Washington Republicans are demonstrating that they've learned nothing from the failure of their 2024 revenue-slashing

initiatives

With the results of the 2024 presidential election now certified, elected leaders and activists across Washington are turning their attention to the upcoming legislative session, which begins January 13th. As they have since late 2017, Democrats will have trifecta control over state government, with the governorship and majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. But they’ll also have something new: extremely powerful evidence of voter support for levying progressive revenue and dedicating that revenue to meet the state’s essential needs, from education to clean energy to long-term care.

That evidence comes courtesy of the Washington State Republican Party, and more specifically, State Party Chair Jim Walsh and his multimillionaire funder Brian Heywood (jablome?), who sunk millions into a slate of initiatives designed to defund Governor Jay Inslee’s signature legislative accomplishments, namely the Education Legacy Trust, the Climate Commitment Act, and the WA Cares Fund. Each of those initiatives was a flop. All failed by big enough margins that they were “landslide” victories; the margin of defeat for each not coincidentally corresponded to their weakness in our preelection polling.

Republicans were well aware of both our preelection polling and other credible preelection polling showing that their measures were on a failing trajectory. At least publicly, they shrugged off that information and tried to project confidence that all of their measures would pass. But they couldn’t will or manipulate a victory into being.

It was obvious on Election Night that voters were repudiating their schemes to defund the people’s treasury. We would have lost billions and billions of dollars had their measures passed. Bluffing and bombast almost instantly gave way to sullenness and resentment, as reporters asked Republicans to comment on their losses.

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2024/12/washington-republicans-are-demonstrating-that-theyve-learned-nothing-from-the-failure-of-their-2024-revenue-slashing-initiatives.html