Thank you for your Oct. 5 editorial titled “In this crisis, legislators must swim – or sink.” I’m reminded of Slade Gorton’s comment after the impeachment debacle that “the voters have short memorie.” This is a common backroom refrain whenever our electeds do the political thing at the expense of statesmanship. It obviously did not work for former Sen. Gorton and it must not work for our state’s Republican House members.
I haven’t forgotten. Our triple-overtime session in January was politics at its very worst. The overwhelming public priority is transportation and if we asked our legislators to do nothing else, we asked them to develop a strategy for addressing this issue. It’s an issue that affects our lives, our quality of life, our economy and our wellbeing. The non-partisan Blue Ribbon Commission spent two years developing a strategy. The governor developed a package. The Senate (Republicans and Democrats) produced a reasonable solution. Finally, we saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
The light, unfortunately, was attached to a freight train named Clyde Ballard. The House Republican leader pitted Republican against Democrat, Eastern Washington against Western Washington, rural interests against urban interests and House against Senate. He had the absolute gall to tell our Republican representatives to stay home while he “negotiated” a transportation deal and our Republican representatives had the gall to stay at home and allow him to scuttle any hope of a solution.
I have voted for my share of Republicans and Democrats over the years. I vote for the person, not the party. But the fact is that the House was deadlocked 49-49 in the last session and nothing was done. The deadlock must be broken. The chief architect of the transportation disaster was the House Republican leadership. The deadlock must be broken in favor of the Democrats, who seem better suited to bi-partisanship. I can only vote for one Democrat – Jean Berkey. But if my one vote for this one Democrat can help get action on our transportation morass, then I will have done my part.
Everett
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