Muzzall, St. Clair in a contentious, expensive race for state Senate

OAK HARBOR — No legislative candidate this year has more financial backing than state Sen. Ron Muzzall.

And it’s not particularly close.

The Republican incumbent from the 10th Legislative District faces two challengers from his left. In a bid to retain his seat, he’s raised $540,000, according to the state Public Disclosure Commission.

The district represents Island County, a wide swath of the north coast of Snohomish County, as well as Arlington and parts of Skagit County.

Muzzall has served in the state Senate since being appointed in 2019. He narrowly won the 2020 election for the seat over Helen Price Johnson, a Democrat.

Democrats Janet St. Clair and Denny Sandberg are challenging him this year. St. Clair has been an Island County commissioner since 2018. Sandberg is a former small business owner and U.S. Navy veteran, according to his submission to the voters’ pamphlet. Sandberg did not return an interview request.

Independent expenditures for Muzzall have largely come from come from WA Wins, Sound Jobs and the New Direction political action committee.

St. Clair’s campaign has raised over $193,000. Sandberg has raised nothing.

Muzzall said three issues take priority for him — cost of living, public safety and education. Living expenses are especially hurting the economic bottom third of the population. To him, major drivers of that include new construction and rising gas prices tied to the Climate Commitment Act.

Food costs are another issue, he added.

“(The Climate Commitment Act), the Ag overtime bill, the initiative to raise the minimum wage, all of these things have added to the cost of producing food in the state of Washington,” Muzalla said. “And once again, that bottom third of the economic scale, they’re paying the price because they have the least discretionary income.”

St. Clair is also concerned about cost of living.

She said she would like to work toward lowering the the cost of food production, “so that our producers aren’t burdened with so many bureaucratic entanglements that they can’t get their product to market,” she said, using local farmers markets as an example.

St. Clair is running on healthcare, too. She is the primary caregiver for her mother and is championing a number of health care issues as part of her platform. She’s supportive of efforts to improve health care for military families as well as policies integrating behavioral health and primary care.

The Island County commissioner is adamantly pro-abortion and has made that a major facet of her campaign.

Muzzall, meanwhile, called the push for a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights “performative politics” and said his “moral compass” makes the issue of abortion “not something I personally can support.” However, he added he does not wish to demonize abortion or reduce access.

St. Clair called out Muzzall:

“I would be supportive of a constitutional amendment to protect women’s reproductive health care choices, abortion, IVF, birth control all of those things, and my opponent has been on record, opposed to that amendment, calling it ‘performative politics.’ So I think that is the one defining issue where I can be clear that I will stand on the side of women, advocates and allies to protect abortion.”

Both candidates are running on education as a major issue, as well. St. Clair said she’d want to take “a hard look” at how education is funded in Washington, pointing to the failure of several levies in Marysville and the chaos that has followed.

“I think the state has a tough conversation to look at how we do funding, especially for rural schools where there’s some regionalization that really hurts us in more rural or remote communities,” St. Clair said.

Muzzall said constituents are frustrated with tax increases. He detailed how he helped secure federal money thorough a state grant for the Oak Harbor School District after voters rejected a levy.

“Not every school district has schools on federal land that are able to get those kind of grants,” Muzalla said. “It’s a problem going forward and we’re gonna have to solve it.”

Ballots are due Tuesday.

Jordan Hansen: 425-339-3046; jordan.hansen@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @jordyhansen.