Paul Queary

Voters rejected all three initiatives on Tuesday, affirming Governor Inslee's legacy and setting the table for a more progressive agenda in Olympia in the future, even as the nation re-embraced Donald Trump as president. 

Dave Reichert’s tactic can be viewed as a 2024 version of Republican Dino Rossi’s attempt to finesse this issue when he ran for governor 20 years ago.

The closed GOP wallets in this race speak volumes about the party’s diminished brand and slim chances in 2024. 

Notably absent from the list of big checks is anything for Reichert, either from national Republicans or the state GOP, which gave him the paltry sum of about $18,000 last month. The deep pockets on the right apparently view Reichert as a bad bet. 

Moderates did poorly in the primaries, where Republican candidates lost to more conservative challengers. Business interests now fear a veto-proof Democratic Legislature.

Should voters give Initiative 2117 the green light in November, the financial falloff for state coffers would also put public transit investment back about five years.

Eight years removed from his last campaign for Congress, Reichert looked slow and rusty on the debate stage.

BP America cut the biggest check of August, sending another $1 million to Green Jobs PAC, which is opposing Initiative 2117 to repeal the Climate Commitment Act, which established a cap-and-trade system for major emitters of carbon pollution.

This change, formally called a “public investment impact disclosure” was mandated by the Legislature in 2022 to make it more difficult to use the initiative process to repeal laws approved by lawmakers.

Protect Progress, a political action committee backed by cryptocurrency billionaires—some of whom also back Donald Trump—plowed $1.4 million into an independent campaign in support of Democrat Emily Randall.