviews, you're going to find documentary reviews. You're going to find Last Week in Congress, which is our almost weekly recap - weekly when Congress is in session - of how our delegation voted. So this is a place where you can see Washington, Oregon, and Idaho's Congressional delegations' votes. And that's really helpful. If you're too busy to watch C-SPAN every day - I know I don't have that kind of time because I'm trying to move the ball forward on progressive policy - but I do want to know how our lawmakers voted, I want to be informed. And I imagine a lot of other people listening to Hacks & Wonks would also like to be informed about what our delegation is doing. And so Last Week in Congress is something you can read on Sunday morning - takes a few minutes of your time to skim it. And at the end of that skim, you're going to learn a lot more about how our delegation voted that week. So those are some of the things you're going to find on the Cascadia Advocate. I think it's a great publication. It's well-established and we have a superb code of ethics and style guide and commenting guidelines to make sure that we're putting out a professional product. So we're very proud of that. And the name is right there - Advocate, right? So we're not hiding what we're about. You're not going to have to worry - Well, what's their agenda? How will I know what it is? Because we're going to tell you what our agenda is. We're going to be very upfront about that. But we're also going to be fair, even to those that we criticize. So whether that's Tim Eyman - quoting his emails, letting people know what he said - we're going to tell people what the other side is saying. We're not just going to say what we're saying. But we're also going to be very clear - this is what we believe and this is what we're fighting for. And it's not going to be a mystery to any reader what that is. [00:07:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - I appreciate it. And as many have seen, have shared links in our episode notes many times - recommend that as part of a healthy local media diet. Now, I want to talk about some issues that you've been engaged with since their inception. One of the big ones that we're going to be hearing about, voting on later on this year are the six statewide initiatives coming in 2024 in Washington state. Can you tell us about these and why they're so important to pay attention to? [00:07:42] Andrew Villeneuve: Definitely. So very early this year, a group called Let's Go Washington, which is funded by a hedge fund manager and millionaire named Brian Heywood - he lives not far from me out here on the Eastside in Redmond - east side of King County, that is. He decided that he was going to go all-in on trying to get the right wing back into the initiative business. For those who have been in Washington for a while, the name Tim Eyman is probably familiar to you - Tim Eyman, for years, has been running initiatives to cut taxes and wreck government in Washington state. His agenda is to drown government in a bathtub, so it's basically Grover Norquist at the state level. And Brian Heywood has come along here after several years of Tim Eyman being out of the initiative business. Eyman's last initiative qualified for the ballot in 2018, and it appeared on the ballot in 2019. And despite our best efforts - it had a really dishonest ballot title that it was hard to educate voters what that was, so even though we raised a lot of money and ran the best No campaign that we could - when I say we, I mean the coalition Keep Washington Rolling that formed - we weren't able to defeat that last Eyman initiative. But we were able to go to court after the election was over and get it struck down. So it never went into effect, - which averted a massive transit and transportation catastrophe, I might add. So fast forward a few years, Eyman has been in trouble with the law because he just blatantly disregards public disclosure law, doesn't care about following it. And he also was double-crossing his own supporters - they just weren't getting the truth from him. And so that's why his initiative factory fell apart - when you're lying and cheating all the time, eventually that's going to catch up with you, and that's what happened to Tim Eyman. So he had to declare bankruptcy. The state won a big judgment against him, and he's been out of the initiative business. But Brian Heywood has come in - and Brian Heywood, unlike Tim Eyman, has a lot of money. And he doesn't need to turn to anyone else unless he feels that he has to, but he hasn't done that yet - he's mainly relied on his own money. So he decided that not only was he going to try to qualify a tax-cutting initiative, but he was going to take aim at all these other laws that the Democratic majorities have passed that he doesn't like. So there's six initiatives that he wanted to get on the ballot this last year, so 2023, that are now we're going to be on the ballot in 2024. And that's because these are initiatives to the legislature, so they go to the House and the Senate first. That's something you can do in Washington - you can either submit initiatives directly to the people, or you can submit them to the legislature. And for those who don't know, an initiative is just a proposed law. So it's like a bill of the people - it goes before the legislature. If the legislature doesn't adopt it, then it goes to the people by default. So an initiative - again, just like a bill, but the people get to vote on it, and it comes from a citizen petition. So these initiatives - last year there was going to be 11, but they pared them down to 6. It's kind of like making up for lost time - We weren't on the ballot for several years, so now we're just going to do a whole bunch of initiatives. The first one that they're doing would repeal the Climate Commitment Act. The second one would repeal our capital gains tax on the wealthy, which is funding education and childcare. The third one would repeal the WA Cares Fund, partly by letting people opt out. Then they have one that would roll back our reasonable safeguards on police pursuits. They have one that would establish a parental notification scheme, which is intended, I think, to jeopardize the health of trans youth in part - which I don't like that at all. And then they have one to ban income taxes. And their definition of income tax is anything that falls under this really broad, adjusted gross income umbrella, which could potentially jeopardize the capital gains tax and other sources of funding for things that are really important in our state. So these six initiatives collectively would cause a lot of damage to Washington. We're talking about billions of dollars in lost revenue. We're talking about good policies being repealed. We're talking about a lot of destruction. And so we're working very hard to defeat these initiatives. We've created a PAC that will oppose all of them. And that joint effort is called Stop Greed - to oppose all six initiatives. We have a website - stopgreed.org - and the operation is already up and running. You can donate, you can sign up for the mailing list. If you want to get involved in stopping the six initiatives, we are ready to have your help because this is going to be a year-long effort. We're going to be working with a lot of other allies, organizations that also share our values to protect Washington. But these six initiatives - the legislature can't reject them and then just have them disappear, they're going to go to the ballots. So we have to be ready for that big fight in November. And they're going to appear at the top - so ahead of president, ahead of governor, ahead of everything else that we're thinking about as activists and civic leaders and whatnot. This is going to be the very first thing that people see underneath those instructions - is these six initiatives. So we're getting ready. And again, we invite others to join us in taking on this challenge so we can protect Washington. [00:12:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And this is going to be one of the biggest battles that we've seen in quite some time in Washington state. Those six initiatives that you covered - for those who may not be familiar with Washington Cares, it's basically long-term care insurance that's state provided - trying to meet a need that is massive. Many studies have showed more than half of people over age 60 are going to need long-term care insurance at some point in time for the remainder of their lives. This often is not covered by health insurance, and it is something that has bankrupted people, has left people just in very precarious positions. As we age, as our parents age, this is something that is top of mind for a lot of people. And although no one loves an extra thing to worry about, having the confidence that when you or your family member or friend is in need of care, that they will have access to it is a very, very important thing. In addition to all these other ones - this is our landmark climate legislation, which I've definitely had some criticisms of, but do not support a repeal. I support fixing the areas that need to be fixed. And I think we can't ignore these things. These are some of the biggest pieces of legislation that we have passed that will equip us to deal with the challenges that we face today and that we're going to be facing tomorrow. So really appreciate the effort, the coordinated effort, to make sure that there is a vigorous defense against these. Now, looking at what's going to be involved to beat these - looking at what these ballot initiatives may serve, even beyond their individual goals, is that a lot of times people look to ballot initiatives to motivate a base and to turn out a base. And certainly in Washington state - statewide, Republicans have been not having a good time, have been reaping the consequences of being out-of-touch policy-wise - whether it's on abortion rights to privacy rights, to their views on taxation and things that serve to defund and dismantle our government. What do you see as threats beyond these initiatives individually, but the threat of a motivated conservative voting base here in Washington state in November 2024? [00:14:52] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I think they're tired of Democratic rule. So they're going to be motivated to turnout because they probably will have Dave Reichert as their gubernatorial candidate - we can't really say nominee because Washington doesn't have a real primary, so we don't nominate people for the general election ballot like they would in other states. But they probably will have Reichert as their candidate, their standard bearer. And that is their best chance to get the governor's mansion since 2012 when Rob McKenna was their candidate in the general election - so I think they're going to be motivated for that reason. I also think the six initiatives are designed to turnout right-wing voters as much as possible - people who are disenchanted with Washington's direction, not happy that we're going a different way than Texas and Florida and Idaho and other states that are Republican-controlled. And so I think that that's an opportunity for them, but it's also an opportunity for us. There can be a backlash to a backlash. And I'm not sure if Brian Heywood and Jim Walsh, who's - by the way, Jim Walsh, the state Republican Party Chair, is the sponsor of all six initiatives. So you've got Heywood and Walsh together - Heywood's the funder, Walsh is the sponsor. I'm not sure if they realize that backlashes can have backlashes. We saw this after Trump came in - there was a backlash to Democratic rule, but then there was a backlash to Trump's electoral college victory. And we saw that play out over the course of four years. It was really, really strong. What happened? You had this mammoth effort to correct what was going on, to have Democrats respond, to say - Okay, well, we're no longer just going to sort of lay down, right? We're going to actually work to turn out people. So we had this huge effort to flip the Washington State Senate in 2017. Then we had this big effort to win the midterms, which saw Democrats get control of the House. And then there was the effort to get the White House back, which also allowed us to get the U.S. Senate back, too, with that runoff in Georgia. So you think about all those sequence of events - how much had to align in order for all those goals to be realized? Because in 2017, Republicans had complete control of the federal government - they had it all - they had the White House, they had the House, they had the Senate, they had the Supreme Court. Democrats had nothing. All we had was some resistance in the states, basically. And we went from that - in the span of three years, we were able to take back the two legislative houses and the White House. We don't have the Supreme Court, but we were able to get the others. And the majorities were narrow, but they were majorities, which meant that we could actually work on progressive policy again. So we were able to pass the American Rescue Plan, CHIPS and Science, we were able to do the infrastructure law. We were able to do a whole bunch of other policies as well - bipartisan postal reform. We did electoral reform to deal with election certification so that we wouldn't have another January 6th. We got marriage equality put in. I mean, there are so many things that happened - I don't know if people remember all those accomplishments. So you think about what we've done federally. And in Washington State, we've been doing the same thing - marching forward - all these laws that Heywood and Walsh want to repeal. So I think they're looking at this as an opportunity to say - It's time to roll back the clock. And that is an opportunity for them. But the opportunity for us is to say - Nope, we're not going to roll back the clock. We're going to keep moving forward. I think doing six initiatives is risky for them. Because one initiative, maybe people aren't going to - they're just not going to rouse themselves as much to care. But six seems like a four-alarm fire for those who are watching from our side. And so it's been really easy for me to - when I explain what's going on, when I make the pitch that we need to stop the initiatives, people are receptive right away. It's not difficult to get people roused and ready to go because they understand six initiatives targeting six progressive accomplishments, whether it's comprehensive sex ed or the climate law or the capital gains tax that's funding education - these are things that we've worked hard on that we're proud of. We don't want them all to be wiped away in the span of one election. So it's an organizing opportunity for us as much as it is for them. And that's the downside of deciding to do so much at one time - is that you're presenting your opponents with an opportunity to do organizing as well, that's sort of a banner opportunity. And they just have to live with that decision - that's the strategy they chose, and so we get to make the most of it from our side. [00:18:55] Crystal Fincher: We've been seeing a number of polls - certainly a lot of discourse and reaction - to whether it's the conflict between Israel and Palestine, whether it is the failure to address climate change, healthcare kind of globally, nationally, to a degree that seems is necessary to actually make a dent in these issues. Do you see motivation in the base, especially the younger progressive voters, as being an issue that may be problematic come November? Or do you think that there are things that can be done to mitigate that, or that it won't be an issue? [00:19:33] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, it's hard to know the future. I always tell people I don't do predictions because predictions are fraught with danger. It's just - you can easily be wrong, and people are convinced that they know what's going on. I take the view that it's hard to know what's going on and that's why we have to do research, so that we can try to understand it better. And I also warn people against the danger of drawing too many conclusions based on what you've seen on Twitter, which Elon Musk now calls X, or Facebook or TikTok or any of those platforms. Those are not representative of public opinion, not even young people's opinions. There are many people who just aren't there. So you can obviously follow some vocal voices and you can see what they're saying - there's nothing wrong with that, checking in - but don't sweep to conclusions about what those folks are saying and say - Oh, well, all Gen Zers are upset about what's happening here or there, because that's the prevailing sentiment on TikTok, right - that's a mistake. That can give you clues as to what people are thinking and feeling, but it's not where you want to draw your conclusions. And polling helps to get a little broader perspective, but it's still a sample. So we do a ton of polling at NPI. One of the things we're known for is our research. And I caution people - you can do enormous amounts of research and still only see a fraction of what you want to see. There's so much you could look at in terms of public opinion, like this issue, that issue, this race, that race - so many detailed, specific follow-up questions you could ask. And in a given survey, there's going to be limitations - you can only ask about so much. We try to do a lot of insightful research, but I'm mindful of the limitations of public opinion research. In the end, you come into every election somewhat unprepared because you don't exactly know what's out there, right? So that's why what I call big organizing, which is a term that comes out of the Sanders campaign and other efforts - big organizing is this idea that we're going to talk to everybody as often as we can, which is hard because how do you have all those conversations? Well, it involves canvassing, it involves actually going out there and doing neighborhood meetings and doing that organizing - having those discussions with people. It turns out even people who are unhappy with politics want to talk politics when they get the right settings - you got a canvasser, who's very understanding, going to somebody's door, having a half an hour long conversation. People actually feel better after they've had that conversation - they're very appreciative that somebody wants to hear from them. So as a movement, I think we need to go out there and have those conversations with folks. And we need to make sure that if people live in areas that are hard to doorbell, that we're finding other ways to reach them. But that all requires investment - primarily time. Money, too, but primarily time because someone's got to go do that organizing, that outreach work. And they've got to be able to go to the door or go to that other setting where they're going to have that conversation. So in terms of getting young people plugged in and engaged, I think it's going to be tough. I think there's a lot of distractions in our culture now, it's very hard to get people to decide - yes, I'm going to vote, I'm going to take the time to do that - especially if you live in a state where they've made voting hard, like Georgia. Washington - we're blessed, because voting is easier here than anywhere else in the country. But we see in odd years, it's still hard to get people to vote. That's why we're so big on even-year elections for local governments, because those even-numbered years, more young people come out. But we've just got to have a strategy for mobilizing people. It doesn't just happen on its own. You can't just sit back and go - Oh, well, we'll just hope that it works out. Nope. You don't let events shape you. You go out there and shape the events with a strategy. And so it's very important that as progressives, we don't just let the Biden campaign do the work. We don't just let the Democratic Party do the work and say - Well, they'll figure it out. We all have to be working together to figure out what the strategy is and then implement that strategy, to the extent that we can agree on what that strategy is going to be. So for those who are not involved in some kind of direct action organization, I would find one - I think that's worth doing. This is a year when democracy is on the line. So getting involved in some way - no matter what the outcome is in November, you're going to feel good that you invested some time in trying to mobilize and turn out young voters and get them to save democracy along with everybody else who's going to be voting. So that's my advice for folks who are listening - find an organization to plug into that's going to do something to help young voters get engaged in this election, turnout and vote, save democracy. Because there's only one way to do that - and that is to reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris, in my view - there's no other outcome that will allow us to make any progress on issues we care about, including trying to bring an end to the violence in the Middle East. What's happening in Gaza is terrible, but that's not going to get better if Donald Trump gets back in. [00:23:58] Crystal Fincher: Now, I want to talk about research - your polling. Local polling is hard - you hear that from a variety of polling organizations, we see it in results that have been really wonky in the past several years with surprising outcomes in several individual states. Polling on a smaller scale - smaller geographies, smaller communities - is a challenging thing. However, you've managed to do quite well at it. We've seen in your polling in the Seattle City Council elections, which looked straight on. You polled previously the Housing Levy, King County Conservation Futures Levy, Senate races, House races - were right on. And so I just want to talk a little bit about your approach and how you put those together, and why you feel like you're seeing better results locally than some other organizations. [00:24:54] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you for that. It starts with a rigorous commitment to the scientific method. One of the things that I think people don't understand about public opinion research is anyone can do it. You don't have to be an objective organization to do objective research. You can be subjective - and we are - but your research has to follow the scientific method if it's going to have any value. And what that basically comes down to is neutral questions asked of representative samples - that's the key. And actually, it's very hard to ask neutral questions of representative samples. The question writing part is particularly fraught with difficulty because there are so many ways to write a question that is loaded or biased and to use language that favors the agenda of the asker. Basically, writing a push poll is easy, writing a neutral poll is hard. And we've seen that over and over again, especially when I look at the work of our Republican friends across the aisle - Moore Information, Trafalgar - these firms are just, I can see their work product and I have deep questions about especially what they're not releasing because I know that what they are releasing is only a fraction of what they're actually asking. But when you ask a question - and you look at a group that does put out all of their work, like Future 42, which uses Echelon Insights, you read through their questionnaire and it's - okay, after the first four questions, which are so simple it's hard to get them wrong. After that, you start going to the rest of the questionnaire and it's biased. It's loaded. The questions are favoring conservative frames. So you're not going to find out what people think if you tell them what to think first - that's one of the cardinal rules that I tell my team all the time - Whatever the topic is, we have to get this question right because we're not going to learn what people think if we don't. You don't want to have worthless data come back. And that really means that you've got to think about - Okay, well, how are we presenting the issue? What are we going to say in the question? And a lot of the times what we'll do is, we'll say - Proponents are saying this and opponents are saying that. So that's one way you can do it. And you have to really go out there and you have to find their words, their frames - so you have to be fair to their perspective. Even if you don't like it, it doesn't matter. As a question writer, you want that perspective represented to the best of its ability, right? So if Rob McKenna has said that the capital gains tax is an income tax - it's an illegal, unconstitutional income tax that will kill jobs and wreck the economy. We're putting that whole thing into our question, because we want people to hear what it is that they're saying. And then we're going to put that up against our best arguments and see what wins. So we've done that and we found that our frames, our arguments beat their arguments. And that's good news. But we only learned that because we actually did a fair question. If we had just said - Oh, well, this is why the capital gains tax is great. What do you think about the capital gains tax? People are going to say it's great. And so we haven't really learned anything other than - yes, people respond to our question prompts in the way that we would want them to. But that doesn't really tell us what people have brought to the table in terms of their own opinions. So that's part of how we've been successful is - when we do polling, we're not trying to gin up some numbers for a particular cause or a candidate. We're not looking to get numbers that just reinforce the conclusion that we already reached. And I think a lot of consultants jump to conclusions, like at the beginning of a race, they'll say - Well, let me tell you how it's going to be. And our approach is we don't know how it's going to be - let's go out and get some data and see what people are thinking and feeling. And of course, we understand that whatever that data is, it's a snapshot in time and that the race could change. So like with the governor's race, we've been polling that and we're seeing some changes - Bob Ferguson is consolidating support, he's not as well known as people who are on the inside of politics might think he is. Nor is Dave Reichart, for that matter. People know who Jay Inslee is. They know who Joe Biden is. They know the top names in politics, but the attorney general is not the governor, and people don't know the attorney general as well as they know the governor. And they don't know Dave Reichert, as well as they know Jay Inslee either. So we're seeing in our polling, the candidates have an opportunity to introduce themselves to voters. And we know that if we ask a neutral question about anything, again, whether it's the governor's race or another race, then we're going to have hopefully an opportunity to find out where people are. And then presenting that data in a way that's responsible, not just dumping the numbers out there and letting people jump to their own conclusions about what do the numbers mean. Even if they were responsibly collected, I think responsible publication includes context for those numbers. What do the numbers mean? Why are the numbers the way they are? What's the explanation for that? So when we release a poll finding, we never just put the numbers out there, we never just dump a poll file out there for people to read. We always provide analysis - this is what we think the numbers mean. And you can read the analysis on The Cascadia Advocate - that's the vehicle for all the poll findings to be released. People, when they want to see our polling, we're going to give them an opportunity to really understand what we're thinking when we saw the numbers - Okay, this is our take. And we always tell people in those analyses - We don't know the future, this is suggestive, it's not predictive. And you should expect that there's a possibility that the poll is off. But, I will say in the 10 years we've been doing research polling, we've yet to have our results be contradicted by an election result. And that's just because we write the neutral questions. And then our pollsters, who I haven't talked about yet, but we work with three different pollsters. And they've all got a strong commitment to responsible fielding - building samples that actually look like the electorate. That's how you get results, too. It's not just the questions are good, but the fielding is appropriate - you're building those representative samples. And then you can hopefully get data that reflects the actual dynamic that's out there. And so when the election then occurs - if the polling has correctly captured the public sentiment that's out there, you should expect to see a correlation. It won't line up exactly. I've had people tell me - Well, your poll was off. The margin was this and your poll said it would be that. I'm like - Polls don't predict, so you shouldn't expect the margins to line up one-to-one or anything like that. But if a poll says such-and-such is ahead of their rival and they then go on to win the election, that's an indication that the poll did understand something about what's going on out there. So that's basically validation in my book. You're never going to get perfect alignment, like the poll has 54% and the candidate gets 54%, and it's off by maybe just a fraction of a decimal or something - that's not going to happen in polling, you don't expect that alignment. So I think that's why we've been successful is that commitment to the scientific method. And we're not going to deviate from that - we're just full steam ahead with that same commitment to excellence. [00:31:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I really appreciate you explaining that. I do think that is a big reason for why your polls have seemed to accurately capture public sentiment. And I appreciate you talking about - you can be a partisan organization and still poll accurately. In fact, it's really critical that the accuracy is there. I think there's this assumption that - Oh, it's a partisan organization - they just want something to confirm what they already believe, to tell them that what they want to happen is popular. And that is a recipe for disaster in the medium and long-term - that sets you up for thinking you're in a different situation than is realistic. And then you don't win campaigns, you don't win ballot initiatives - you have to accurately understand where the public is in order to do anything with that from a campaign perspective, which is really important. And I do see polls from the Chamber where reading through the poll - and I highly recommend every time there is a poll, especially from news organizations, I will say Cascadia Advocate does excellent poll analysis - but most articles and most publications that I see, I always find different things than are encapsulated in their poll write-up when I read the actual poll. Reading the actual poll is a really illuminating thing - and you can see questions asked in very leading ways, you can see one side's argument is presented and another isn't, or one is misrepresented. And those are really problematic things for a poll. Sometimes people do use polls - if they aren't really looking to get information - just as a marketing tactic. But that becomes pretty apparent when you're reading the poll, when you're seeing - they aren't really asking these questions to get informative answers about what the public believes and why. So I think that's been really illuminating. Looking forward, what do you plan on tracking? Are you going to be tracking the six initiatives? Are you going to be polling the statewide races? What is your plan for research? [00:33:13] Andrew Villeneuve: Yes, we're going to be doing all that. The governor's race - we have a commitment to the public that we're going to poll on the governor's race - and no matter what the data is, we're going to release it, that's our commitment. We've polled on the governor's race three times already this cycle. And we're going to do it three to four times again this year. At the end of the cycle, you're going to have gotten six to seven different findings from us - different seasons of data - which will tell the story of the governor's race. How did it start out and where does it kind of end up? When I say end up, I say "kind of" because - of course, the election happens after that last poll. So we're going to have election data soon after that final poll comes out in October and that data will tell us who wins the governor's race. And that's the final word. But until we have that election results, then polling will help us understand what could be happening out there - I say "could," because again, we don't know what is happening until people vote and the election data comes in and then tells us - Okay, this candidate's ahead of that candidate, this is the voices of millions of people. Polls can only give you a peek into what might be happening at the time - that's the best we can do because there's no real way - sometimes people will ask me about sample sizes. This is a fun inside bit of polling. So a lot of people are convinced that the larger a sample size, the better the poll is. Not so. A poll can be perfectly representative if the sample is just 300 or 400 voters - it's not the size of the sample that matters, it's how representative it is. If it reflects the electorate, then it's a good sample. If it is not representative of the electorate, you've got a problem. So you could have 10,000 voters in your sample, which would be huge, right? Nobody has samples that big. But if they're all progressive voters in Seattle, or if they're all Trump voters from somewhere in rural Washington - it's not representative of the electorate and the data's worthless. It can't tell you what's happening in a statewide race. So we'll be polling the governor's race. We'll be looking at Attorney General, we're going to look at U.S. President, we're going to look at U.S. Senate. We're going to look at basically all the competitive statewide races. In October, I expect that we'll have a poll result for every single statewide race. And there are so many that that's probably going to be the entire poll. We're not even going to be able to ask any policy questions because we're going to have six initiatives, possibly a few State Supreme Court races. We're going to have U.S. President. We're going to have U.S. Senate. We're going to have nine statewide executive department positions. Plus, we're going to have a generic question for Congress and legislature. So that's our poll - the whole poll is already written. I already know what's going to be in the poll because there's so much on the ballot this cycle that there's no room to ask about anything else. That's a lot of poll results to have to release. And it will take us some time to ship them all. We're not going to do it all in one day, that's for sure. Because I think what's responsible is to provide that analysis, as I said. So we're not going to do - Okay, here's the entire poll. Goodbye. Enjoy it. No, we're going to take the time to look at each of the results. And so that probably means it'll take us a whole week to talk about all the different poll results. And people are going to say - Why don't you release everything at once? I want to see it all. Well, because we want to give you the context. We want to give you our view on what's happening so that you understand the background, especially if you're not from here - if you're from another state, you're reading this polling, you want to know who are these people, what are the dynamics in this race, why is such-and-such ahead, what's the theory behind that. That context is going to be really helpful to you as a reader, so we're committed to providing it. [00:36:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And what polling firms do you work with? [00:36:30] Andrew Villeneuve: So there are three we work with. Public Policy Polling out of North Carolina is the one we started working with first - our relationship goes back over 10 years, and they've done excellent work for us. I'm particularly proud of our 2020 and 2022 polling because those are the two most recent even-year cycles. But in 2020, this was the first time that we went up and down the entire statewide ballot, including State Supreme Court races. And we're the only ones polling on State Supreme Court races. Nobody else does that, I'm especially proud that we do that. Probably this year we're going to poll on them - any that are contested, we'll do at least two rounds of polling - probably May and October. And you mentioned earlier that polling can be tough, especially at the state and local level. And one of the reasons it can be tough is because a lot of people will tell you they're not sure who they're voting for. If the race isn't partisan, then you can have an enormous number of people who say they're not sure - sometimes over 80%. And that can make it very difficult. But you still learn something when you ask people about their opinions - because you'll find out people's familiarity with the candidates, and you will also discover if there's been a change. So like in 2020, we said - Okay, we've learned that no one else polls State Supreme Court races, so let's poll them repeatedly because then at least we'll have data of our own to compare to from different seasons. So in May, we polled them and then we polled them again in October. And that was really valuable to have that comparison and to see just little small changes. What we saw was the incumbent justices like Raquel Montoya-Lewis - they picked up a little bit of support, so that suggested they were actually getting some awareness of their candidacies before the voters. And that was illuminating - so there weren't many people who really knew much about these candidates, but still there were a small number who had heard something and had decided how they were going to vote. And that was an indicator. And that indicator proved to be accurate. It accurately foreshadowed what really did happen in the election. So we're committed to doing that again. And we believe that it's crucially important that people have some data in those races. If you're an observer, data that gives you some inkling of what's going to happen in a race that's so far down-ballot that nobody else is really, frankly, writing about it - I mean, that's gold. These are the things that I wanted back in the day when we weren't doing all this polling. So I've always been of the mind that if it doesn't exist and you really want it, you should create it if you think it's really needed. The other companies we work with - Change Research does a lot of our local polling. They've been working with us in Seattle and Spokane, and they've worked with us in Snohomish County and Pierce County. We've polled all the major counties with them, and we just love working with them. They're great. And then our third pollster is Civiqs. They are more recent on the scene. They're not as well-established as Public Policy Polling - they're a newer company, but they do great work. Their polling in the Senate race last cycle with Patty Murray and Tiffany Smiley - they were the ones who had Murray really way out there ahead and Smiley well behind. When I saw that work - they were dedicated to putting out this really great polling, said - Well, we need to add them to our group of trusted pollsters because they've proved they can do great work. So we've got those three now, and I'm not averse to working with other pollsters that have proved themselves as well. But every pollster we work with has to be committed to the scientific method. We will not accept any work that is done contrary to that method because that will yield worthless data. We don't want to pay for data that doesn't have any value, that isn't collected transparently and with integrity. We love working with all of our pollsters and we're excited to do good work with them this cycle. [00:39:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I appreciate that breakdown. I appreciate something you said earlier, particularly as a political consultant. There are several consultants - lots industry-wide, it's an issue - where they have preconceived notions of what's going on and they are looking for confirmation, or they decide that they know what the dimensions of a race are and why people are aligned on certain sides and sometimes stick hard and fast to that. There's a different approach. You can wait and see what the information is. Certainly, we have our theories and ideas, but we learn so much more by actually looking at the data, waiting on the data, not being so devoted or tied to a specific theory or something that must happen. If you leave yourself open to say - I think this might be happening, I'm seeing something happen, I think these could be reasons why - test that, understand the data and research, and see how it turns out. And one thing you mentioned - I think it's particularly illuminating for people who do that - any race, most races, especially if it's not someone at the top of the ticket, is going to have a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the people involved. There are going to be a lot of people who are undecided - just not familiar with an issue, not familiar with a candidate. But when you do poll over time like you do, and when you do see how those people who were initially undecided then wind up making a decision, how they align on those - that can tell you a lot about why people are favoring something or another, who messages are landing with, what is effective and what's not effective. So even if you aren't getting specific data of someone saying - I don't know - polling over time and then once they do figure that out, or sometimes they just end up not voting, right? All of that information is valuable in putting together a picture for why people believe the things that they believe, why people are favoring certain candidates or policies, and how that might translate to other issues or races. So appreciate the repeated polling. Now, I do want to ask you - as someone who does work with polling organizations and hearing a number of nonprofits, other 501(c)(4)s, be interested in that space - what advice would you give to organizations who are potentially interested in working with a pollster to field polls of their own? [00:42:04] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I guess the top advice I'd give is go seek out people who do it regularly. NPI is always happy to help people find out how we can answer our research objectives. Maybe you're trying to pass a bill in the legislature, maybe you'd like to get a ballot measure passed, maybe you're working on a policy that you think will come to fruition in 10 years and you want to get some initial data - we're happy to help. And of course, you can just go approach a pollster. But in our experience, most pollsters - their goal is to do the fielding and their goal is to get the project turned around and back to you. And then they move on to their next project because that's the polling business. Pollsters specialize in fielding and they do polls every week. They can't really linger on a project for six months and be - Well, we'll help you analyze that data. Their job is to give you the data, not necessarily to help you make sense of the data. Of course, they will try, in a basic sense, to help you make sense of it. If you are like - Well, I don't understand this crosstab, or I don't understand this results, or can you help me with this? - they'll do that. They'll answer all your questions to the best they can. But what is, I think, missing there is the guide. The pollster is going to do the fielding to the best of their ability. But can they actually guide you through all steps of the process? Some pollsters do specialize in providing more of that guidance, but they also charge a lot more. If you want that guidance, if you want that expert hand to assist you at all stages - not just writing the survey, but also deciphering what comes back - you're going to pay more. Lake Research Partners, FM3, other pollsters I can think of - that's their model. They do excellent work. I love them. We don't work with those pollsters as much because we're able to bring a lot of our own expertise to the table. So we work with pollsters that primarily do a really good job of fielding, but they're going to let us design the questionnaire because we want to do that. Of course, we'll take their input and counsel, but we'd like to write our own questionnaires. And so we work with pollsters that are comfortable with that arrangement. But if you're a nonprofit who needs help writing the questionnaire, then going with a firm like Lake Research Partners is going to be a great idea. But you are going to pay a minimum probably of $25,000 for that project. And you can expect to pay as much as $50,000 or more for that assistance and that data. Research - it's something that can be really expensive to collect. So for those who love our research, we do accept donations to keep it going. You can donate at NPI's website. We do put the money that people donate right into our polling, so people do have that ability to support our research budget directly. And we actually use a donation processing platform that has no credit card fees, so the processing platform eats the fees. And the reason they can do that is because people can leave tips for the processor. So regardless of whether you leave a tip or not, though, we get 100%. So it's not quite the same as - well, click here to pay the nonprofit's credit card fees. You can actually just donate. And whether or not you tip or not, we're going to get 100%. And that's very innovative - that's the kind of thing that NPI does. We look for ways to make sure that we're running the most fiscally responsible nonprofit that we can. We try to be very cost-conscious. So when we do an event, it's usually in a public space. We usually source the food ourselves - we find a restaurant that will do a really great job for us, a local restaurant that we want to do business with, and then we bring them in to do the food in a public space. And that allows us to keep the costs under control of that event. When we do a fundraiser, a lot of that money can then go right into our research polling. So if you come to our spring fundraising gala - you buy a ticket - most of your ticket's actually going to go into research and advocacy. It's not going to go into event costs. And that's not something that every nonprofit can say. So for those nonprofits that want to learn - how do we do it? How do we keep the costs in check? How do we practice research responsibly? We're happy to talk and provide advice and guidance. And whether or not you want to take advantage of what our expertise is and work with us on a project, or whether you want to do something yourself - we can help. We can provide you at least with the leads that you need to get started and do your work. But if you are going to be doing research and you haven't done it before, and you're going to work with a pollster and you're expecting them to provide a complete package for you - just be prepared to pay well out of the five figures. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Right. That expertise is valuable. And that is reflected in some of those costs, as you mentioned. Now, I do want to talk about your work this legislative session. The session recently started and there's a lot on deck. I want to start off talking about the even-year elections bill. What is that and why does it matter? [00:46:27] Andrew Villeneuve: So this is a bill that would let localities switch their elections to even years when turnout is higher and more diverse. There's two versions of the bill - one that NPI wrote is in the Senate, and it just covers cities and towns. And the other one, which is based on the one we wrote and is sponsored by our friend Mia Gregerson - which we also support, we support them both - covers a lot more local government. So it's cities and towns, but then it's also ports and school boards and so on. And basically what we're trying to do is we're trying to liberate these important local elections from the curse of super low, not diverse turnout. So we know that in odd years, turnout's been declining - in fact, last year, 2023, we set a record for the worst voter turnout in Washington state history, around 36%. We're getting into special election territory with our odd year turnouts. So that means that in a special election, the turnout's going to be somewhere between like 25% and 35%. Well, regular election turnout in odd years is now approaching that special election average, which is not good. And so to liberate localities from that problem of having their leaders chosen by the few instead of the many, we want to let localities switch into even years - at their option. We're not making them. So we could propose a bill that would make it mandatory. And New York State is actually switching a lot of their localities to even years and it's not an option, as I understand their legislation. But our legislation makes it optional. So that way we could do some pilots to see how it would work here in Washington state. Because there's a lot of folks in the election community who are real skittish about this. Because we've had a system in place for 50 years where local governments go in odd-numbered years for the most part - there's some exceptions, which I'll mention in a second - and then the state and federal is in even years. And they're comfortable with this arrangement. It provides continuity and consistency - every year there's going to be work for our election staff to do. And people should get into the habit of voting every year - I think the auditors are in love with this bifurcated system. And the problem is the voters are not. And so the old saying is, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Well, we can schedule the election in the odd-numbered year, but that doesn't mean people are going to vote then. And I think it's wrong to have - in my city, I look at Redmond's turnout percentages, and it's true for other cities too, like Seattle - you can look at the turnout and say, Well, 37% of the voters are picking who's the mayor of our city? I don't like that. I want the mayor being chosen by like 60% to 80% of the voters. And that's what would happen if that election was being held one year later or earlier. It just doesn't make sense that we're having these elections at times when most people aren't voting. We know that if we move them to an even-numbered year, people will vote in them. There are some folks who say - Well, they're down-ballot, so no one's going to vote in them. Not true. When you look at data from other states, or when you look at data from here - because sometimes we have a special election. One of the things you were talking about earlier is the governor's race. But Seattle's actually going to have a special city council election this year - it's an even-numbered year, and there's going to be a city council election right there on the ballot. And that election - you and I can go over the data after it comes back, but I'm willing to say right now, even though I told you I don't like predictions, but I'm willing to tell you, I think the turnout in that city council election is going to blow the doors off of the regular turnout for that same position three years ago. It's going to be like twice as much or something in that territory. And that's because it's a special election in an even-numbered year. And it will be way down the ballot. People will vote for it. So what that shows is that people are still going to keep voting, even after they get past president and governor and these higher-profile positions - they're going to keep going. They're going to keep voting. And that's the benefit of local elections moving over - is they get to ride the coattails of those state and federal offices. And we will hear, of course - people say, Well, you're going to kill local issues. You're going to bury local issues because you're having these elections at the same time as state and federal. So they're going to get drowned or swamped out. And actually, I love paradoxes. And one of the things that's a real paradox in politics is - you might think local issues just can't compete with state and federal. Oh, no. Local issues do very well when they're in the mix. Why is that? Because first of all - if people are not paying attention to begin with, it takes an enormous amount of energy just to get them to care about anything. So if you're a canvasser in Kent and nobody knows there's an election, nobody knows. So you're going door-to-door and you're like - Well, have you voted in the election? What election? What are you talking about? Okay. It's a lot harder to get people to care about the election when they don't know about it and they're not interested and they think it's an off-year. And I hate that term "off-year," by the way. Don't use it, but it's out there. It's used all the time, so people think - Oh, it doesn't matter. My vote doesn't matter. It's an off-year. Well, it's not. Every year is an on-year - but people hear that it's an off-year, so they think it doesn't matter. So they don't vote. And then they're told at the door maybe - if somebody comes to their door, which may or may not happen - but if someone does, they get told, Well, it does matter - but does that conversation actually move them to care? Whereas in an even year, that same person comes to their door - they already know there's going to be an election, they're already primed to vote. So now you're just trying to get them to take action in a race where they're already going to vote - they just need to make sure that when they get to that bottom of the ballot, they're going to check for a particular candidate. So as a canvasser, that makes your life so much easier. And people can still do - we've heard all about, Well, TV ads are going to cost more and radio is going to cost more. Well, that might be true. But local candidates need to be doorbelling anyway. So doorbelling is not going to cost more in an even-numbered year - it's going to be the same price. You're not going to have to worry about that. It might cost a little more to print your literature because you'll be competing with more campaigns. But there are trade-offs, which is if you're a local candidate, you're running for Teresa Mosqueda's council seat that she's given up because she went to the County Council - well, you can go out and campaign with other endorsed candidates, like your legislative candidates. You'll be able to doorbell with them if you want, because they're going to have to doorbell too. So there's opportunities to do joint campaigning that haven't existed before. And you mentioned earlier that King County is moving to even years as a result of our charter amendment. So even if our legislation doesn't pass at the state level for cities and towns and other local governments, we're still going to get data back from the county starting in 2026, because voters have signed off on that already. And I'm convinced that what we're going to see is that folks like Claudia Balducci are going to be running for a four-year term in 2026, and they're going to find all these opportunities to go out and campaign with people. And the turnout in their districts and countywide is going to be much bigger than what they've seen in the past. And this is an opportunity to get people connected to King County government who don't even know that it really is there. So it's very exciting - that's what our bill does is it gives localities the option. They can either do it through ballot measure or they can do it councilmanically if they want. If they do it councilmanically, they have to hold several hearings spaced 30 days apart so that people know that it's happening. So we don't want anybody being surprised by such a change. The way I see it - if this bill passes, let's say Seattle wanted to do it - if they were prepared, they could turn around a charter amendment to the people of Seattle in time for the November general election. Because they have to change their charter - they can't just pass an ordinance in Seattle, because that's a first-class city. So if we pass our bill, it gets signed into law in March or April, then by June it's in effect. And then the City of Seattle can use that law - they could propose a charter amendment and then submit it by August, turn it around. The vote happens in November. By 2025 - by this time next year - Seattle could, in a best case scenario, if they wanted, they could be starting their transition to even-year elections. But first, our bill would have to pass - either the Senate version or the House version, doesn't matter. One of them has to pass. And that has to get signed into law.

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn! Crystal and Lex dive into the new year's headlines with a debate over Space Needle NYE drone shows vs fireworks, a rundown of new Washington state laws taking effect, and a discussion of why it's important to look past a poll's summary headline. They then chat about the new Seattle City Council taking office, a lawsuit against the City of Burien over its homeless camping law, and a new entrant into the Attorney General's race. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn.   Resources RE-AIR: Ending Youth Incarceration with Dr. Ben Danielson of AHSHAY Center from Hacks & Wonks   “The new Washington state laws taking effect in January 2024” by Laurel Demkovich from Washington State Standard   “Poll: Washington voters want to spend more — while cutting taxes” by Donna Gordon Blankinship from Crosscut   Crosscut - Elway Poll | 2024 Legislative Preview    “Tammy Morales, Rob Saka To Chair Key Council Committees During Pivotal Year” by Ryan Packer and Doug Trumm from The Urbanist   “Seattle politics shift as City Council gets new members, president” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times   “New City Council Elects Former Conservative Outcast as President” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger   Council Vacancy | Office of the City Clerk   “Unhoused people sue Burien over new homeless camping law” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times   “Update: Eastern WA attorney who fought gun laws, COVID mandates plans run for state AG” by Eric Rosane from Tri-City Herald   Find stories that Crystal is reading here   Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, we re-aired an important conversation I had with Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY Center about ending youth incarceration. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder and editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. [00:01:20] Lex Vaughn: Hey, nice to be back. [00:01:21] Crystal Fincher: Hey, great to have you back - excited to have you back. I don't know that I'm excited to talk about everything on our list today, but we've got to get through it. But I do- [00:01:33] Lex Vaughn: There's a lot. [00:01:34] Crystal Fincher: There's a lot. And so - first show of the new year - we just had New Year's Eve, New Year's Day happen and we welcome that in in the greater Seattle area with a big Space Needle fireworks show. This year, it was a drone show pre-show and then a fireworks main show. And this year, there was a bit of a challenge with it - it was a smoky, hazy, kind of unintelligible soupy mess. What did you think about it? [00:02:09] Lex Vaughn: I was like, what is this? It's 2024 - did someone read like the last part of the year backwards, like 420, and go - This is a 420-themed New Year's Eve celebration? I don't know - it was funny. I mean, I was celebrating out-of-state with family, but I immediately was getting messages from people like - Did you see this? Did you see this? I mean, honestly, I think that - I know that a lot of people are flipping out and going like, Something needs to be done - but this is Seattle. Come on - you know that the Space Needle thing doesn't always work as planned and that's part of the fun. And the look of it was definitely fun this last year. [00:03:01] Crystal Fincher: You know, it was interesting - weather is always, always a factor in anything that happens in this region, whether it's 4th of July celebrations or New Year's Eve. I think for me, I have just been, I mean, I'm someone who has traditionally loved fireworks for most of my life and has enjoyed them. Yes, 100%. But I also, especially over the past couple of years, contending with the smoke generated by fireworks - not on New Year's Eve, but you know, July 4th, mostly, but I guess the neighborhoods on New Year's Eve - the fire hazard associated with it, which is definitely worse in the summer than it is in the winter. It just seems like now we have the option for drone shows and those seem like they're a bit more resilient - they don't create smoke. And part of the challenge of this current show was the way that the fireworks and the smoke interacted with the atmosphere, kind of making each other worse, making visibility worse. And it just seems like, okay - I am ready to move on from fireworks and to move on to drone shows. They seem like they can do everything the fireworks shows do and more. And it just seems like given where we are at with our climate, given where we are at with the volatility of just Seattle weather period, that it seems like it makes more sense to me to do that. But you know, I don't know if that's an option moving forward. You know, I don't know what's gonna happen with that. I'm not in any way affiliated with that. So it'll be interesting to see, but I wish we could move beyond fireworks personally. [00:04:38] Lex Vaughn: I'll never be over fireworks. I want that - well, I don't know - it's like, I know there's a lot of debate over it. But I also think any attempt to lessen fireworks only increases fireworks. So honestly, the best plan for reducing fireworks all over a region is always like a big, you know, show that people can watch. And when I, you know, go back to my hometown in California for New Year's or July 4th - that city stopped doing a central fireworks show. And what happened is just a proliferation of fireworks all over the city. There's just like a fireworks show going on everywhere all night. So I always think it's worth it to have one big show or you're gonna get that. [00:05:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I do think that a big show that the community can come to is important. In the absence of that, people are definitely going to celebrate on their own. I'm just thinking the big show can be a drone show. We saw a pretty successful pre-show - I thought - [00:05:45] Lex Vaughn: The drone show is a good backup. I mean, especially in Seattle, 'cause it's like, you know, you might be excited about a show and then, something about the weather happens and it's - Oh, you're not gonna see anything. So it's like the drone show is the only thing that can be guaranteed if it can move to a little space where it's free from smoke or clouds or whatever. [00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, also wanna talk about a few more things this new year is ushering in, and that's a number of new state laws taking effect as of January 1st. One of them includes marijuana testing and changing in how that can be used by employers. Under the new law, employers are blocked from conducting drug tests for cannabis when making hiring decisions. They can still test for other drugs before hiring and they can still test employees for cannabis in certain situations, like after accidents or if they suspect someone's impaired. There are also some exemptions for companies that need to test for federal requirements and other workers potentially - including police, airline crews, corrections officers - may still have to test. But it's a pretty significant change in just kind of pre-employment testing overall - that's done with a lot of lower wage jobs, certainly not so much predominant and higher wage jobs. But it does, there has been a tension for quite some time in going - Okay, well, if it's legal, then why are you testing for it? And so this seems to bring things more in line. Do you think that makes sense? [00:07:21] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, and I hope the message of a law like this is it's not worth it because you could be breaking the law and you can get sued. Like it's a liability for you now to try to judge people this way - If you haven't like sped up with the times here and realize that it's generally not that big of a deal to use cannabis. [00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Another law that took place is a - that is taking effect - is a 10-day gun waiting period. So as of now, those wishing to buy a firearm in Washington need to complete a background check and then wait 10 business days before they can complete that purchase. We've seen this referred to as kind of a cooling off period before wanting to purchase a gun and actually owning one. We have certainly seen a number of examples from mass shootings to domestic violence situations where people use guns to murder people immediately after purchasing them. And so while no gun reform is going to solve everything - usually no anything solves anything for everything - and it really is gonna take a patchwork of policies and laws to move forward. And this seems like a positive one to me that has some evidence behind it. [00:08:39] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, honestly, this is like, I think the most positive new law of this next year that I'm really looking forward to seeing put in place and I hope becomes more commonplace because like you said - yeah, there's a lot of reform that needs to happen to make this country safer from gun violence. But this cooling off period is a major one. When I was a reporter at The Seattle Times, I definitely covered some very tragic situations where it was very clear that a young man or something was distraught over somebody breaking up with them and made a horrible decision really quickly. And it's like in a lot of these cases, it's - what could have happened if this person had just been held to a few more days of thought before pulling that off. [00:09:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Another law taking effect impacts hospital staffing. Hospitals in Washington need to establish staffing committees made up of nursing staff and administrators. This is in response to years of advocacy really by healthcare workers saying that - Hey, these staffing ratios have gotten way out of whack. We're not able to provide adequate care to patients, patient care quality is suffering and we need to get back to staffing ratios - happening during a time where we're losing healthcare workers. There's been a lot of attrition. The pandemic only has made that worse. And so this is trying to still allow hospitals to have their say, but to do it with the input of nurses and hospital staff to say - Let's put patient safety first. Let's really work on these ratios and make sure that we're moving in the right direction and really putting patients at the center of this year. And I think this is a step forward in this direction that will bring a little bit more transparency and accountability to the process. [00:10:43] Lex Vaughn: And it's awesome that hospital staff is getting this extra leverage to make that happen. Because I mean, obviously they've been pressing for stuff like that as unions and all. But it's crazy the way they have to fight to give us quality care. Increasingly, unfortunately, in our health systems here in the US, it's like a lot of hospital administrators are more focused on turning hospitals into these profit machines without as much thought about what's happening to staff and their patients. And those staff - those are the ones rooting for us and protecting quality of care. [00:11:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So there's a new voting rights law. It's intended to address situations where there are signs of polarized voting among different groups in a community, and where there are risks to some groups having their votes diluted so they don't have a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. It makes it easier to try and address this with a couple different mechanisms - it allows organizations to sue on behalf of their members, it allows local governments to voluntarily reform their election systems to be more representative of their populations, and for lawsuits to be filed if the locality refused to take such steps. So it hopefully can bring the cost down. I mean, sometimes there are clear violations, but it has been very costly - prohibitively costly - for someone to pursue it if they feel they have been wrong and want to bring that in court. So this seeks to try and address that and provide a pathway for people to be able to sue without that cost prohibitive element involved and to recover costs they incur when researching those possible legal challenges. What are your thoughts on this one? [00:12:42] Lex Vaughn: I have to admit, I was like, when I, you know, just kind of heard about this one and got a general sense of it, I was like - wait, what? This sounds a little bit confusing to me. The motivation of it is just that like, if someone is feeling outnumbered in a community, that they have strength and power to - I have to admit like this one, I didn't totally get, 'cause I don't know if I've seen a law like that before. [00:13:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is in line with previous voting rights act laws. And we have passed legislation in the same vein - I think five years ago, we passed a voting rights act in the same vein. But it's really an issue of like - we see a challenge when it comes to districting that's happening right now in Yakima, or issues where it looks like - Okay, a community's overwhelmingly voting in the same way if you look at it geographically, but things are sliced up and that's not turning out the way it is in government. I mean, there's a case to be made in a city I'm pretty familiar with - the city of Kent, the largest city in the state that doesn't have any council districts, no form of districted government, which makes the government certainly less representative than it is in other areas. But to try and bring a case or bring a suit and rectify this has been prohibitively expensive. You can see something being wrong, but whether you can pursue any remedy or whether there's any recourse is a whole different subject. And so it's like - okay, we see that there are problems happening, but we don't have the tools and power to make it realistic to expect something to be done about it. And if someone doesn't expect something to be done about a violation, if they see that there's no consequence for bad actions, it makes it more likely that that's going to happen. So this makes it more likely that - hey, if you are violating the law, if there are violations happening here, you can expect more of a consequence for that than you did before. So hopefully one that prevents further violations from happening, but for those that currently are, it makes them easier to remedy and rectify. So I think that's a positive step. Will it solve anything? Will it immediately change anything? I don't think this is like an immediately transformative piece of policy - we're going to see something that flips from night to day in this. But I do think that it's part of, again, patchwork of legislation like most things that makes it easier to hold people and entities that are violating voting rights laws accountable and to give people more tools to fix it. [00:15:25] Lex Vaughn: And maybe like slow the role of people who were planning on exploiting people in new ways or something like that. [00:15:31] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Because there's a lot of that happening right now. Okay. Absolutely. Another law that a lot of cities have been dealing with is one that addresses street racing. So this law imposes tougher penalties for street racing. If you're caught, you can have your car impounded for three days on the first offense and forfeited on the second one. It also increases penalties for those who are found to be aiding and abetting street racers. I don't know if this is going to get there. I mean, that seems like a really tough penalty. I am not personally familiar with how these laws have resulted in any changes, or whether they've resulted in any changes. But it seems like they're trying to do more. That people are seeing that this is a problem - and it is a problem - it's a problem for a variety of reasons. And they're trying to do something to address it - and hopefully it does help. We will see. [00:16:28] Lex Vaughn: Honestly, I think it's - of course this is dangerous. I mean, whenever I hear something like this happened - I can't believe sometimes I hear this happened in Seattle sometimes. I'm like - What street are you on? Oh my God. This is horrible. This is not the place. But I think the thing is - there is a culture for this that will always be there. And no matter what law you put in place, I mean, you're just going to make it sexier. So, I mean, honestly, I wish that there was some way to - I don't know - give people a space to do this more safely or something. That's the real solution, 'cause it is going to keep happening. [00:17:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think you're onto something there. I mean, clearly you're right - there's a culture around that - and I mean, it's so interesting. And it's kind of an offshoot of car culture. There are car enthusiasts and this is a subset of that. And it's kind of tangential, but we, as a community, as a society have been reducing the number of just alternative, recreational opportunities in spaces, particularly for younger people. And then criminalizing a lot of activity there. Some of that, you know, may be warranted. Not all activity is positive. Like we said, there's a lot of danger associated with street racing, but what are we doing to give people options to do safer activities? Whether it's racing activities or others, if we aren't providing positive, affirmative options, particularly for younger people - places for people to congregate and share that don't require an entry fee, that don't require purchase necessarily, that are places where people can congregate and recreate and do things that are meaningful to them together - that we're moving in the wrong direction overall. I think that's a valid concern and one we need to do better with as a community and society. [00:18:28] Lex Vaughn: But it's not going away. So it's - we just need a more proactive approach. [00:18:35] Crystal Fincher: Yep, and so we will keep our eye on how these laws pan out, on new laws as they pass. We have a new legislative session starting on Monday, and we'll be following along with what happens there. But we're seeing these results now and we'll keep paying attention. Also wanna talk this week about a new Crosscut poll that was just released - part of the poll at least. And the headline of this poll is - Washington voters want to spend more - while cutting taxes. Also another headline saying that 57% of people are in favor of repealing the state's new capital gains tax. Now this is interesting. We've talked about this before in the podcast, but polls are very interesting things. And it's very important to pay attention to the questions asked, who they're being asked of, and what the particulars are in this. And this one - I think there are some interesting findings in this poll, I think that you have to dig a lot deeper than these headlines. And I think that this doesn't actually tell us much about what voters' likelihood of voting for or against some of these questions asked in here. And one of the reasons why this is being asked is because there is likely to be an initiative, a statewide initiative, to repeal this tax. But it's very important to actually read the poll, to go beyond the synopsis in the article and to take a look at the actual poll. And when we do that, we see that these questions were asked in a way that they aren't asked when people are invested in, where like people working, right - if you're actually working on this thing, you would not trust this. You're not asking questions in this way. Usually when you're trying to figure out what happens - one, kind of the most important thing, you wanna ask the question in the same way that it's gonna be asked to voters on their ballot. Now we're kind of before that point, right? So a lot of times you'll hear - Well, is it the ballot title? Is it the ballot language? We don't have that yet, but you wanna get close to that. You wanna describe it in a way that you feel that they're gonna encounter it in the real world with voters. You also with this, it's very important understanding, particularly with something like this - there's gonna be a lot of money, there's gonna be a lot of communication in these campaigns. So people are gonna hear messages in favor of it. People are gonna hear messages opposed to it. They're gonna be getting mail in their mailboxes, they're gonna see digital ads, they're gonna be seeing political commercials about this - and they're gonna be getting a lot of messages. You want to expose the people you're asking those questions of of likely messages that they're gonna hear so that - okay, afterwards, is it more likely or less likely that they're going to support it? - or that you're coming closer to the conditions under which they're gonna make their decision. That's really informative and really predictive and a pretty accurate way of figuring out where support really lies. And really in those things, when you have a poll, you're asking those questions - there's a lot learned by asking the initial question before they hear any pro and con arguments. And then asking that final question - the question again - having heard all that, are you still in favor of, more likely to support, less likely to support this initiative or this law? And seeing who that moves and who different arguments influence is all part of how people put together these campaigns. None of that was in here. This was asked in kind of a kludgy way, actually, kind of a muddled way in how they did this. They kind of asked - Hey, they're expected to have a surplus from a capital gains tax and a carbon pricing trade system. What should we do with this money? And so it's just - Okay, we should put it into schools. And actually the majority of people did not say they want to keep spending at the current level or reduce taxes somehow. They were saying - majority 55% said put more money into schools, reducing homelessness, mental health programs, and combating effects of climate change. Then they asked - Okay, the following are some proposals that the legislature is expected to discuss in the coming weeks. As I read each of these, please indicate whether you favor, strongly favor, oppose, or strongly oppose each one. And so all it says is - Repeal the state's new capital gains tax. And that's it. And the other ones are - Eliminate some restrictions on when police can pursue criminal suspects in cars. Put more money into mental - like they're just asking the sentence. Now, if there's one thing, especially people involved in politics, involved in reporting know - it's that people do not have the context for this at all when you just ask that. [00:23:23] Lex Vaughn: In just a general sense, the average person is like - less taxes. Like no context, like what is it? [00:23:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, sure, it's a tax - repeal it. What is that? [00:23:32] Lex Vaughn: Are you taking more money from me? And it's like, if this does end up on the ballot, you know, again, like this year, the main message that I know we've kept saying to defend that capital gains tax is - it affects such a small number of people. It's probably definitely not you. [00:23:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, exactly. [laughing] It is such a small percentage of people. And when people are like - Oh, okay, you're not talking about something that applies to me and I'm already struggling and trying to figure this out. [00:24:02] Lex Vaughn: Honestly, that thing needs like a rebrand or something - capital gains tax. [00:24:05] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I don't even - you know, I don't know. [00:24:08] Lex Vaughn: The 1% tax - I mean, I think it's even smaller than 1%. It's like - tippity-top. [00:24:13] Crystal Fincher: I would question whether it even needs a rebrand because the other thing about this is that we have seen a lot of high quality polling that turned out to look like it was pretty accurate when it came to this. And basically the numbers look flipped. When people actually are asked a reasonably composed question, when they - after they hear pro and con messages, they're more likely to support the capital gains tax. It has actually been a popular policy in polling that we've seen till now. And, you know, the questions were asked more comprehensively and differently than they were here. It'll be interesting to see as this continues - I mean, certainly this is going to produce a great headline, which in today's media environment is a goal for many people. Most people don't read beyond headlines. So if you can get a great headline, that is a win because then that gives people an impression of something, even though it may not be completely accurate or there's not other contexts surrounding it. But it'll be interesting to see where this comes out. I would just be leery about these results based on the way that these questions are asked, based on the fact that it does contradict other publicly available polling that we've seen. And it'll be interesting to see, but I am taking this with a grain of salt - for these results. I do think that there are - just looking, polls are always interesting things. And even if it's not the number one thing that the poll may have been designed to elicit, it'll be interesting. There's this larger discourse, kind of want to say Stancil-ized discourse - discourse about the economy, and whether people are happy, and what this means for Joe Biden, and like where people are at. And that there are a lot of economic indicators that seem positive, but people are kind of sour on the economy overall - more sour than traditional economic indicators would indicate is logical. But these questions, there's a question asked here - Hey, what's your outlook for the country? - basically - do you expect things will - in general terms, get better over the next year or get worse? Much better, somewhat better, somewhat worse, or much worse. And in these, what we saw is that people said - Okay - and it was asked four ways in four categories. Do you think this for the United States, for Washington State, in your community, and in your household? And across the board, people gave, you know, majority of people said - Hey, things are actually gonna get better for my household. Majorities across the board there. And then slightly less for their community, and then less for Washington State, and then less for the United States. So there's this difference where if you look and you ask people individually - Hey, do you think the next year for you in general terms is gonna be better or worse? Most people say better. But if you ask people - Okay, generally for the United States, do you think the next year is gonna be better or worse? Most people say worse. And the further out it gets from them, the less likely they are to think that it gets positive. There are lots of theories for why this is, there are lots of people's views - but it's an interesting dynamic that is there. And it's not a new dynamic - we've seen this before, but it certainly is more pronounced. It's very pronounced and there's a very wide gulf, wider than we've seen in quite some time. The other interesting thing about that is when you look at the crosstabs broken up there - younger people are actually more optimistic than older people, which is interesting. [00:27:52] Lex Vaughn: Now I don't trust anything in this poll. [00:27:54] Crystal Fincher: [laughs] What I don't have at my fingertips right now is enough data on this asked in different polls in a variety of different ways to immediately be suspicious and wanna look into more. Like with that question about the capital gains tax, it's just at odds with other polls that we have seen - certainly publicly available, certainly at odds with a lot of private polling. [00:28:21] Lex Vaughn: But young people being optimistic - about anything political - hmm. [00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: In some ways, right? And about like, does it, are you more optimistic about your own prospects? Like looking at the personal, 'cause the further away you get, the more politically influenced it is. But looking at the personal, it's really interesting. And I just find that very, very interesting in what that means and the difference there. And to me, when I see those things, the interest is in wanting to dive down and - okay, what explains that difference? Who is experiencing kind of in that zone between you thinking things getting better for yourself and worse overall? You know, who is in that category? Who are the people who move? What's influencing that movement is interesting to look at. So we'll link this poll. And like generally, I would just say for people, when you're consuming polls, there's usually a whole article breakdown, and then there should be in each article - there is in this article - a link to the actual poll. Always read the actual poll. Always read the questions. Because a lot of times, some of these challenges or things that seem non-standard or problematic are often visible to a layperson if they read it. Like, okay, that's a weird way to ask the question. Or, you know, if you ask me that, I might be confused. Or like, what does that even mean? So there's a lot there, but that was an interesting finding. But we're certainly hearing about this today - we're recording this on Thursday - and we'll be hearing a lot more about it. What did you think just generally about it? [00:29:53] Lex Vaughn: First of all, I have to admit - I think a lot of times I don't click on that kind of external PDF like there is here with a breakdown of who was interviewed, breakdown of landlines, cell phone, text. I'll say at least this poll does a very good breakdown of exactly who they interviewed. But in general, I don't take a lot of reporting on polls very seriously. I usually think it reveals the bias of a media organization or a polling organization. And I'm - that's informative. That's what I'm taking from this. [00:30:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's, you know, polling is an interesting thing. Polling is - not all polling is predictive. Not everybody is polling likely voters or trying to mimic an election result. Some polls are just trying to take the pulse of where people are at. This, you know, is asking some things that they're gonna be dealing with in the legislature. And it's not like there's gonna be an immediate vote up and down on proposed legislation, but it could indicate people's general satisfaction of the legislation or not. I think with these things, it is important to read the actual poll. I will say - just for here - it's important to read the poll 'cause I have seen more than one misleading breakdown of a poll, or things that omit some significant or even contradictory findings. And so I think it's important to look for yourself to - okay, not a synopsis, but if we're really talking about how important this is about policy or what people think, let me look at everything people ask and let me look at this whole poll and see what happens - because we can't always trust the breakdowns. But also just understanding what polls do and don't do. A poll that - things can change massively in either direction, right, between now and the election. These are a snapshot in time. Something, especially at this point in time, is not predictive. They're very early. There's usually - if you're asking about a specific candidate or policy, a lot of people who aren't familiar with it yet, or who don't have all of the context - there's still a lot of pro and con arguments and a lot of communication that's gonna happen. So they're not determinative, certainly. They're not absolutely predictive. But they can be useful information points. And usually they're most useful - not in the horse race sense - but in the who does something appeal to and why, if it's done well. And just understanding that - certainly from a campaign perspective is really important - Even if you set aside the - ultimate who's likely to vote for this or not type of questions. So just another interesting one. I'm sure we're gonna see other ones. I think this is part one of two that they've released, so we're going to see some more from this soon. And that was a Crosscut poll. Also this week, Seattle City Council - councils all across the state, really were sworn in - the new Seattle City Council was sworn in. And so we have a new council. We have committees that were assigned. We have Sara Nelson, who is now the council president. Sara Nelson, who is a moderate conservative, who is now seeming to be very aligned with the mayor and leading a council that is much more aligned with the mayor's office - that is much more moderate to conservative. And so we're going to see a new council and seemingly a new direction here in the state. We saw one of Sara Nelson's first actions as council president was to disband the Renters' Rights Committee, which former Seattle City Councilmember, Kshama Sawant, had chaired since 2019 - disbanded that committee, and which is not that surprising. More than half of the residents of Seattle are renters, so it seems like that is applicable to the majority of people - it would be useful and helpful. But Sara has indicated distrust and hostility of several of those efforts before, has hosted landlord support groups before. And so it is not surprising, even though it may be really unfortunate. [00:34:18] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:34:20] Crystal Fincher: But we're gonna see. What do you think about this whole thing? [00:34:24] Lex Vaughn: It's really unfortunate that a whole slate of people was elected that are probably gonna just kinda be in lockstep with the mayor. And I see all of them as like, faux-gressive - they know how to kinda have the facade of progressive to fit into Seattle, but their policies that they're rooting for are just so obviously conservative and Republican to me. Like making your first order of business disbanding a Renters' Rights Committee. [laughs] It's like, it's just amazing. And it just kind of adds to the cognitive dissonance of the whole identity of the city - who these council people are and what they're probably gonna do legally this year, the policies they're gonna enact - just makes me laugh that anyone thinks the city is liberal. 'Cause it's - unfortunately, these people that were just elected are probably going to move forward with basically a lot of conservative policies on a local level. [00:35:33] Crystal Fincher: It's gonna be really interesting to see. And for me, there's a lot that they're going to be dealing with. And just so people know - that for committee chairs, the people who are going to decide the general direction of these areas, what kind of legislation they pursue within their committees. Rob Saka will be chairing the Transportation Committee. Tammy Morales will chair the Land Use Committee. Joy Hollingsworth will chair the Parks, Public Utilities and Technology Committee. Maritza Rivera will chair Libraries, Education and Neighborhoods. Cathy Moore will chair Housing and Human Services. Dan Strauss will chair Finance, which will handle the budget, Native Communities and Tribal Governments. Bob Kettle will chair Public Safety. And the vacant Position 8 position - the person who will be appointed to the council - will chair Sustainability, City Light, Arts and Culture. Sara Nelson will chair Governance, Accountability and Economic Development. Within those, there's a lot that's gonna happen. And I think one thing that some people discount or don't expect is just how much practically they're going to have to deal with. Now it's kind of like - Okay, strip the progressive or conservative, whatever labels. There are serious issues that people have to deal with and a range of options, like a range that could be under the progressive label, a range that could be under the moderate label, right? But they're going to have to chart - well, they don't have to - their job is to chart a path forward for lots of this. Rob Saka, Chair of Transportation, which, you know, there's certainly a lot at stake - when it comes to transportation, there's gonna be a new Move Seattle Levy. He's overseeing the $700 million annual budget. We see a lot of asks and needs from the community. He's talked about getting back to the basics and being "the pothole king." And there, and it'll just be interesting to see. There's a lot of practical daily things that have to be dealt with. How is he going to do that? What approach are they going to take to a lot of things? We've seen Bob Kettle, Chair of Public Safety, talk about a lot of law and order oriented things, building a better relationship, promoting respect. We heard Sara Nelson talk about - one of her other first acts was proposing another pay increase for SPD, which is, you know, without anything changes, would deepen the budget deficit that the city is facing, barring any new revenue on the heels of other additions to that budget and elements of pay. It'll just be really interesting to see, because these things are having practical effects. They're all going to impact the budget that they're all going to have to deal with, with a major budget deficit coming up. They were all, most of these people who are new on the council were very hesitant to discuss what their actual practical plans were for dealing with this budget deficit, most hesitant to put support behind any new taxation, progressive taxation, proposals from the work group that the mayor convened on this that came up with options. But they have talked about cutting in areas. They have talked about the need to trim overall, but were hesitant or unwilling to talk about what specifically that would be. They're going to have to get into specifics now. They're going to have to deal with the things that they were hesitant to talk about during the campaign. It's going to be really interesting to see how this, how this carries out. Also, this is a very new council overall. They're going to have to get their feet underneath them. Sara Nelson announced that they are not going to be having regular committee meetings for most of this month to allow people to get up to speed - there's a lot of that that needs to happen - and that their first council meeting of the month will be on the 23rd to appoint the new councilmember that is going to take over for Teresa Mosqueda, who is, was just elected to the county. So it's going to be really interesting and just FYI - applications for that vacancy, if anyone is interested, are being accepted until January 9th. And that is Tuesday and the appointment will take place on the 23rd. Certainly a lot of talk about who might potentially take those places. We have heard a couple names bandied about, one of them being Tanya Woo, who lost - [00:40:10] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, how about not Tanya Woo? [laughing] [00:40:13] Crystal Fincher: You know, I just have a hard time - you're representing all of Seattle. It is a city that has made a strong stance and has made strong statements - fortunately - when it comes to protecting all members of the LGBTQ community, including trans people. And there's an interview with Hacks & Wonks, it's been covered elsewhere where Tanya Woo did not fully support the ability of trans people to participate in regular everyday life like everyone else, expressed reservations about trans people participating on sports teams - said if they wanted to exclude them, she would be willing to support that in a position on the city council - which just to me, there are policy differences, but then there are issues of just basic humanity and support of people and residents of the city. And that, to me, is one of those that's automatically disqualifying in my personal evaluation of that. And so it looks like that is not necessarily disqualifying for some people who might be considering this on the council, but I certainly think it should be considered with this. Now I do understand that she, I think, made an Instagram post apologizing for that and trying to clarify their position. I would just suggest that, you know, and lots of people evolve over that. So I'm not saying that that is what she thinks or believes for the rest of her life. Maybe she has changed and maybe she has learned more, and I hope that she has and that other people are on that journey. I just think that when it comes to appointing someone responsible for the city, we can appoint someone who is further along in that journey and not learning about the humanity of people at the same time that they're having to learn about all of these policies and operations that they're now having to. So it's gonna be really interesting to see. There are certainly other people who have held various elected office, school board candidates that have had exposure and that may be able to be really positive additions to the council, particularly with a number of councilmembers that have not served in elective office before - having someone who had in whatever capacity could be a very positive, helpful thing for this council. It'll be interesting to see. I think that there are - certainly there have been some names that have been talked about publicly. I think there are more names that are circulating privately. It'll be really interesting to see how this shakes out. But either way, I also don't think that's gonna tip the balance of this council. I do think that it could help with policy formation and general operational items. But I think just, you know, it's not gonna tip the balance of power of the council. [00:42:55] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I think the direction the council is gonna go is pretty well set. [00:43:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:43:01] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:43:02] Crystal Fincher: Yep, so we will see. Also this week, news of a lawsuit against the City of Burien over their new homeless camping law that - we have heard about the saga of Burien for quite some time. There was also an independent report this week that came out really chastising the city manager for not handling some of the major issues that they're doing with due care and seriousness. But this is a lawsuit being brought on behalf of unhoused people by a regional advocacy organization suing the city, claiming that it banishes homeless people, inflicts cruel punishment, and it violates Washington's constitution. The Northwest Justice Project filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in King County Superior Court on behalf of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness and three individual plaintiffs. What were your thoughts on this? [00:43:56] Lex Vaughn: I mean, it seems like this is the next step in inevitable plan to get this in the Supreme Court. I think there's probably a variety of cities, not just Burien, who have been wanting to challenge this. So this is another showdown that'll go to a higher court. But in general, I think it's just sad that it's happening because it's - we're talking about people's right to exist. It's not just a right to be homeless or something. It's a right to exist. There are people who cannot afford shelter. We as a society are not providing them enough aid in a dark period of their life. And you can't just ask people to go poof. Like, there's no magic wand that makes them just dissipate in air overnight. They have to exist somewhere. And to criminalize that is incredibly inhumane. [00:45:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, they have nowhere to go. Homelessness is a housing problem - it's the lack of housing. There has certainly been a lot of talk and skewed coverage presenting the homeless population as basically criminals and violent drug abusers. And one - homeless people are more likely to be victimized by crime than any other group. And if we were looking at facts and data, we would start from that point - they are not more violent than the general population. [00:45:35] Lex Vaughn: A lot of people are escaping violence. I mean, especially homeless youth, you know? [00:45:41] Crystal Fincher: 100%. [00:45:42] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:45:42] Crystal Fincher: But, you know, criminalizing - it doesn't help that. Sending someone to jail because they don't have shelter doesn't help them to get shelter - it moves them further away from it. It destabilizes people. And it's just incredibly expensive. [00:45:58] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:45:59] Crystal Fincher: There is just- [00:46:00] Lex Vaughn: So ineffective. [00:46:01] Crystal Fincher: Yes - so really expensive and ineffective. Seems like - okay, that should be the thing not to do. But that's the thing that they are rushing to do. Interesting about this lawsuit is it doesn't cite Martin v. Boise, which is a previous 2018 decision that came out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, saying that homeless people can't be punished for sleeping outside on public property if there are no adequate alternatives to offer them. Doesn't cite that, and it is also citing that it's a violation of Washington State's Constitution. So this, you know, which to me is notable because we'll see if Martin v. Boise stands. I don't think there's absolute confidence that that's going to continue to stand, although I certainly believe it should. But this could be something else that could prevent the large-scale just criminalization of homelessness without there being any place for anyone to go. No surprise to listeners of the program - I do believe we have an obligation to provide shelter and housing for people and that we have done a poor job of that, we have not kept up with the demand. And we continue to spend tons of money on these criminalized solutions that could go so much further if we invested them in ways that have shown they're more likely to reduce homelessness. There's been lots of coverage about Housing First models, which have been under attack, and there's actually an article recently about a very coordinated, conservative attack on these models. Just anecdotally, I've seen lots of people - Housing First policies have failed - when the truth is they haven't been tried yet. We've done a lot of criminalization. We have not done that - and man, we would love to, but suggestions that they don't work and that they failed are just false and not rooted. In reality, we haven't tried them. We have tried criminalization, and that's what's gotten us here. [00:47:53] Lex Vaughn: Criminalization, another word for addiction to punishment. Doesn't matter that there's just mounds of research showing that these old techniques of criminalization don't reduce homelessness, they don't make us safer. It's just frustrating to continue to see this happen when it's like there's so much evidence and research showing that criminalization is an expensive and ineffective strategy for solving A) homelessness, and B) making us a safer community in general. [00:48:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. The last item on our list today is there is a new entrant into the race for attorney general - a Republican from central Washington, an attorney named Pete Serrano, is the first major Republican to toss his name into the ring for Washington Attorney General. So he joins former US attorney Nick Brown, senior King County Deputy Prosecutor and State Senator Manka Dhingra in the race - who are both Democrats. So if he was elected, he would be the first Republican to hold the office since Rob McKenna vacated the seat in 2012. He's running on pretty standard conservative policies right now, which are kind of out there. He announced his candidacy with the host of the Washington Gun Law blog, if that gives you any hint - he is not in favor of any kind of gun control or gun laws. He, I believe, fought against vaccine mandates, filed legal challenges against the state's COVID-19 emergency order, fought against gun control legislation, and wants to bring more of that to the AG's race. What do you think of this? [00:49:48] Lex Vaughn: I think it's interesting that the first person he was coming out swinging against is Bob Ferguson. And I think as he campaigns, he'll probably keep his aim there because even though Bob Ferguson isn't running for AG again, he's running for governor. I guess this guy is gonna sell himself as like the check on Bob Ferguson if he wins the governor's race. I think - hopefully this guy won't stand a chance - but he will make these campaigns a little bit more colorful. [00:50:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly a new dimension in this race. There were - the main people in the race, two well-known Democratic candidates or fairly well-known Democratic candidates. This being the first Republican candidate is a new dimension in the race. We will continue to follow it. We're gonna have a lot of very interesting statewide races, which is not an unusual thing - except in Washington State for the past decade, basically, where we haven't had much change there. So will be interesting to follow, and we'll keep our eyes peeled on what happens there. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 5th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder and editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. You can find Lex on Twitter @AlexaVaughn - you can also find her on several other platforms, as well as me. I'm everywhere @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Rob McKenna believes keeping Trump off the ballor in Colorado will be 'overturned'

Embark on a transformative journey into the heart of intentional leader development with Dr. Rob McKenna, the visionary CEO of WiLD Leaders. Join us as we delve into the essential practices and attitudes that empower leaders to navigate high-pressure situations, particularly when occupying the leadership hot seat. Find full show notes here: https://bit.ly/368robmckenna Share the love. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it on Apple Podcasts and write a brief review. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-flourishing-culture-podcast/id1060724960?mt=2   By doing so, you will help spread our podcast to more listeners, and thereby help more Christian workplaces learn to build flourishing cultures. Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on X https://twitter.com/allopus  Follow our Host, Al Lopus, on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allopus/ Email our host at al@workplaces.org

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank! They discuss Dave Reichert's entry into the Washington gubernatorial race, whether fireworks are worth their consequences, observations about the motivation for and role of endorsements in local elections by powerful media outlets, a school governance model that renders school boards powerless, and Seattle Times poll results that challenge their usual narratives on homelessness and public safety. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.   Resources “Former Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert files paperwork to run for WA governor” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times   “Fireworks cause at least 2 building fires in Seattle, dozens of brush fires” by David Hyde from KUOW   @waDNR on Twitter: “(deep sigh) All six wildfires in the Pacific Cascade Region this weekend were caused by fireworks.”   “Seattle's School Board Should Move Away from Student Outcomes Focused Governance” by Robert Cruickshank for The Stranger   “1 in 3 Seattle residents is considering leaving. Costs, crime are to blame” by Alison Saldanha from The Seattle Times   “Seattle police rated as ‘fair' or ‘poor' by most residents, poll finds” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times   Find stories that Crystal is reading here   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. Welcome. [00:01:11] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back on, Crystal. [00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: Very, very excited to have you back on. And as we start our news of the week, we see a new entry into the race for governor - Dave Reichert. What do you make of this? [00:01:27] Robert Cruickshank: It's not that surprising, given that he had been apparently poking around the 2016 governor's race, the 2020 governor's race - Republicans didn't really have a leading candidate yet. I think corporate Democrat Mark Mullet was hoping he could de facto become the mainstream Republican candidate. But Reichert, I think, saw an opportunity here, realizing that the Republican candidates who have announced - people like Semi Bird or Raul Garcia - are much further to the right. Reichert himself has a very right wing record in Congress, of course, but he has 20+ years of presenting himself to the people of Western Washington, in particular, as someone who's more mainstream. And I think he saw his opportunity with Inslee retiring, an open seat. And open seat elections for governor in Washington - they're pretty rare these days - we've only had two this century. The first in 2004 was decided by 130 votes. And then in 2012, Inslee beat Rob McKenna, but it was pretty close - I think 51-49%. So Reichert saw his moment - I'm sure he had Republican leaders in the Legislature, corporate backers whispering in his ear, saying - Dude, we need you - there's no way we win otherwise. And even with Reichert in the race, it's still a pretty uphill climb for him, but he's going to have a ton of money and backing behind him for this. [00:02:39] Crystal Fincher: He is going to have a ton of money and backing behind him, and I do think that it was really an opening. And I think the opening came because of how extreme the Republican candidates are. The leading candidate right now is endorsed by Joe Kent, notoriously so extreme that he lost a traditionally Republican district to a Democrat in Congress - one of the biggest upsets in the country - because he is unhinged. And we're seeing candidates like that bubble up - now it's a reflection of how extreme the base has actually become. So I'm very curious to see what the reaction from the base to Dave Reichert is, because what - the people who were certainly encouraging him to run are looking for a more moderate presence, someone who is not presenting themselves as extremely as some of the other candidates are. But are they going to get any traction in a crowded primary where there are other alternatives that seem closer to that base? While at the same time, on the other side, I think Mark Mullet was really hoping to be able to capture moderate Republican votes - and has basically legislated as a moderate Republican, but still calls himself a Democrat because Republicans as a party have moved further to the right. But his policy certainly has not been consistent with Democrats in the Legislature or in the base. And so the concerning thing about him, from more progressive people, was that - Okay, if he makes it through against Bob Ferguson to the general election or against Hilary Franz in the general election, that he could siphon some Democratic votes for sure. But also pick up a ton of Republican votes, if Republicans don't feel like - Hey, we don't have one of our people in the general, but this guy is not as much of a Democrat as these other ones. That's a scary proposition in that situation. This really flips that and adds a whole new dimension to this race. So I'm curious - imagining what conversations are like in his camp - and what they're really considering as the impact on their campaigns and the path forward for each of them. [00:04:43] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, Mullet's team is, I think, trying to win over that sort of centrist Democratic vote. The thing is - it's just not that extensive - there's not very many of them. If you're a Democrat who is somewhat cranky with the status quo, you're not that numerous. Ferguson has won three statewide elections, he's got a strong base of support in King County, and will do well outside of King County as well. Mullet has, I think, really no path at this point. Especially as Reichert left Congress in 2018, so that means he avoided having to be there during both of Trump's impeachments. He avoided having to be there on the insurrection on January 6, 2021. So he is a bit of a relic from the past in many respects. But one of the things is he didn't have to go on record around some of these things and he'll try to play that up. But I think Bob Ferguson, who has not been running the greatest campaign - we should say, so far - running a front runner campaign, but really light on issues. He did hit pretty hard at Reichert - and correctly so - when he pointed out Reichert is a really right wing voting record on abortion rights in particular. And that matters here in Washington state, because the governor appoints Supreme Court justices in Washington state. And if you have a right wing governor who's trying to prove his anti-abortion cred to a suspicious base - he gets into office somehow - then I think we're going to have a real problem on the Washington Supreme Court. And we've seen what happens when you don't take Supreme Court nominations seriously. A lot of people, 2016, thought - Oh, they will never actually overturn Roe vs. Wade. Well, they did it. And you'll hear conversations here in Washington in 2024 saying - Oh, Reichert may be anti-abortion, he's got an anti-abortion record, but it's so safe here in Washington state, nothing could happen to it. I think we should know by now that anyone saying that is just deluded and has no real conception of the risk that a right wing anti-abortion candidate poses to abortion rights. [00:06:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and that's such an important point. And lots of people think it's safe - it is only safe to the degree that we actively protect it. It is only safe because there have been appointments of our State Supreme Court justices - that follow the law, follow the precedent, and understand that that's critical for personal freedom and autonomy. And the blueprint for how this works, we saw with Trump. Yeah, parrot that - Oh, I'll protect women's rights. Oh, it's settled law. We're not going to mess with it. Meanwhile, just appoint all the judges to do that work for you. The base knows that's how it works on that side - they play along - Yeah, he'll say whatever he needs to say to get elected. Don't worry about it. We know he's going to appoint these judges. That's where really the fight for rights gets usurped, where things that are not publicly popular get entrenched, and get implemented. So it just is a big concern in terms of that. And he gets credit for being a moderate Republican based off of really him not being there while more extreme Republicans were acting more extreme. I don't know that it's a given that he's not that extreme. I'm going to be really curious, especially through campaign stops as he hears the base demand more from him. Does his rhetoric change? Does it become more extreme for that party's base of today, which is different? I'm really curious to see how that race unfolds. [00:08:05] Robert Cruickshank: Reichert will have to campaign with Trump, either literally or figuratively. Trump will be on the same ballot and his rabid fan base, which is of course now the base of the entire Republican party, will be eager for restoration to power of Trump. And they're going to want to know where Reichert stands on that. And there's no way he actually gets around that. Now this is where - again, Ferguson has, I think, a gift here. He can run against an actual right wing Republican. But Ferguson's also going to have to learn the lessons of 2016, which is that you don't win solely by running against a right wing Republican. You have to have your own agenda that says - here's what I'm going to do differently as governor. Here's what I'm going to do to solve your problems. We haven't seen that from Ferguson so far. He seems content to run a traditional front runner campaign - where he has a poll lead, he touts his endorsements - but no real bold narrative to try to inspire people. He's going to have to do that. Because the lesson we learned in 2016 from Hillary's campaign was she didn't have that at all - she also ran a classic front runner campaign and narrowly lost. You have to have something that excites people about you yourself. Democrats have, for as long as I've been alive, tried to defeat the far right by pointing out how awful they are - sometimes works, but more often than not, it fails. Because the voters need to see from Democratic candidates those solutions to what they want. [00:09:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, could not agree more - and we will keep our eye on that race. Also this week, we had the July 4th Independence Day holiday. With that came fireworks celebrations - big publicly-funded fireworks celebrations from cities and counties. But also, just a ton of personal firework activity, although it is banned in several cities and counties around the state - that really doesn't seem to be consequential at all. What do you think about the use of fireworks, and is it worth the risk that they present now? [00:10:02] Robert Cruickshank: I don't know about you, but I remember - as a kid in Southern California - looking forward to the Fourth and lighting up the fireworks in the street and you think not much of it. You think about personal safety - Don't blow off your hand, kid. But I think what we're seeing here is there's a much larger policy problem with these personal fireworks. People talk about the way in which they cause post-traumatic stress revival in combat veterans, people worried about their kids and pets - that all matters. There's an even bigger problem though with the effect on our climate and on air. I think it was the Washington Department of Natural Resources pointed out that all six of the wildfires currently burning in Washington state were caused by fireworks. And Crystal, you've posted in the last couple of days on social media great before-and-after shots from downtown Tacoma - crystal clear blue sky shot of Mount Rainier, and then the day after the Fourth obscured by all the smoke. And we all woke up yesterday to all this smoke, which was caused in one part or another by people lighting off fireworks - whether it's just the actual smoke from the fireworks themselves or the wildfire smoke that it caused. And I think we have to look really seriously at whether, especially in a climate crisis, we want to be doing this. Our forests in Western Washington are especially dry this year. You go to campgrounds and they will soon, if they're not already, be under a burn ban - and rangers will come and enforce that. But a lot of cities like Seattle have fireworks bans - they're unenforced. And I remember - I think it was in 2011, I was working with Mike McGinn when he was mayor - I used to sit in occasionally on the meetings he had with SPD command staff. And I remember - I think it was July 4th, 2011 - when just fireworks went off all night and we just got flooded in the mayor's office with complaints - This is illegal, mayor, you should be enforcing it. And so the next day happened to be a command staff. And so I went in to help compose our response from the mayor's office and McGinn asked the commanders - What do we do about this? And the SPD brass all said - Yeah, it's illegal, but we have so many other things we're dealing with on the Fourth. We have to make sure that people aren't driving drunk, we're worried about people congregating in big crowds and causing problems, worried about gun violence. And Mr. Mayor, we can't respond to all of these calls. And people know that. Everyone knows that the prohibition on fireworks is never enforced. So we have to figure out what we're going to do about this. I don't think we want cops rolling up and down every street on the night of the Fourth. But is there some way we can more effectively limit the sale and use of fireworks? Because I think this is a clear climate problem. And it's not just the risk of someone blowing off a hand, which is bad enough. Now it's a risk to all of us and our air quality and our lungs. We don't want yet another smoke-filled summer just because people shot off fireworks unsafely. [00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I'm someone like you - especially growing up, when I was young in Southern California - loved fireworks. I loved fireworks here, I loved fireworks displays. There was - probably about 10 years ago, now 15 years ago - where it was similar kind of to the Blue Angels conversation - Yeah, I may enjoy it, but it does have negative impacts on others. Pets are freaked out, it's a nightmare to manage pets with the things. And people - because we have sent so many people to war, there are a lot of people dealing with PTSD and complex issues surrounding things that sound like very large explosions, especially when they're unplanned. And I don't know what things are like where you're at, but where I'm at in South King County, fireworks start long before the Fourth and they last long after the Fourth. And they're random. It just can sound like a random - six o'clock this morning - sounded like a random explosion happening - Did a bomb just go off? No, it's fireworks. And so they do just, themselves, have a lot of challenges. But they're compounding other huge problems that we're dealing with. You talked about the wildfire smoke that we're already dealing with - we're adding smoke on top of smoke in this situation, when we've learned so much more about how important air quality is to health. We're adding fires on top of fires, when we have our fire departments and our state fire officials trying to fight so many fires already. Skamania County residents were dealing with a water shortage because so much water was being used to fight fires. Is it really worth jeopardizing people's access to water here in Washington state? Is it really worth the days - plural - of horrible air quality directly attributed to that? And on days like today, and this week, when it's really hot out - Okay, we are a state that has very low rates of air conditioning inside, people have to go outside to keep from baking while they're in the house inside and now they've got to breathe dangerous air. I don't know that the cost is worth it. But also - one, you'd be surprised how many people who are progressive in many ways would like cops driving down every street enforcing fireworks bans. But I think what we've learned from all of these bans is that if the supply issue isn't addressed, I don't know that we get beyond this problem. And we've got to figure out a better way, just community-wise, to work on this. It feels like the cat is so far out of the bag. It feels like, whether it's cars or guns or other things that people just feel such an emotional attachment, and some ties to patriotism - which, if your patriotism relies on fireworks, it's not patriotism. But it's just a big challenge. I certainly am so tired of fireworks at this point in time, but I'm not sure what an effective path forward is. [00:15:39] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and one thing to note is that the sale of fireworks is banned in much of Western Washington, but one notable exception is tribal lands. And I think people have the experience of driving through tribal lands and seeing these enormous stands where fireworks go on sale two weeks before the Fourth. And Native Americans have, as we all know, been denied their rights for so long, you don't want to come in and try to pass some ban. At the same time, I think it's worth having some conversation with those communities and say - What can we do about this? How can we find a way to bring down the number that are being sold and really try to crack down on the abuse of privately owned fireworks? [00:16:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. You will not find me advocating for telling tribal communities what to do, sovereign governments what to do. But I do think there is a place for conversation among everyone to try and figure out how can we better manage this, at least. Also want to talk about some races going on right now. We are coming up on the primary election, which will be on August 1st. We're seeing some endorsements begin to trickle out from a number of outlets. Are there any endorsements that have caught your eye to this point? [00:16:54] Robert Cruickshank: There's one that came out yesterday, which was completely unsurprising - but still notable, I think - which is The Seattle Times not really endorsing Sofia Aragon for King County Council, but really endorsing against Teresa Mosqueda, who they just seem to loathe. And reading their editorial yesterday, the thing to know is that they don't tell you precisely why they loathe Teresa. They talk about - Oh, defunding police, she doesn't take public safety seriously - none of which is true. The real reason they don't like her is because she's incredibly effective at standing up for working people, standing up for their unions, and especially taxing big corporations. JumpStart, the tax on big corporations here in Seattle, would not have happened without Teresa Mosqueda's leadership. The Times is so anti-tax and wants to cut taxes on big corporations - that's what they really care about. And one of the reasons why this endorsement matters is because it's a tell - it shows what's really going on when The Times makes their endorsements this year. And you see the pattern across these races in Seattle City Council, they'll say - Oh, we're endorsing this person because they sound good and they have experience, and they're going to crack down on public safety, and they're going to outlaw drug use, and resume the War on Drugs - that's their surface level messaging, because they know that's what resonates with their section of the electorate. But the truth here is they want a city council that will repeal the JumpStart Tax. They want a city council that will either slow walk, or undermine, or not even do a capital gains tax - that is what the Blethen family's cared about, above all else - is taxes. And they're furious that someone like Teresa Mosqueda was able to finally get the JumpStart Tax through, and they want to see her defeated because they don't want her going on the King County Council and continuing her successful advocacy for taxing the rich and big corporations. So I think it's important to read Times endorsements with that lens in mind. [00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: The corporate money in Seattle politics, I think, is pretty safe to say that it's primarily motivated by anti-tax sentiments. We have talked for years and years about Washington state, Seattle included, having the most regressive tax system in the country - meaning that the people at the bottom spend much more of their money on taxes than the people at the top. We have no income tax, and we're light on a lot of other taxes for the most wealthy individuals and businesses here in the state. They want to maintain that. They love the status quo. Now everyone else is suffering under it - we've seen how that impacts homelessness, poverty, education, other services, seniors - everything else is starved because these people want to maintain their wealth and profits to the detriment of the rest of the community. So when we hear these things and when you hear these wedge issues, the cruelty sometimes that comes to those conversations is absolutely there - but that corporate money really is motivated by who's going to ensure that we're not going to pay more taxes. And so what I think we've increasingly seen, and I'm definitely noticing this cycle, is that these candidates really are not on record about much. And when you read this endorsements, they don't point to - hardly any specifics - you see things like, They seem like they can bring people together. They have a perspective that can reach lots of people. But what are the details? What have they done? And usually that's not included in these endorsements. And so what is it really about? Not what they're talking about in that article - it's about the taxes. And Teresa Mosqueda has been so extremely effective at figuring out what the community needs, responding to what the community actually desires, and putting together a coalition and a revenue package that addresses the most critical needs that we have in the City. It was extremely popular - so popular that it passed and has been really resilient. People not only liked it before passage, they love it now. And on top of that, it was put together so well and so soundly that the JumpStart Tax bailed us out of an economic shortfall. The JumpStart Tax prevented austerity in the City of Seattle. Bruce Harrell used JumpStart money to help stabilize a lot of his priorities. This has been very helpful to everyone with all interests, because it was there to backstop the volatility that comes with not having more stable progressive revenue. So it is really disappointing to see that. And it feels like they're talking out of two sides of their mouth because they have benefited from that tax. But it's a tax, so it must be bad. And Teresa Mosqueda understands budgets - she understands where to find money, where money needs to be invested to get the biggest benefit - and is looking to take that to the King County Council, which it's desperately needed there. I don't know if many people pay attention to how opaque the King County budget is, but it is really hard for - even legislators - coming out there to understand. And for the public to engage with, it's really difficult. And Teresa Mosqueda has proven that that's her forte, that she can bring more transparency and accountability to the tax money that's being spent - because I do think there are legitimate questions about - Where is this money being spent? How is it being spent? How does this compare to other times? And I think she's in a unique position to do that. It's just wild to see someone do something that a lot of people thought was impossible, and do it so successfully that it's literally benefited everyone in the City, and have that just not be acknowledged. [00:22:31] Robert Cruickshank: Your point about what corporate money really wants is anti-tax policy - I know that the Seattle Chamber of Commerce was asking city council candidates this year a question that basically went - Do you agree that we should be wisely spending City money and look to cut spending before we raise taxes elsewhere? It's a very leading question that clearly states their goal. They want to roll back as much of JumpStart as they can. And what they're seeing with JumpStart, as well is the state capital gains tax - it's popular. Not only is it effective at raising money, it raises more money than people thought it would. There's a lot of money to be gained through taxing corporations, through taxing the capital gains of wealthy people. It's popular, it works. Teresa Mosqueda could bring that to King County, where there's a huge crisis with transit - we're losing routes, having a hard time retaining operators, need to pay them better, give them better benefits, put more buses out there. That all costs money. And King County usually goes to property taxes or sales taxes to fund transit. Well, put Teresa Mosqueda on that council and you could see something much more progressive in terms of revenue for our transit system - that sends shivers down the spines of every Seattle Times editorial board member, and that's why you saw this absurd attack on Mosqueda in their editorial yesterday. [00:23:51] Crystal Fincher: What do you think about the role of endorsements - in Seattle, particularly - so far? [00:23:58] Robert Cruickshank: It's interesting - I've been talking to a few candidates about this. And a couple candidates - some who have just not really done the political thing before, but who have paid attention to politics. Like most of us who are progressive - we don't know much about a candidate or a race - we open The Stranger and look at their endorsements. I first moved here in 2001. I had no idea about anything related to local politics, but I read The Stranger and I'm - Okay, yeah, this makes sense. And ever since, that's usually how I voted until I started paying close attention to things myself. But talking to candidates, and some of these folks are - Gosh, you know, if I don't get a Stranger endorsement, I'm sunk. My campaign's over. And I try and say - No, that's not true at all - I've worked with candidates, local, state, federal candidates around the country who lose a key endorsement and go on to win anyway because they run a great campaign that gets their message out to voters and talks about things that people really care about. But I think here in Seattle, we've gotten to a place where - even though I strongly agree with The Stranger endorsements 9 times out of 10 - I think these newspaper endorsements - The Stranger, The Times, in particular - have become too influential. And I don't think this is necessarily the fault of the papers themselves. Newspapers do endorsements all the time around the country. And there are other media outlets here in Seattle that do endorsements - South Seattle Emerald does, PubliCola, Urbanist. But it's these two in particular, Stranger and Times, have outsized influence. And I think we, who are progressive activists, voters, people who - I don't know about you, but I'm the type where family and friends say - Robert, I don't know how to vote on this. What should I do? We need to start doing a better job steering people towards other sources of information, in addition to these newspaper endorsements. One of the reasons being they're small-d undemocratic - you can have candidates that have done great work in their community, who've built up a strong network of support, who've really gone out there and hustled to build grassroots backing, who are running a progressive campaign. And if they don't have a great day in an interview, or they aren't buddies with the Blethens - they don't get an endorsement and their campaign's sunk. You can get around that. And I think we, who are the progressive activists, need to do a bit better job of helping campaigns and helping inform voters how to run smart campaigns, how to get messages out there, and what those messages are. Because there are great candidates who are going to be overlooked in some of these endorsements. And though, again, I'm assuming I'll agree with 9 out of the 10 endorsements that we see in The Stranger when they come out later this month, I still want to see voters look to other sources as well. And I want campaigns to know that they can still win, even if they don't get this or that endorsement. We're finishing up our endorsement process at the Sierra Club - I want people to look at Sierra Club endorsements and think that they matter, and I think they do. But I also want to be part of a campaign - I wouldn't want anyone to look at the endorsements we're doing and have that be the final word. It all needs to be part of building a movement that's grassroots in nature behind campaigns, rather than having people who we might agree with - or not agree with, in the case of The Times - anointing winners and losers. I don't think that's healthy for a progressive movement. [00:26:58] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. And I think endorsements are useful as a piece of information as a data point, not as the determining factor. And it is bad for small-d democracy. To your point, it's not necessarily the fault of the papers. But like with The Stranger - The Stranger is batting a thousand in its endorsed candidates getting through the primary. So basically, if you're a progressive candidate and you don't get The Stranger endorsement in your primary, it's bleak. It is that bleak at this point in time. I think part of it is due to us losing so many reporters at so many other outlets, the decline of local media. We used to have a ton of papers in South King County - now we have a few, and those few are dramatically understaffed. And that's the case throughout the City. We used to have more hyperlocal blogs even in the City than we do today - even that is hard. The revenue needs, it's harder to support yourself as an independent journalist, it's harder for newsrooms to afford to put the amount of reporters on things. And I think what I've seen is there's been a decline in the amount of political reporters. There's been a decline in the amount of coverage overall. And that coverage used to do a better job of informing the editorial policies and the endorsements. Hard to ignore something that was covered on the hard side of your paper that was reported and just not address it, or gloss over it, or not acknowledge it's a problem. That's much easier to do when you just aren't able to cover the things, but the coverage isn't happening. So you get these really ideologically focused endorsements - it's not like they weren't ideological before, but now there's not even reporting to back that up in so many situations. And really one of the reasons why I started moderating debates was because I just want those endorsements to reflect who those candidates really are. I want voters to understand what the candidates really believe, what they're on record voting for, what they're on record doing. Because so many times these days, these endorsements happen that don't talk about anything that is on the record. People read that, they believe it because it's coming from a trusted paper. Then they get into office and govern consistently with their record and people have the surprise Pikachu face like - I never knew this was going to happen. When it's just like - if endorsements and editorial boards would have done a better job of making sure that endorsement reflected who that candidate was, we wouldn't be in this situation. And so I just think it's a disservice, really, to voters to not have who a candidate is and what they've actually done - good and bad, wherever that falls. Just have it be based in reality, and be based on what they've said and what they've done. And that just seems to be playing less of a role in some of these major endorsements, understandably, because there isn't a lot of coverage there. You have people doing their best to interview people in these situations, but it's a big challenge. [00:29:56] Robert Cruickshank: We also need to draw distinctions between The Stranger and The Times - not just on ideology, but an approach. Like at least at The Stranger, you've got the reporters themselves, comprising their Election Control Board, doing the interviews themselves. And those interviews are tough - tough in a good way. They ask really good hard-hitting, probing questions and they follow up with hard-hitting probing responses - they don't let people wiggle out of something. They're coming in there with some background, they've done research there, and they're coming at it trying to get a sense of who's going to be the most progressive, who's going to fight for us, who's going to be a champion. I like that and I respect that - that's good. The Times is coming in there with a clear bent and an agenda - 9 times out of 10, they know who their candidate is going to be well in advance. And they're just looking for things in the endorsement interview at The Times that they can quote in the editorial, or they want to get the candidate they really don't like and oppose to say something in the interview they can quote from and bash them over the head with it in the editorial of the other person. So I think those are fundamental differences there. But I think you said, as usual, a lot of really good things here - one of which is the lack of reporting. And I think we've seen local reporting just fall apart, not just in Seattle, but it's even worse once you get outside Seattle. These smaller towns like Burien or Bothell or Kent or Federal Way or whatever it is, the local coverage is almost non-existent. Or when it does exist, it comes from the right wing. And that's not helpful either when there are huge populations in these cities that are progressive and want a progressive solution. And so I think the lack of reporting on a day-to-day basis really just undermines a lot of our ability to run the democracy the way we want to. I also want to close by saying I think it's a little bit incumbent on candidates and campaigns and consultants themselves to do a better job running smart campaigns. I think here in Seattle, in particular, some folks have become a little too reliant on getting a Stranger endorsement - counting on that to get them through the primary, counting on that to get them through a general election. Yeah, if you get that endorsement, clearly it's worth a lot. It's valuable. I don't know that Mike McGinn would have been mayor without getting The Stranger in 2009, so that worked out. But I think at the same time, you have to run a smart campaign - McGinn ran a really good campaign in 2009. Stranger endorsement might get you through the primary - doesn't always get you through the general election. You have to have a really sharp ability to get your message out there, mobilize your voters, and talk about things that voters care about in a progressive way. I worry that with the dominance of just a couple endorsement sources, that people aren't running as insightful or smart campaigns as they might in other parts of the country. [00:32:25] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with that. I also want to talk about a piece about Seattle Public Schools in The Stranger this week by none other than Robert Cruickshank. [00:32:38] Robert Cruickshank: It comes back to this question of local reporting. And I was looking at some articles a few months ago about the strike that happened at Seattle Public Schools in 2015 - and just the amount of coverage from so many different reporters and so many different outlets, compared to what we have today, was striking. There's very little coverage now happening in the media about what's going on at Seattle Public Schools. The Times will cover it occasionally, but there's a bent to it. The Stranger rarely - and again, they don't have the resources they need to cover everything they want to cover. It's not their fault. It's - the ecosystem is eroded by corporations and private equity and all of that. But what I wanted to draw attention to is this issue around how the schools are governed. And there is an effort out there, funded by the Gates Foundation through something called the Council for Great City Schools, to impose a model of governance on the school board and the school district that is rooted in corporations and nonprofit governance - where a school board is really the school district's version of the city council, or the legislature, or Congress, right? That's how it works today and how it should work - they're the elected representatives of the democracy to make sure that everything's going properly, that if there's a problem the board can step in and fix it, to hold the bureaucracy accountable. Bureaucrats hate that, and so do the corporate education reformers at the Gates Foundation - they've always been trying to find ways to limit or eliminate the public's oversight and influence in operations of the school district. And so what they've come up with lately is this thing called Student Outcome Focused Governance, which sounds great - we all want good student outcomes. But in practice, what it means is this tendency - which already existed - to have the board do less and less work and have less and less oversight over district operations. It now locks the board into a really rigid system where the board essentially becomes rubber stamps. The idea is that they give goals to the superintendent - we want a certain amount of third graders to score well on a test. And guardrails - Oh well, you agree you're not going to violate community norms by doing this. It's all really vague stuff, but there's no enforcement mechanism. And ultimately, what happens is that when a school community comes to the board saying - We have a problem here. You're cutting our jazz program at Washington Middle School - which is nearly a third Black students at Washington Middle School. Franklin High School - You're eliminating our mock trial program - the student body at Franklin, about a third Black. A year ago, the district fired the principal at Cleveland High School, who had done a great job hiring a faculty that looked like the diverse community that attends Cleveland, that had done a great job raising graduation rates, especially among Black students. And they fired her because she violated a district mandate to hide the stats on COVID cases. And so the community - again, a lot of Black families show up at the school board saying - Oh my God, this is terrible, you need to intervene. And the board in all these cases says - No, we're not going to do anything. And part of the reason they say no is they say - Well, we've decided we're stepping back from operations. We're not going to interfere with what the superintendent is doing. And this new model of Student Outcome Focused Governance, where we hand over more and more power and policy to the superintendent, is part of that push. And so it's just adopting this corporate mindset where your board of directors just rubber stamps everything and lets the CEO do what they want - that's not how a school district is supposed to operate. And the nice thing about Seattle is we're not a place where we have Moms for Liberty showing up at the school board meetings wanting to ban books. Now, that is a problem in Kent and a problem in other places - you have to figure out how you manage that democratically. But here in Seattle, we need a board that is engaged - especially with $130 million budget deficit, especially with closing schools. And we're going to see at tonight's board meeting, some of this play out - where they're reviewing their goals and seeing that actually these goals they set out - of third graders achieving certain test score proficiency - aren't being met. In fact, they're pretty far from being met. And so the question is - All right, what are you going to do, board? Are you actually going to intervene on any of this, or are you just going to let it go? And the last thing I want to mention on this front is the board is looking at, the district really, is looking at closing schools. They might announce this fall maybe as many as 20 schools they want to close, which will be a huge story, a bomb going off in communities when their core of their neighborhood, their school is closed. And people have been asking - Well, what's the board going to do to have public input? The superintendent's plan is to have a couple of public meetings in August, when people are either physically not here or are checked out for other reasons - they're not engaged in their school community - to have this conversation. And is the board going to do anything about that? Are they going to actually bring in the voices of the communities that are going to be most affected and impacted? Or are they just going to say - Eh, we've ceded all that power. We don't really want to do that work. We're just going to sit here and rubber stamp what the administration says. These are fundamental questions about community involvement and governance, small-d democracy - and the board is going off in the wrong direction with very little oversight from the public and certainly not from the media. [00:37:30] Crystal Fincher: I'm really glad you wrote that because it's such a big problem. And what was striking to me was a couple of things - as you mentioned, just how frequently the voices of parents and students have just been ignored. Where problems - yes, they exist, yes, it's bad, but it's not our place to intervene, basically. And if it's not their place, then what are they doing? It just doesn't seem to make much sense. And in the context of this current election, where we have school board candidates talking about what they want to do, what their goals are, how things would change - that seems like that would be hard to do under this current structure. It seems like - in order to make any kind of progress, to have anything that they're talking about land in the realm of possibility - we have to change this way of doing things first. So it's a bleak situation currently, but it can be changed. And there just needs to be a focus. And I thank you for writing that to help provide that focus - on everyone saying - Wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. And really just another thing that is bad for public governance. [00:38:36] Robert Cruickshank: One of the reasons I wrote it is these are conversations happening among a lot of different parents in Seattle that - there's a whole network of people who are engaged and talking with each other about these concerns and growing increasingly frustrated that they're just not getting media coverage. And this is where I point out - yeah, there's so fewer reporters covering the schools these days. As we said, even earlier in this podcast, while we think it's bad in Seattle, it's so much worse once you get just a couple of miles outside of the City, where there are Moms for Liberty people out there pushing really hard to ban books, to attack trans kids, take down Pride flags. And that occasionally gets covered when it gets bad enough, but the constant drumbeat going on in some of these smaller school districts is just not getting the attention it needs to and it's a problem. [00:39:26] Crystal Fincher: It's a big problem - in Kent, in Highline School District, in Tacoma. It is in our suburbs. And because it isn't getting much pressure and because information is so siloed, we're seeing alliances form - some people who endorse Democratic candidates falling into this trap and then just spiraling from there. And it's a big challenge, but we won't be able to get on top of it without taking action here. And by having those districts that aren't being afflicted with that set an example, policy-wise, for other districts. Seattle is in such a unique position, as a larger city with a progressive population, to be able to do that. And policies like this - you could almost say they were designed to prevent that, that's how it works on the ground. But it absolutely needs to be changed. Now I also want to talk about some polling that we saw reported in The Seattle Times this week, that may have been surprising to some Seattle Times readers if they read past the headline. What did you see here? [00:40:32] Robert Cruickshank: There's some fascinating results, including even in today's Times, where - just starting with the one that appeared today - the headline, "1 in 3 Seattle residents thinking about leaving the City." Okay - another "Seattle is Dying" narrative? Well, you read the actual article and look at the polling results - you see that about 30% of those people saying they want to leave are worried about housing costs - turns out they're renters who love Seattle, they feel safe here, they like the City a lot and they don't want to leave. But they feel like they're being priced out, so they're looking - Maybe I move to Tacoma, maybe I move to Montana, maybe I move to Texas - but they don't want to. Then there's another third of those people who are looking at leaving Seattle, who are the ones who say they're concerned about public safety - turns out, overwhelmingly, homeowners making more than $250,000 a year as a household - these are people who have no actual public safety worries. We have issues in Seattle, but this is a very, very safe city by any stretch of the imagination. And yet these are the people who have the most privilege, the most money and wealth in the City, who are being spooked by the coverage they're reading in The Times and thinking - Oh gosh, maybe I need to move out of here, it's become unsafe. No, it's not. But it's interesting to see who gets attention and who doesn't. The Times caters to that wealthy homeowner and stokes their fears about public safety. While the renter - usually younger, usually more progressive - The Times actually attacks what they need. The Times is notorious for opposing housing bills. The missing middle bill, the Times tried to kill earlier this year from the editorial side. So it's interesting to see these results even pop up in The Times' own reporting. Earlier this week, they had something on public safety and police - shouldn't surprise any progressive that "defund the police" is now unpopular with pretty much most of the electorate. But what remains highly popular across the board - and this shows up in the Chamber's own polling as well - is standing up alternatives to police. That has huge support. People get it - that we need an alternative to sending an officer with a gun to a lot of these calls. We need to preserve that for violent crime or theft in progress - the things that you might want a cop for. Someone in mental health crisis needs a mental health counselor, not a cop. Suspicious person walking down the street - come on, someone else can respond to that who's not going to escalate that with a gun. And the public gets that. And yet that's not reflected in The Times editorializing. And as we know, City Hall, especially the mayor's office, really dragged its feet on setting up alternatives to policing, even though the public is making it clear in these polls that they want that. [00:43:07] Crystal Fincher: And notable that - even on this program before - Monisha Harrell, former Senior Deputy Mayor, really wanted to stand those up. And unfortunately, she's not going to be with the administration much longer. And even in this and this public safety poll - it is so interesting how people view polls, approach polls, and how media entities are now using polls. One - now, you want to view the entire poll. And what we've seen increasingly from outlets, including The Seattle Times, is the kind of dripping of information. And okay, you drip information - still talk about your methodology, but they seem to be like - Oh, it's all about talking about this - so that's definitely one thing to note. I'm looking at the headlines on some of these things, which are curious. But when you look at the actual results - my goodness, when asked the question - How would you rate the job the Seattle police are doing in the City? - 60% of residents say it's not good. The choices are excellent, good, fair, and poor - 40% say fair, 20% say poor. If you have 60% of residents in your city saying you're not doing a good job - for everyone else, that gets breathless headlines from The Times saying that they're in trouble, maybe they're on their way out, but here it just seems to not factor into the narrative. And not that The Times is going to say - Okay well, disband - that's not going to happen. But it can inform questions - like in the last municipal elections, we had a number of candidates running on police reform. Now, some with a more cynical view - myself included - when they saw, say, mailers from Sara Nelson saying that she was going to focus on police reform, didn't really believe that. But hey, everyone gets elected, they have a chance. Now, I don't know what Sara Nelson has done in this time on the council about police reform, but that seems to be the thing - just promise it and never get to it. Or that's basically the - You know, hey, we don't need to do any extreme stuff, but things do need to get better. Once again, if you don't talk about what those things are, what your actual plans are, it really commits you to nothing. And surprise, what we have gotten there is nothing - when the public is really saying - Please do something and we're getting increasingly dissatisfied by not doing something. You talked about how people desperately want alternatives to policing. There are few policy proposals in any issue area that are as popular as that. And so my goodness, stand that up, get the job done. And what this could really spur is an examination of why, when it's so popular, it's not happening and the mayor's office is dragging its feet. It's funded by the Seattle City Council, this is really in the mayor's lap. Why isn't this happening? But there just seems to be no curiosity here. And this, to me, is interesting in just how campaigns use polling. A lot of times it's not for horse race stuff - it's to inform where people are at on issues, how to bridge the gap between where people are at and where you are as a candidate, and where you'd like them to be. It's not a - Well, this is where people are at and this is all we can do about it. It's a piece of information, it's not a determining factor for what will happen. And we see that all the time, because polls move and polls change. And the more you talk about an issue, you see the numbers move on it. So it's not set in stone, but it is a piece of information and it just feels like we aren't using that information effectively. [00:46:30] Robert Cruickshank: I think you can look at some of the progressive campaigns in Seattle that are being run this year, and I'm not sure in some cases what their overall strategy is. Because there's a clear path here - tax the rich, stand up alternatives to policing. And quickly get people housed without sweeping them, without being violent and destructive, but get our homeless neighbors into housing that is good and housing they want to be in - with a door that locks, for example. That's popular. All those things are super popular and they probably can run on that. And then The Seattle Times candidates are going to have a hard time saying - Oh yeah, me too - because their backers don't want that. But these polls are really fascinating because of what they show, and how they not just complicate but openly challenge the narrative that we're seeing from The Times, from the Chamber, and from some of these candidates, people like Sara Nelson and others. This is not a right-wing city. This is a city that sees some problems out there and wants them solved. And wants progressive solutions to them, as long as progressives are able to truly offer them. [00:47:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And shows that everyone across the board is concerned about these problems. There's this narrative that progressives just don't care about crime. Statistically, we're victims more than anyone else. We're victims of this stuff. We are suffering from it - we don't want it, it's unacceptable. What is infuriating is seeing so much money and time devoted to things that have proven not to solve this and being told - But we don't have the money or resources to actually do the things that will. Well, if you would just stop wasting them on the things that won't - how many headlines do we have to see that community is upset because following this sweep, people came back to next door, right across town. Clearly, and literally I've seen four of those headlines in the past two weeks for our region. And yeah, it's so obvious that just saying - Go somewhere else - and violently imposing that and destroying people's property while telling them - Go somewhere else - just doesn't work. The problem is that they don't have homes. If we aren't doing anything to get them in homes, we are just perpetuating the problem and spending a lot of money to do it - it's just so incredibly wasteful, it's so fiscally irresponsible. [00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: What this shows is that candidates on the right, Seattle Times, Chamber of Commerce - people like that - are not actually interested in solving these problems. They're not really interested in housing the homeless. They're not really interested in dealing with people who are abusing drugs, addicted to drugs, and doing so in public. They're not really interested in solving the crime problem. What they're really interested in is taking those problems - blowing them up out of proportion, scaring people about them, and then using that fear to turn people against progressive elected officials and progressive candidates. Because as we talked about earlier in the show, what they really care about is cutting taxes for the wealthy and for big corporations. They know that those taxes are extremely popular, but if they can elect candidates who will roll those taxes back and elect them on other issues by stoking those fears - that's a winning political strategy. And it's worked. It's a strategy that exists for a reason - it's often successful. And so we, who are progressive, have to understand that. And we not only need to just point out that that's what the playbook the other team is using, we have to counter that with having the solutions that people really want. And fight hard and effectively get them. This is where Teresa Mosqueda, again, has been very, very good at this. She had, with the JumpStart Tax, tried to fund affordable housing. The council in 2020 had great efforts - great programs funded and approved to solve visible homelessness. And Jenny Durkan just undermined all of them for political reasons. And so that's the challenge that we face - is often progressives are going to get the blame for things that corporate Democrats and right wingers have blocked them from doing. [00:50:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, could not agree more. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 7th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, one of the best political minds on the West Coast, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on one of the 11 platforms that people are on, probably, @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks and me @finchfrii on all platforms. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Rob McKenna on the breaking Supreme Court decisions // Margaret Brennan on AI journalism // Feliks Banel with All Over The Map - The naming of two of Washington's most popular lakes // Dir. of AmeriCorps Seniors Atalya Sergi and volunteer Charlotte Simpson on volunteering in retirement // Thane Rosenbaum on the recent Supreme Court decisions // Dose of Kindness -- building Walls of Love // Gee Scott on the Supreme Courts' decision to gut affirmative action in college admissionsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most people claim to have a growth mindset, but their actions reveal a different story. For example: Instead of taking responsibility for their mistakes and trying to improve, they often blame others or think they're not talented enough This not only holds them back from reaching their full potential, but it also has a detrimental impact on those around them. Join us in this episode as the famous Dr. Rob McKenna uncovers the truth about fake growth mindsets, how to destroy it & become an unstoppable force of growth. Listen now! Show Highlights Include: How to know when to push through or give up when you face hard challenges (Note: this'll speed up your growth) (6:58) Can't complete goals you set? Here's how you supercharge your goals and make it infinitely easier to reach them (12:49) The counterintuitive reason why judging people negatively reinforces a fixed mindset within you & others around you (Warning: This puts a ceiling on growth & forever changes one's life trajectory for worse…) (21:49) How to track results properly so that you grow as fast as possible (25:52)  3 no-brainer ways to go from average to extraordinary as a leader (28:33) To connect with Dr. Rob McKenna, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrobmckenna/

Change in a company starts at the top. That's what the CEO and Founder of WiLD Leaders, Inc. Dr. Rob McKenna believes. He joins Dr. Davis and Jonathan in a discussion about changing the narrative of leadership from the top down. Read "There are No Shortcuts to Lasting Change" or "Composed: The Heart and Science of Leading Under Pressure" by Dr. Rob McKennaFollow @Wildleaders on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Follow @drrobmckenna on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Contact WiLD Leaders and use the subject line, "Go Wild". -----Follow @maranathaedu on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.Subscribe to Maranatha On Mission on YouTube. Learn more about Maranatha mbu.edu.For more episodes, visit mbu.edu/podcast.

In our Great Conversation Podcast, we begin with a statement: “Welcome to The Great Conversation where Ideas Matter. Ideas shape markets. Ideas can change the world.” I originally decided to open with this to reinforce my passion for pursuing people and ideas that ultimately impact our lives. But hidden in this opening is another premise: that a leader is needed to activate the idea. A leader is someone who determines that an idea does matter and intentionally helps to activate the idea in the world through their interaction with others. In this sense, the idea becomes a “manifesto”; a declaration of their intent so that others can rally around it, feed it, nurture it, and “manifest” it into the world. There is another hidden premise in this opening: that all humans have agency, i.e., that no matter how difficult and narrow our choices are, we are the final arbiter of our experience on this planet. We can choose our mindset. Some choose to follow an idea. They are the “crazy ones” because they think that it is possible to leave a mark on this world. I am fascinated by these people who issued their own versions of a manifesto upon this world such as: John F. Kennedy's moonshot speech, declaring that we will reach the moon and return. Martin Luther King's “I have a dream” speech declaring an identity intrinsic to every man has been denied to the black man. The Declaration of Independence that expressed this so eloquently: We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness Unalienable (translated today as inalienable) means that something is intrinsic, it cannot be separated, it cannot be taken or given away. And now another manifesto is needed. In an era where we have been taught to look at leadership as the secret of a few, we must change our thinking. The “unalienable” notion that every human can intentionally lead their lives and travel the journey to wholeness upends the notion that it is a degree in school, a royal birthright, or a corporate program. I pursued a great conversation with Dr. Rob McKenna, the founder, and CEO of Wild Leaders. Dr. McKenna is one of the top industrial-organizational psychologists in the country.  He is the founder and CEO of WiLD Leaders, and created the WiLD Toolkit, a leader development process and set of tools.  He served as the Chair of the Department of Industrial Organizational Psychology at Seattle Pacific University. He is the author of several books, including Dying to Lead: Sacrificial Leadership in a Self-Centered World.  His most recent book, Composed: The Heart and Science of Leading Under Pressure, focuses on strategies leaders can use to stay true to themselves and connected when it matters most. He is currently working on another manuscript which, at times, becomes a part of our conversation. Dr. McKenna has lit my fuse. What an audacious idea! That I might be able to intentionally lead a whole and meaningful life and help others along the way. What an audacious idea that organizations can invest in the development of their people and enjoy a more meaningful definition of success. In an era where most people live lives of quiet desperation, this is a conversation we need to have.

Rob McKenna on NY's grand jury system/ falsifying business records // Feliks Banel, All Over the Map -- the Kingdome's "Walla Walla" // Matt Markovich on the right of way initiative/ protections for out-of-stater seeking medical procedures // Doses of Kindness -- finding the helpers in Nashville/ the Lonely Girls Club // Gee Scott on the Seattle Times' "unwritten rules" feature // Micki Gamez on Seattle's street sinksSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we sat down with Dr. Rob McKenna, to talk about his book Composed: The Heart and Science of Leading Under Pressure. Named among the top 30 most influential I-O Psychologists, and featured in Forbes, Dr. Rob McKenna is Founder and CEO of WiLD Leaders, Inc. Dr. McKenna has devoted his life to developing leaders and transforming the way we see the people in organizations - seeing and developing them as whole. His first TEDx “Becoming a Whole Leader in a Broken World” is a manifesto on the critical role that developing whole and intentional leaders will play in our future.   He previously served as Chair and professor of a Masters and PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, and is the author of numerous articles and chapters on leadership character, calling, and effectiveness. Find Dr. McKenna's book HERECheck out www.wildleaders.org

Rob McKenna teaches from 1 Samuel

As one of the lead attorneys, McKenna provided details on why the capital gains income tax is unconstitutional in Washington. https://bit.ly/3QfdXJ4 #WashingtonPolicyCenter #JasonMercier #RobMcKenna #CapitalGainsIncomeTax #Webinar #WashingtonState #FormerAttorneyGeneral #Litigation #LeadAttorney #LeagalIssues #StateSupremeCourt #OralArguments #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

Attorney Darrel Cochran on a settlement reached in a child abuse case // Chokepoint- Year in Review // Rob Mckenna on WA Salary Law // Attorney Darrel Cochran on a settlement reached in a child abuse case involving Olympia Schools // Dave Ross on Zelenskeyy's visit // Dose of Kindness -- Shop with a Cop // Gee Scott on shopping for the kids // Pete Carroll Show // Micki Gamez on taking care of yourselfSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join us for this episode of the IASP Leadership podcast.  A weekly podcast production containing short, sweet, nuggets of Wednesday wisdom for our leadership growth.  In this episode, we hear from Dr. Rob McKenna and Dr. Daniel Hallak, of WiLD Leaders, as they share about leadership and their WiLD Conversations.

On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Julie Anderson about her campaign for Washington Secretary of State - why she decided to run, how partisanship affects the office, and the experience she brings to manage the Secretary of State's broad portfolio. With regard to managing elections, they discuss her plans to increase voter turnout, her stance and approach to local jurisdictions potentially adopting alternative systems such as ranked choice voting, and how to handle misinformation that creates mistrust in our elections. Crystal then gives Julie an opportunity to respond to the many attacks from her detractors before switching gears to dig into her thoughts on managing the state archives - both preserving historical records and ensuring that the Public Records Act is administered efficiently and effectively. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.  Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Julie Anderson at @nonpartisansos.   Resources Campaign Website - Julie Anderson   Transcript   [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, I am very excited to be welcoming to the show - Julie Anderson, who is a candidate for Secretary of State, which is one of the most important and consequential offices in the state and going to be up for election on your November ballot. Welcome, Julie. [00:00:55] Julie Anderson: Thank you, Crystal - and thanks for acknowledging that the Secretary of State's office is really important. It's nice to meet somebody who's excited about picking leadership for the important office. That's - thank you. [00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So what made you decide to run for Secretary of State? [00:01:12] Julie Anderson: Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to do this in 2022 - but definitely the importance of the office. I'm one of the end users of the office - the Secretary of State is my authorizing agency and leader for elections on the county level and also for document recording - so it's an important office to me and I know it's important to the other 38 counties as well. So when Kim picked up and left, I jumped right in. And I was also inspired to do it because I wanted, I saw this as an opportunity to make a shift in the office and run as a Nonpartisan and to hopefully create a little bit of an air bubble in the office and normalize the idea of hiring professional election administrators who aren't associated with the political party. So that's why I'm running. [00:02:10] Crystal Fincher: And that has been a difference this cycle that we've seen - just that people are not familiar with. This office has been held by a Republican for several years, the only statewide office that was previously held by a Republican. With the appointment of former Senator Hobbs to now being Secretary Hobbs, which - a lot of people were advocating for your appointment in that seat, citing your experience for that - but he is there and a Democrat. But you have decided to run as an Independent. Why do you think being Independent is so important to the office? And do you think that we've suffered from having it be a partisan office in the past? [00:02:53] Julie Anderson: One quick thing - I'm making a real point of calling myself Nonpartisan rather than Independent - because as you've noticed in Chris Vance's race, he calls himself an Independent and he has designs on creating an independent third party. I have no designs on creating a group or a party and - I don't have a group - so I am literally nonpartisan. Have we suffered by having partisans in that office before? I think that we've been really lucky with Sam Reed and Kim Wyman taking the job very seriously and performing the job in a nonpartisan fashion. I do think, however, that their party affiliation dragged some unnecessary drama into the office and made their work more difficult. It is a political office and so the opposing team is always looking for a way to knock you off at the end of your term, and is always positioning to put their best candidate forward doing that. So there's always a little jockeying around depriving the incumbent of oxygen and victories so that they're less credible whenever they run for re-election. And then in the electorate, there is also skepticism because we live in an increasingly hyper-polarized political environment, people are just naturally suspicious of somebody that holds a political party that they don't belong to. So those are two reasons why I think that partisanship in this job does not help or add value to the work. And I don't think that having a party affiliation does add value to the policy work or the operations of the office. [00:04:38] Crystal Fincher: Now you have talked a lot about the experience that you bring to this office should you be elected. Can you talk about what your experience has been as Pierce County Auditor and how you feel it's going to be beneficial as Secretary of State? [00:04:51] Julie Anderson: Sure. So for over 12 years - 13 in November - I've been the nonpartisan county auditor for Pierce County, which is our state's second largest county. Which means I've conducted hundreds of elections in Washington State and have also presided over a recording document program - making recording documents, preserving them, and making them accessible to the public - and then also business registry and licensing. So with that experience, I'm familiar from the bottom up with Washington State's votewa.gov election management system because my team was part of, really, building it along with other lead counties and obviously the Secretary of State's office. I sat on the Executive Steering Committee while that was under development and when it launched and went live in 2019. So having that background, I think helps, puts me in a position to better help the county auditors and the election administrators using that system. It also helps me to design and implement policy proposals for the Legislature to consider since I know how the system works. And it also puts me in a position for visioning how to modernize the office, what the needs are to go the next step, and where the gaps are. And when we're talking about elections - where the gaps are specifically - we don't have a lot of residual gains left to make in Washington State, but the ones that we do need to make are going to be the most difficult and challenging. And I think that's where experience matters. [00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely matters - and it matters for more than just the elections too. The elections are certainly the most visible part of what the Secretary of State does, but it has such a broad portfolio of responsibilities. And just recapping those briefly for people who may be unfamiliar. In addition to supervising local elections, filing and verifying initiatives and referenda, and distributing the Voters' Pamphlets - also responsible for registering private corporations, limited partnerships and trademarks; registering individuals and organizations, and commercial fundraisers involved in charitable solicitations; administering the state's Address Confidentiality program, which is critically important for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking - so very important too, public safety really - collecting and preserving the historical records of the state and making those records available for research; coordinating implementation of the state's records management laws, which are constantly in the news for one reason or another; affixing the state's seal; regulating use of the seal; filing and attesting to official acts of the governor; certifying what the Legislature does; and sometimes even called upon to represent the state in international trade and cultural missions and greeting dignitaries. There's so much under that umbrella, each of which seems like it could potentially be its own office really, but so broad. How has your experience as an auditor helped to prepare you for the full portfolio of what you're going to be managing if you're elected to be Secretary of State? [00:08:07] Julie Anderson: I would say it's auditor plus my whole professional portfolio. So I come with public and nonprofit leadership experience in human services, criminal justice, and economic development. I was notably the Executive Director of the YWCA in Tacoma-Pierce County, so that speaks to the sensitivity and understanding of the Address Confidentiality Program, and I can tell you how I would apply that to expand that program. And then in economic development, I was a Senior Policy Advisor for the State Department of Commerce, where my portfolio included workforce development and developing a green economy and also innovation zones. But that body of work in the public and nonprofit sector means that I'm really tuned into the importance of community, and the unique conditions in community, and understanding that I have to have a partnership in community to do any of those things well. A top-down management model or staying isolated in that executive position is not going to make the organization better or better connected with the citizens and residents of Washington. And we don't just serve citizens, we serve the residents of Washington State. So I think that my community connections and my work on the 2020 census, for example, I have some great ideas about how to engage community in each of those programs, whether it's talking about voter turnout, access for people living with disabilities, or how we are talking about curating the heritage and history of Washington State to make sure that we don't disappear people and cultures and make sure that we're doing culturally relevant screening of our collection and portfolio and working in partnership with community to do that. [00:10:04] Crystal Fincher: So now you mentioned voter engagement and turnout - you've talked on a few occasions about efforts to increase voter registration, and increasing voter registration is not necessarily consistent with increasing voter turnout. What do you propose to do to increase voter turnout, to increase the amount of people who are participating in our government and democracy, making their voices heard? And how are you going to go about that? [00:10:32] Julie Anderson: Well, it's my belief that election administrators are facilitators, not catalysts. And looping back to community, I'm going to leverage community a lot. For example, I think you have to pay attention, first of all, to data and trends. We know that the four-year election cycle has really unique peaks and valleys that are pretty darn predictable. In a presidential election cycle, we probably don't need a lot of help with getting the word out. But in these off-year elections and in local elections, we need a tremendous amount of help because that's when voter turnout is the lowest. One of the things that I would propose doing is partnering with local government and with schools to focus on municipal elections and pooling resources and having - the Secretary of State can certainly provide materials and infrastructure, but the execution of how that gets delivered in a community is going to be unique in every community. But I can see municipalities all focusing their energy on a one-week period where we're getting voters prepared to vote, getting them to develop a plan, and helping them if they need reminding about what their local government does for them and with them. And then partnering with schools in that same one-week period where you're doing some education in schools about local government and then challenging kids to go home and talk to their parents about the election, so they can have a dinner table, a kitchen table conversation about it. So there's concentrated energy in just one week, it's hyper-localized - because strategies that are going to work in Asotin County is going to be completely different than King County - and locals know best. So I see myself as being a facilitator and having local communities tell the Secretary of State how I can help. But at least laying out a plan and applying some leadership to get everybody pulling in one direction, concentrating on one week, I think would be helpful. You have probably visited my website and you also know that I plan a VOICE Program, which is Voter Outreach and Innovative Civic Engagement, where I'd be replicating some really successful strategies from the 2020 Census, pooling philanthropic dollars with government dollars, and then having a very low-barrier granting program where communities can propose their own voter outreach and engagement programs. And again, I can't wait to see how creative people are, and it's going to get very - we're going to get some very niche products, but yeah. So those are a couple of ideas, but I would say that the first thing is really paying attention to the data, not just the trends that I talked about - which elections have low turnout and don't - but also geography. One of the great things about the Washington State Voting Rights Act that has been proposed - we already have a Voting Rights Act, but what I think of as Phase 2 that's been proposed - is it came with money and authority for the University of Washington to hold data and they're going to be getting electoral inputs, like candidate filing, rates of voter registration, rates of ballot return, and combining that with demographic data. And doing basically heat mapping and analysis so that we can also look at geographic areas and populations that have low voter turnout or low levels of engagement. So let's pay attention to the trends, let's pay attention to what that Washington State Voting Rights Act data tells us, and start developing strategies in response to that. [00:14:28] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense, and the ideas that you have - especially that one week, I'd love to see that implemented - that would be exciting. There are also efforts to increase turnout through some structural changes to the ways that we vote, and there are changes that are on the ballot in several jurisdictions right now in our state, including ranked choice voting, approval voting, a number of different things. Are you in favor of ranked choice voting, approval voting, some of these changes? Do you support those? [00:14:55] Julie Anderson: I support the local option bill for ranked choice voting that has been kicking around in the Legislature for about six years now, and I look forward to supporting local jurisdictions that want to adopt ranked choice voting. I think it is head and shoulders the leader in electoral reform proposals, and it seems to be particularly popular among young voters - and Gen Xers and Millennials are going to be the biggest share of the voting population by 2028 - if we're talking about increasing voter turnout, we've also got to look at youth and really change the way we talk with youth - not talk at them, and not using government channels. I look forward to harnessing some of that young adult leadership and having them tell us the best ways to engage with young voters, and one of the things that they're saying is ranked choice voting. There's a lot of disenchantment with our primary system, and I think that they're really looking for alternatives and wanting untraditional candidates and maybe minority party candidates to have a fighting chance in the primary. So I think they're excited about that, and if your community decides to take it on, I'm ready to support. There's a load of work to be done to make ranked choice voting successful, and there's a lot of rulemaking that falls on the Secretary of State, so one of the first things I'm going to do is gather together a cohort of communities that are seriously talking about this and start working on the rulemaking so that we have a chance of having some standardization as this rolls out. [00:16:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and one component of that that I think is particularly important - I'm wondering what your perspective is on it - is the voter education component. Whenever there is a change - we struggle with our existing system to make sure everyone understands how to make sure that everyone understands how to vote, and even something like - hey, remember to sign the ballot - still slips through the cracks for a lot of people. Several things can seem very intuitive, but maybe not actually be for everyone for a lot of different reasons. When we're making a major change, the importance of education is that much greater. How do you propose, when there are changes, to make sure that we do have an adequate amount of voter education in all of our communities across the state so that people aren't intimidated or disenfranchised by the change? [00:17:23] Julie Anderson: First, taking a clue with other states that have been doing this a while - I've been through several webinars and in-person visits with jurisdictions that do it. But instead of just copying what somebody else does, I want to do usability testing. Assume nothing. Let's get that cohort together, let's get stakeholders and end users together. Do mock ballots, do mock voter instructions. And actually test it through scientific usability testing and find out where the errors are going to be made and what we can do to change it. And that includes - ranked choice voting ballots that may need to be translated for people that don't speak English well, or different types of ranked choice voting - that's the other thing that's not well understood is - the local option doesn't force you to combine a primary and a general election and just have one election. It's an option. It also leaves open the opportunity for applying a ranked choice voting ballot and using proportional representation elections. There's all sorts of different ways that a ranked choice voting ballot can be applied depending on what the jurisdiction is trying to achieve. We need to do usability testing in all of those forms. [00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: Looking at that and the coordination that's necessary for that, your opponent has talked about - hey, there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out in the current environment. Now's not the time to make changes, we're experiencing enough of a crisis with trust from some people in our current systems - it's going to require a lot of education, may disenfranchise people. Do you think that's reason enough to not move forward with things that could potentially increase turnout or help better represent communities? [00:19:17] Julie Anderson: Name a reform that didn't have opposition. Name a reform that didn't have barriers and reasons not to do it. Reform is hard in the beginning, and I think we need to have more confidence than that. We need to approach it carefully. We need to do that usability testing. We need to do lots of voter education. Tactically, one of the things that I would like to do - you've noticed on my website, one of the things I propose with transparency is - I want to find a secure way to have voted ballots and cast vote records visible to the public. Other states do it. There is a way to do it. We may need legislation - because paramount is preserving voter privacy, right? That goes without saying. We absolutely can't do it if we can't guarantee voter privacy. But if there is a way that we can, and I believe that there is, and if we can get rules made by the Secretary or legislative fixes, then making those available is really going to help demystify people who don't trust a ranked choice voting ballot and the algorithm that gets used to reallocate votes. If we can make cast vote records public, there is open source software available where they can run the records themselves and retest the vote allocation if they want to. So, I want to look at things like that not only because there is a lot of public interest in auditing elections, but because it also is an enabling feature to making ranked choice voting more understandable and independently auditable. And there is some really neat communication tools that other jurisdictions have used in terms of color coding the reallocation of votes between each round, and they've gotten good results. [00:21:13] Crystal Fincher: And the issue of trust overall is one that you will have to contend with. [00:21:17] Julie Anderson: Always. [00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: We are dealing with an environment where there is certainly disinformation and people who are just spreading information that is false, whether it's denial of the 2020 election federally, or in our state and local elections, who question the security of vote by mail, of ballot dropboxes, of a variety of things that we have implemented successfully. And what they cite about them is false. That's a bad faith effort. But because of that bad faith effort, there are a lot of people who genuinely believe that there are problems - from all sorts of backgrounds, for all sorts of reasons. So how, in this environment where there is disinformation, do you help increase trust in our voting systems and our electoral system with people who frankly just don't have faith in it currently? [00:22:13] Julie Anderson: First of all, not acting defensively, and not acting aggressively, and having a nonpartisan message. The best thing that we can do to maintain and increase confidence is to keep doing what we're doing, which is running error-free elections that are auditable and serve the people. We can do some minor things that I've suggested on my website for transparency. We can do additional risk-limiting audits. Doing a statewide risk-limiting audit, I think, is a good idea. We currently have audits in counties that are called by the political parties, but they're not statistically valid batches of ballots that are being hand counted, and every county is counting a different race. To the Loren Culps of the world, who are just mystified by how the top-of-the-ticket candidate could lose, while the down-ballot candidates prevail, a statewide risk-limiting audit would be really helpful. And by the way, I would be proposing this as a best practice, even if we weren't currently getting pushback from candidates and parties. But to loop back to your question about confidence. Crystal, this is where I think that the nonpartisanship really helps. There's a good study out there that shows that you can, by double digits, move - and this is a phrase I do not like to use, but for shorthand's sake, let's say an election denier, somebody that really believes that the 2020 election was stolen. Even among that group, you can move them by double digits into the confidence tally by simply talking about the due process and the ability to challenge an election. Instead of acting aggressively and defensively about the accusation that it's stolen, just calmly educate them and inform them how elections can be challenged, the due process, how they can challenge individual voter registrations, and repeat how interested we are in any evidence that they have, and that we don't even need them to go to court for them to present us with evidence. I'm still waiting in Pierce County to get some of that canvassing work that the communities say - the door-to-door stuff that they're doing. They're not doing it in Pierce County, but I'm waiting for that because we can sit down and walk through the data with them. And almost always, it's a misconception of - either they're missing pieces that they don't know, or they're misinterpreting the data - and we can walk through it. And occasionally, I would expect to find a correct case. Occasionally, I would expect them to find, among 4.7 million voters and voter registrations, an error in a voter registration record - and we want to know about it and need help fixing it. [00:25:30] Crystal Fincher: Now, you talk about it - that seems reasonable, that is encouraging data and research, and there's certainly a lot that we can talk to people about with that. And it does seem like not being a partisan may be helpful in explaining that - the trust and faith that people have there. But you've been under attack from the Chair of the Democratic Party over this past week. It looks like saying that - oh, no, no, no, Julie Anderson is a partisan, she is a Republican, has a - I will read it and allow you to respond. I see - testified against bills expanding voter accessibility, against election officials promoting voter outreach and education, office sent flawed ballots, takes no position on campaign finance laws, accountable to no one, have talked about having a consultant and campaign staff or consultants who are Republicans and have supported Republicans. Now, I will say - there are quite a few Democrats that I saw question this and say - especially from Pierce County - saying, well, we've regularly seen Julie Anderson in Democratic events also. But some people countered with - well, now we're looking at her with JT Wilcox. I guess starting with the partisanship, and now you're actually associated with Republicans - and I think Rob McKenna has notably talked about endorsing and supporting you - you have been at those events. Can people credibly see you as a Nonpartisan when they see these associations and these endorsements? [00:27:16] Julie Anderson: Sure. I'm a Nonpartisan because I don't belong to any political party, which is different than not talking to anybody. I am not soliciting or accepting any endorsements from any political party, and I'm also not soliciting or accepting any money. But I regularly ask to be introduced. I try to break into legislative meetings and PCO meetings of both parties. Sometimes they'll let me in to introduce myself, sometimes they won't. I asked JT Wilcox if I could crash his salmon bake because I wanted to meet Republicans, and he said yes. And I'm sure that he got a rash of - from his supporters - for having me there. But just not belonging to a party doesn't mean that I don't talk with people, and I think that's important for the Secretary of State to do. One of the critiques is that I'm accountable to no one - I'm accountable to voters, and I've been re-elected overwhelmingly three times as an election administrator in Pierce County, so I have earned the trust and the votes of the residents of Pierce County who have seen me in action. I think it says something that the political parties don't run opponents against me. Presumably if I'm bad and bad for their party's interests, they're going to run somebody against me. The people who are working on my campaign - it was very difficult to find any consultancy that would take me on as a client because there were both credible Republicans and credible Democrats running in the race, and here comes this Nonpartisan lady wanting a contract with them. That's a business model and a relationship they didn't want to ruin, and so it was very hard to find somebody. I ended up getting a referral from Mary Robnett, who's the Pierce County Prosecutor who ran as a Nonpartisan, and I said, who were your consultants? And she introduced me to Josh Amato, and he has been associated as a Republican, I don't even know if he's still a Republican - I'm imagining that he is - and he has worked on Republican campaigns and Nonpartisan campaigns. This is an income-constrained campaign. I do not have a lot of money. I have been having to run this campaign the way I'll run the Secretary of State's office, which is modestly and judiciously. So I had to wait until the general election to hire a staff person, and when I did, I chose a young gentleman who came from the Derek Kilmer campaign, and had worked on Emily Randall's campaign, and worked with the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. It is true that I contracted with an independent vendor for PR in the primary, and she had Republican roots. But my detractors are cherry-picking - they also failed to notice that I hired a fundraiser who is very progressive and comes from the non-profit community, so I think I'm pretty balanced in who vendors, what kind of vendors are helping me. But most importantly, the vendors don't boss the candidate around. I'm the one that's responsible for every single policy position that you hear me talk about. Do you think the Republican consultant was happy about me saying I support ranked choice voting in the Washington State Voting Rights Act? No, he thought that that was a crazy thing to do - but I'm the boss, not him. I've lost track of the attacks. What other attacks do we want to look at? [00:31:07] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think one worth addressing is testifying against bills expanding voter accessibility - and I think that one, maybe for voters, is probably a concern. If looking at Republicans - hearing the attacks on seemingly democracy, partisanship - hey, we want to stop same-day registration, we don't like vote by mail, we need to reduce the amount of drop boxes, and the types of reforms that we have embraced here in Washington State - and is that going to impact where you stand on those issues and how much of a leader you are there? [00:31:47] Julie Anderson: So, in testifying, I had a leadership role in the statewide Association of County Auditors. So, I was either the Legislative Co-chair on the Legislative Committee or the President. And 39 counties come to a consensus on what their position on bills is - and because of proximity or leadership position, I was often asked to represent the association on those bills. Crystal, name for me a legislative proposal that is perfect on the first day that it's introduced. [00:32:18] Crystal Fincher: Well, I can't do that. I can't do that. [00:32:20] Julie Anderson: Not many. Many of them need to, in the legislative process - through testimony, stakeholder engagement, and the amendment process - needs to be changed. And often county auditors, who are the ones that have to operationalize good ideas and bad ideas, have feedback and have concerns. Most of that testimony was done at a time when the state wasn't paying for state elections, and it was all falling back on county general funds. It wasn't until 2020 that the state passed a bill to start funding their share of state elections, and it didn't take effect until 2021, which does us no good - it's really going to make an impact this year. So, a lot of the testimony was driven by our concerns about resources, time, money, and staffing to get done some complicated things. In other cases, it was technology. So, same-day registration only became viable when we had VoteWA up and running so that we had real-time visibility on registration and balloting transactions around the state. And I will say - again, cherry-picking, my detractors are - in as early as 2015, I was personally advocating for the Washington State Voting Rights Act well before it got passed, even though the association either had a neutral stance or they had constructive feedback and testimony. So, I am a strong supporter of vote-by-mail, strong supporter of same-day registration, strong supporter of just about every electoral reform that's taken place since 2016. And the expansion of ballot dropboxes - I know that one piece of feedback that's been fluttering around is my opposition to dropboxes on college campuses - again, in my role as, in the Association of County Auditors. And - like in Pierce County, at that time, I was really struggling for expanding dropboxes, period, in my community. And I knew, using that geographical and demographic data and that voter turnout data that I used to make decisions, I knew that there were pockets in my community that really could have benefited from a ballot dropbox - as opposed to the University of Washington of Tacoma, which is a commuter school, not a residential school with young people far-flung from all over the United States that might be confused about how to get a ballot or how to register. It's a commuter school. And having a ballot dropbox on that campus, where people are driving to and from their homes to classes, and not being able to install a box at the Housing Authority or at Manitou, which - anyway, you don't know my neighborhoods. [00:35:35] Crystal Fincher: I know a little bit. [00:35:37] Julie Anderson: Okay. All right, all right. So that didn't make a lot of sense to me, and I stand by that. I really think that the control of where ballot dropboxes go should be local, using local intelligence and local needs. I completely support the threshold, like population standards. And by the way, all of this wraps around to why I support the Washington State Voting Rights Act, and the expanded version that's going to come up in session again this year. Right now, we have a Voting Rights Act that is really specifically tailored or focused on vote dilution and that helped us get through redistricting safely. But we are now talking about vote denial and vote abridgment. And I support it strongly for this very reason. If you're going to give local election administrators control over where to place ballot dropboxes, we need to make sure it's not at the detriment of protected populations and that it's doing the most good. And I like that kind of structure. [00:36:47] Crystal Fincher: And I hear you there. I guess the questions that pop up for me personally when I hear that are - one, for me, ideally, shouldn't we be able to find a way to place them in more places, period? And should being a commuter location or a commuter school, given that we aren't limited to returning ballots in a jurisdiction where we're registered, where we vote - a lot of people do commute there, which means a lot of people are there. It's a convenient place to be able to vote. It's an enfranchising thing, even though it may not be for the particular precinct that that ballot dropbox is located in, or neighborhood. Do you factor those things in to making your decisions there? [00:37:34] Julie Anderson: Oh, yeah - I'm making a rookie mistake getting into an argument with the host. So it made perfect sense when I was able to place it at the transit station on the street of Pacific Avenue, just outside of UWT, as opposed to inside a pedestrian plaza not accessible by an automobile and not visible to the general public. And also, by the way, very hard to geolocate on Google Maps for people that are searching for a place to drop their ballot. I do think that the number of ballot dropboxes is increasing - the number is worth looking at, especially because we don't know what's going to happen with the United States Postal Service. By the way, I would work hard as Secretary of State to work with letter carriers to preserve door-to-door delivery. But if that doesn't happen and Congress continues to privatize that service, we need to be prepared and with more dropboxes. And you know something - the Voting Rights Act and UW's data collection that they're going to be doing is going to be very informative about whether we have enough ballot dropboxes and if we have them in the right place. So I'm completely open to it - I just don't like the Legislature deciding where they go. I want to be holistic, data-driven with local intelligence. [00:39:05] Crystal Fincher: That absolutely makes sense. The other one I just want to get to - just talking about accuracy - we've actually seen errors in a number of jurisdictions in a number of ways - from misprinted Voters' Pamphlets, ballots that have to be reprinted. There was talk you provided voters false information and lost 100 cast ballots. What happened there? [00:39:30] Julie Anderson: Okay, two separate incidents, and you're right - errors happen all over the state and all over the country - reminding us all that elections is a human process. We leverage technology a lot, but it requires expertise and a lot of proofreading and sometimes things slip through the crack. In one case, the vendor that Pierce County - well actually, the vendor that is used by over 60% of the electorate in Washington State, K&H - made an error when we mailed out ballots to our military voters and 88 voters out of 550,000 were impacted. What happened was they shuffled the return envelope with the mailer so that 88 people got a ballot packet on time, but the return ballot had somebody else's name on it. When we found out about that, we immediately contacted the voters, reissued the ballots, and immediately sent out a press release. That's what you can count on from me - is tattling on myself, telling people, taking corrective action, and doing whatever we can to make sure it doesn't happen again. In that case, I amended the contract with the provider that said next time you have a machine stoppage and you've got a set of quality control procedures that you use - this is like using your Xerox in your office or your home where you have a paper jam, and then by the time you finish ripping everything out, you've got to figure - do I reprint the whole document or do I figure out what page I left out on? The quality control at that plant is to reprint the whole darn thing, and somebody on the line decided that would be wasteful and they didn't do it. And so I amended the contract to say there's going to be consequences if you deviate from your own quality control. In the infamous case in 2016 where Pierce County urged voters to, if they were going to use the United States Postal Service, to do so - let's see, I think it was 5 days before the election - but if they were going to use a drop and to please use a dropbox otherwise. The allegation says that we were sued - we were not sued. There was a threat of a lawsuit and at the end of the day - what the Democratic Party wanted was for me to mail out a postcard to voters saying that's advice not a requirement, and they wanted me to make that clear on our website. And so that's what we did. And at the end of the day, the attorneys agreed we did nothing illegal. And we haven't done it again since because it created such a stir and so much upset. So we don't even give people advice anymore about - if they're using the Postal Service to do it early, but you should. [00:42:45] Crystal Fincher: Well and yeah - that's the complicated thing. And as someone who is interested in making sure people not only vote, but that their votes get counted and they arrive on time, we are experiencing more challenges with the United States Post Office. There is some uncertainty and certainly at the time, during the 2016 election, there's lots of conversation about potentially challenges with mailing things. So I do generally advise people to mail as early as you can if you're going to do that, but yeah - so I am glad we have gotten some clarity on a number of these issues, but also want to ask about some other things. I guess one of them is talking about preserving the historical records of the State and making them readily available to the public. What are your plans there and how can you make those more accessible and available to researchers, to the public, to everyone? [00:43:41] Julie Anderson: A couple of things. One, the Secretary of State's office, I think, is behind in terms of digitizing paper records and getting them indexed and available. I do believe that my opponent has invested in additional scanning equipment, so that's a good thing. I don't know if they have sufficient FTEs to do that - I'll have to look at that when I get there. But my big concern is looking towards the future government - so our state archives hold all of the records that are produced by local and state government that have permanent retention value all the way from territorial days to right this minute. And in the last 10 years, government has been producing a heck of a lot of digital native, digital born documents that never were a piece of paper. And in my experience, our state archives still has a paper mindset because they're used to working with precious ephemera and paper documents. But we've been producing tons of native, digital born documents that are complex and interactive. Is the Secretary of State's office ready to ingest a high volume of digital records that are interactive and richly indexed, and turn them around and make them accessible to the public? I don't think so, and that's a project that I want to tackle right away. If you think about everything that just happened with redistricting - with all of those maps that were generated, so many different versions - and if you tracked it, you know that that was highly interactive data, right? You could move lines around. That is a record. Is it being preserved in that state, that interactive state, or are the maps being preserved? So those are the questions I'm interested in and want us to be forward thinking about. I am a certified public records officer, so I am very passionate about public access to public information and one of the things that the Secretary of State's office needs to do - there's two things - is provide more training to local records officers and maybe even a camp for requesters. I think that would be a good idea. [00:46:05] Crystal Fincher: No, I think that's excellent and was leading into - the next thing I wanted to talk about was document retention and how closely linked it is with records requests. And we're seeing challenges in that area in jurisdictions across the state - one, in properly retaining the correct records. But the purpose of that retention is so that they can be accessed and provided to people who are entitled to see them, including the public. And we are seeing and hearing reports from a number of reporters and people making requests in jurisdictions across the state who are receiving increased wait times, increased estimates of wait times - sometimes comically long, decades long wait times - for some of those requests potentially. Hearing that localities are short staffed - it's challenging to respond to these kinds of things. And even getting into accusations of bad faith use of the public disclosure request system and records request system - some people trying to do that. Or on the flip side, people just being unhappy about receiving a request and having something looked into and calling things a bad faith attack and looking to delay the process, maybe unnecessarily, in those. How can you help make that process more consistent, help localities handle those in a more consistent way so that people can request and receive public documents when they're entitled to them? [00:47:46] Julie Anderson: Two things - I'm going to be the Secretary of State that's known as a "Clean your closet, kid" Secretary of State. Government is producing more records than ever and they don't know what to do with them. If you don't know how to store them, then you can't find them. So record retention is about record management. The Secretary of State's office used to have a pretty good training program for records officers about that. That needs to be rebooted and redoubled and it needs to have a modernized context. I cannot tell you how many emails are generated hourly by government. We don't know which of those are important or not until you have a sorting and classification system that you maintain constantly that marries emails with the associated documents, right? So that's something that we did in Pierce County. I want to take that passion with me to the Secretary of State's office and hire somebody that's an expert at this to help train local government. And I'll also be an advocate for resources for local government. There are some jurisdictions that are literally drowning and they're also having turnover issues. So I do want them to have resources, but first of all they got to know how to clean their room. [00:49:10] Crystal Fincher: So as we close and as people are trying to figure out how to make this decision - they hear from you, they hear from your opponent, lots of outside groups, and a lot of noise. When you are talking to someone who is considering making this choice between you and your opponent, does not know which direction they're going to go, what do you tell them to help make that decision? [00:49:32] Julie Anderson: That like them, I love Washington State's election laws - want to preserve them, make them even better. And for the first time in history, they have a choice of hiring somebody that's a professional administrator with expertise in these subjects without party strings attached. [00:49:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, join us today, and letting the voters just get more familiar with you. Much appreciated. [00:50:01] Julie Anderson: Thank you. Thank you for the questions. And I love that you're a fan of the Public Records Act. [00:50:06] Crystal Fincher: I'm such a fan of it - and if it's follow up and organizations being accountable to adhering to it. But yes, thank you so much. [00:50:16] Julie Anderson: You're welcome - bye bye. [00:50:18] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Zdravo. V tokratni epizodi čestitamo vsem, ki ste včeraj tekli in se pogovarjamo o tem, kako bi mi delali podkast, če bi zmanjkalo elektrike. Vsak ponedeljek ob 6h zjutraj v živo v parku Zvezda. Spomnimo se tudi na geografijski zdrs iz prejšnje epizode in se še enkrat opravičujemo za vse nevšečnosti vsem prebivalkam in prebivalcem Babnega polja. Ugotovimo, da smo politično (ne)korektni in da bi potrebovali cenzorja in ugotavljamo, kje bi ga lahko dobili brezplačno. Aljo pove, da bi rad bil investicijski nesvetovalec, preden pa se vržemo v poglavje, pa se spomnimo na prejšnjega, kjer je spet blestel Rob McKenna. Tokrat pa si Artur žalost in obup zdravi z nakupovanjem najnovejšega Applea, prvega Maca (takrat so mu rekli še Macintosh), zada si nalogo da bo našel svoje domovanje v Islingonu iz časov, ko je pet let prebival na prazgodovinski zemlji. Če mu to uspe in če nam uspe ostati politično korektni in uravnoteženi, pa v tokratni epizodi.

Kolesarji so na svetovnem prvenstvu že nastopili na kronometru, kjer je Tadej Pogačar osvojil šesto mesto, velike ambicije pa ima na cestni dirki, ki bo v nedeljo.

Dr. Nathan Regier welcomes Rob McKenna, PhD to today's episode. He was named one of the top 30 most influential I/O psychologists, he is a TedEd speaker and features in Forbes. Dr. McKenna is the founder of WiLD Leader Inc and The WiLD Leader Foundation, as well as the creator of the WiLD Toolkit. Dr. McKenna's research and coaching with thousands of leaders across corporate, not-for-profit, and university settings have given him insight into the real and gritty experience of leadership. His clients have included the Boeing Company, Microsoft, Heineken, Foster Farms, the United Way, Alaska Airlines, and Children's Hospital. He is the author of numerous articles and chapters on leadership character, calling, effectiveness, and leadership under pressure. His latest book, Composed: The Heart and Science of Leading Under Pressure focuses on the specific strategies leaders can use to stay true to themselves and connected to others when it matters most.   Key Takeaways: [3:13] What are some of the most formative influences on Dr. McKenna's journey? [5:52] Dr. McKenna talks about his motivation to study I/O psychology. [7:35] What is WiLD Leaders? Whole and Intentional Leader Development. [8:30] Dr. McKenna explains what the WiLD Toolkit is. [10:20] Dr. McKenna talks about the genesis of his newest book. [13:45] How does pressure impact people? [14:26] Dr. McKenna talks about the importance of efficacy. [18:50] Thinkers and feelers can both be beneficial but can also become a liability. [22:22] “Stop trying to be interesting and start trying to be interested.”  [22:38] Dr. McKenna explains the difference between empathy and perspective taking. [27:40] Selfishness looks different for different people. [28:41] “Human beings are the only species who speed up when lost”, Dr. McKenna explains his quote from the book [31:26] Dr. McKenna talks about the distinction between blame and grace and how it applies to the responsibility as a leader. [35:41] Dr. McKenna explains the difference between peace-keeper and truth-seeker. [37:26] Dr. McKenna shares ‘the secret sauce': a sense of purpose. [43:13] Readiness beats potential. [47:20] Humans make mistakes, how we relate to our failures is a crucially important aspect. Dr. McKenna shares his personal perspective on faith and human failure. [53:30] Dr. Nate and Dr. McKenna talk about role models. [56:28] Is there anything on Dr. McKenna's mind that he feels the world needs to know?  [1:01:14] Dr. Nate shares his top three takeaways from an inspiring and energizing conversation with Dr. McKenna.   Mentioned in this episode: The Compassion Mindset   Tweetables: “Pressure impacts people in three fundamental ways: thinking, feeling and doing.” #oncompassion   “You can't sacrifice something you don't have.” #oncompassion   “The emotional side is the least promoted in leadership development.” #oncompassion   “Worry less about what people are thinking of you and worry more about what they think about themselves.” #oncompassion    “The person who has the most capacity to lead within any system is the one who can express himself with the least amount of blame.” #oncompassion

Former State Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge on the Roe v. Wade SCOTUS ruling // Political strategist Ron Dotzauer on SCOTUS Roe v. Wade decision // Rob Mckenna on the Roe v. Wade SCOTUS decision // Councilman Jeremy Takala of the Yakima Nation on the Lower East Snake River Dam and salmon // Felix Bannel takes us all over the map // Margret Brennan on the Jan 6th meetings // Travis Mayfield on the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Zdravo. Tokrat začnemo epizodo z razmišljanjem o inflaciji in kriptu in se sprašujemo zakaj bi z inflacijo izgubljali 8% na leto, če lahko v kripto valutah izgubljate 8% na dan. V rubriki Berite z nami povemo, da z nami berejo (in so se javili) Maruša, Matej in Slavko. Preberemo tudi “novo” oceno na Apple Podcasts in povemo, da Peli svoje dopaminske receptorje polni z ocenami in recenzijami … in nič več z alkoholom. Drugo poglavje četrte knjige, ki je za Pelija prvo poglavje, s katerim se je srečal s Štoparcem, začnemo, tam, kjer se spodobi. Pri dejstvu, da je bil Rob McKenna zagrenjen pankrt. Aljo se sprašuje če je bil kot bog dežja zaresen bog, ali le en izmed malih bogov in da ima zagotovo svojega šefa, ki se odloča kakšne vrste dež bo padal, medtem, ko on vozi svoj tovornjak iz Danske proti Združenemu kraljestvu. Govorimo tudi o dežju. Še posebej o dežju številka 17, zato pokličemo v Luksemburg našega “dopisnika za dež”, ki nam pove vse o dežju v deželah blizu Atlantika. To je kdo drug kot Aljaž Pengov Bitenc (znan tudi kot @pengovsky), ki svoje poročanje zaključi nekako takole: "… ko se ti zdi, da dež pada od spodaj navzgor, si resnično prepričan, da si v deželah blizu Atlantika in da je Rob McKenna nekje v bližini." Zapiski so na opravicujemo.se ... Hvala ker nas poslušate, podpirate in sledite. Povsod smo @opravicujemose ...

Hanna Scott on the five-year plan to address homelessness // Dose of Kindness -- seeing the world in a different way // Gee Scott on success for Sounders FC // More from Rob McKenna on the draft SCOTUS opinion on Roe v Wade // Chris Sullivan's Chokepoint -- "Revive I-5" expansion joint replacement // Rachel Belle on "dopamine dressing" See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jason Mercier of the Washington Policy Center interviews one of the lead attorneys for those challenging the capital gains income tax about what happens next. https://loom.ly/wheOyYc #Opinion #Columns #Commentary #JasonMercier #WashingtonPolicyCenter #CapitalGainsIncomeTax #Lawsuit #I1929 #SB5096 #FormerAttorneyGeneral #RobMcKenna #DouglasCountySuperiorCourt #UnconstitutionalGraduatedIncomeTax #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

Drs. Rob McKenna and Daniel Hallak lead WiLD Leaders, with a mission to intentionally prepare a generation of courageous and sacrificial leaders who will lead the way in reflecting light into a world where darkness is the default — a generation of leaders who will bring thoughtfulness, conviction, hope, resourcing, strategic thinking, and deeply rooted care to the institutions and people they serve. They're deeply committed to providing a practical structure and process where leaders are deepening in courageous and sacrificial leadership alongside developing in business skills and acumen--all within the context of real-world, everyday business experiences and realities. Your Hosts: Mark L. Vincent, Founder of Design Group International and the Society for Process Consulting. He also facilitates Maestro-level leaders Kristin Evenson, Consultant and Coach at Junctures. Find out more about The Third Turn Podcast by visiting thirdturnpodcast.com. Jennifer Miller, who runs a marketing consultancy firm called, Strategically Connected, is our producer. And shout out to Joshua Brinkman who is our audio engineer. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In Episode 32 we have two leaders joining us to help us look more squarely at developing the next generation of organizational leaders. WiLD Leaders and our guests Dr. Rob McKenna and Dr. Daniel Hallack advocate for and resource organizations with a whole and intentional leader development (WiLD) approach. Your Hosts: Mark L. Vincent, Founder of Design Group International and the Society for Process Consulting. He also facilitates Maestro-level leaders. Kristin Evenson, Consultant and Coach at Junctures. Find out more about The Third Turn Podcast by visiting thirdturnpodcast.com. Jennifer Miller, who runs a marketing consultancy firm called, Strategically Connected, is our producer. And shout out to Joshua Brinkman who is our audio engineer. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app