Gov-elect Bob Ferguson made it clear Thursday: he will play chess with the second Trump Administration. The Democrats took a shellacking through the middle of the country but carried the coasts, especially in Washington. Fergy dispatched Dave Reichert with more than 56 percent of the vote.
But the AG who sued the first Trump Administration from the get-go was holding his cards on how to respond in the second. The Trump victory has left lots of people “scared and fearful for themselves,” he told a news conference in Seattle.
Ferguson pledged that the state will respond when its citizens are harmed, noting that there will be criteria for litigation. The action by Trump and company must be illegal. It needs to be harmful. And the state must have standing to sue.
Ferguson will have a state government to run. He was elected by “Space Needle Washington” — every place visible from Seattle’s landmark. It’s a stressed out territory these days — a housing shortage, the homelessness crisis, and some of America’s worst traffic congestion.
Voters decisively rejected initiatives to roll back the modest wealth tax and Climate Commitment Act — crowning achievements of the Jay Inslee era. But there is impatience for action elsewhere. Inslee, briefly a presidential candidate in 2020, was a darling of MSNBC and CNN but less popular at home.
Ferguson and North Carolina Gov-elect Josh Stein were the Democrats’ big winners on Tuesday. Given the party’s shattered morale, they need to perform and to provide a counterpoint to Trump.
The first Trump Administration had a familiar feature: the Governor and the AG would announce a lawsuit against the administration. Inslee would supply the sound bites, Ferguson the substance. The AG and chess master has moved up. Fergy is one of four AGs resistant to Trump who have been elecțed governor. The next step is the national stage.
Expect a Trump provocation, followed by a presser featuring Ferguson and AG-elect Nick Brown. They will find a citizen harmed, likely outrageously harmed. The next step: go before one of the federal judges put on the bench by Joe Biden. And hope for a ruling that will send Trump through the roof. We are a society with the rule of law, which our incoming president has skirted, mocked, and defied. The drama will continue.
Hopefully this preview of Ferguson’s term in office is way off target. Four years of Ferguson fixating on Trump’s actions to find excuses to send AG Brown rushing off to court waving lawsuit papers? We deserve far better. Seattle is sliding downhill, particularly downtown. This state’s governor now should be working to improve state laws by buttonholing the legislative leadership, using the bully pulpit of his office to inform the public and cajole local officials, and working hard to improve both the administration of, and regulatory framework for, government agencies.
I voted for Bob Ferguson and Nick Brown because I want them to stand up for Washingtonians whose rights might be violated by actions of the Trump administration, and to pursue justice for our residents aggressively. Apparently you don’t. Would you care to explain why you don’t think that’s so important?
You don’t have perspective Ivan, nor do you appreciate how this state and region are heading in the wrong directions on numerous fronts. The political leadership should be addressing the bigger problems here:
— poor prospects for good jobs,
— increase in violent crime,
— growing racial and financial inequities (middle class hollowed out),
— poor schools,
— high cost of living,
— downtown’s vacant storefronts and street crime,
— large employers laying off workers, etc.
There are big problems around here, and the political leadership needs to address those. Our state’s leaders should not be fixated on scoring legalistic “points,” and spending their terms in office reacting to whatever Trump does. “I’ll fight Trump” is not their job description — improving the prospects for many residents and businesses of this state is.
They both won by landslides. I take from this that people are not only satisfied, but enthusiastic, about their potential for leadership. Maybe if you were the child, born in the USA and thereby an American citizen, of an immigrant couple facing deportation, you might characterize being “fixated on scoring legalistic ‘points’ ” as a matter of survival. Maybe you would appreciate a little more the efforts of our newly elected governor and AG. But I guess I “lack perspective.”
Things have changed since ’94, when red waves across the country effected Washington. 30 years ago, Tom Foley, then Speaker Of The House along with all but two of the Washington House members went down in defeat. In 1980, Warren Magnusson was defeated in the Reagan landslide.
Today, those waves stop at our Eastern border.