While national Democrats lost the White House and US Senate in November, what happened in Pennsylvania should not dictate what Washington legislators do now. Washingtonians voted to expand Democrats’ power up and down the ballot, making it clear we want more — not less — of what Democrats have been doing the last 8 years. Voters gave Washington State Democrats a mandate this election. Now Democratic legislators must act on it by passing bold, progressive policies during this year’s legislative session.
In a year of national Republican wins, Washington Democrats had their strongest election in decades. Democrats swept nearly every critical contest and made inroads in places long considered safe for Republicans.
Washington had the smallest shift to Trump in the country in the 2024 election. Washingtonians also re-elected Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell and Reps Kim Schrier and Marie Glusenkamp Perez in conservative US House districts, each by a bigger margin than their last election.
Democrats expanded their large majorities in the State Legislature, inching closer toward a supermajority. Voters ousted long-time incumbent Republicans in legislative districts not just in cities like Seattle, but in the Olympic Peninsula to Southwest Washington.
Voters rejected a $50M+ campaign from right-wing megadonors to kill key Democratic legislative victories that keep our air and water clean (I-2117), protect healthcare access (I-2124), and tax the rich to fund childcare and education (I-2109).
Washingtonians also fired Republicans in county positions. Clark County voters erased Republicans’ 4-1 Clark Council majority to a 3-2 blue majority. Pierce County elected a Democrat to replace the incumbent Republican.
These wins give progressives the best opportunity in decades to pass bold progressive policies these next four years and defend against Donald Trump’s extremist Project 2025 agenda, parts of which he has already moved to enact. We have the opportunity to set the national standard for future progressive legislation when Democrats take back Congress.
This is not the moment for apathy, but to leverage Washington’s biggest blue majorities in decades to enact the structural, progressive change voters elected this year.
We’ve mobilized before in similar despairing times. When Roe v. Wade was overturned in the Dobbs decision in 2022, activists, providers, and patients didn’t sit idly by. Instead, we organized and passed trailblazing policies the very next legislative session, like the Shield Law and My Health My Data, to shield Americans seeking abortions in Washington from arrest and to protect Washingtonians’ personal reproductive health data.
We know that just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s accessible, even in blue Washington State. As we enter a second Trump administration already curbing access to reproductive healthcare, Washington legislators must forcefully pursue every avenue to protect Washingtonians from federal efforts to ban abortion.
In addition to protecting abortion rights, we must pass economic plans to uplift working class people. Donald Trump will pass billionaire tax cuts for himself and his Wall Street and Silicon Valley friends while everyone else ends up with less. Washington Democrats must counteract this and build on this year’s overwhelming voter support for a Capital Gains Tax (47/49 LDs opposed I-2109 to repeal it) and continue to ensure the Top 1% pays their fair share to fund affordable housing, education, healthcare, childcare, and things everyday Washingtonians cannot afford.
If these past ten years of Trump’s direct influence in our government have taught us anything, it is the importance of our state’s example to the rest of the nation. Washington has been, and continues to be a progressive stronghold, moving the needle on abortion rights, mitigating climate change, investing in workers, and more. Other states look to us to learn our strategies and see what is possible. Now more than ever, it is imperative that lawmakers continue to champion these issues and boldly protect the rights Washingtonians have fought so hard for.
To our Washington legislators, now is not a time to play it safe or settle for the status quo. It is your job to push for progress, not solely on behalf of Washingtonians, but for the nation. We have the opportunity to defend democracy, protect progress, and set a precedent on what it means to have a majority in both chambers and the governor’s office. Washington voters elected you all for a reason – it is time to make good on the promises you made on the campaign trail and show up for the values of our state.
Andrew Hong is a research data analyst at the Washington Community Alliance’s Data Hub and Masters engineering student at Stanford University. He’s from South Seattle where he’s been a community and political organizer.
Sarah Dixit is based in Spokane, WA, and is the Organizing Director at Pro-Choice Washington, a reproductive freedom advocacy organization.
The right to reproductive care is already enshrined in WA state law
https://doh.wa.gov/you-and-your-family/sexual-and-reproductive-health/abortion/know-your-rights
So what exactly more can the legislature do? This editorial basically boils down to a call to masssively raise taxes even though the authors can’t be bothered to provide a purpose other than paying a “fair share”. If progressives do decide to go down that road they might not like where it leads.
I would like to see a move away from regressive taxes – this would demonstrate progressive taxes aren’t simply a ploy for more revenue in and of itself. Propose a sales taxes decrease to go hand in hand with whatever progressive tax has the best chance of passing. Without a plan to decrease regressive taxes, I can’t buy the sincerity of folks who complain (rightly) of our upside down taxation.
Even the Democrats have gotten the message. The public is sick and damn tired of activist politics and they want their state and local governments to work closely with the Trump administration. The Resist movement has gone and died. It’s time to Make Washington Great Again.
@1 “What exactly more can the legislature do?” OMG, where do I start.
@1, 2 I agree that any major tax reform should include a meaningful sales tax reduction. Not including it in the 2010 initiative was a big mistake. But one way or another we are going to have to seriously beef up revenue at the state and local level if we want to keep providing basic health care, housing assistance and education to those whom the federal government under Trump is almost surely going to take it away from. And I think most of us in this state, no matter how they voted in the presidential race, want to do that (or at least can be made to understand why it’s in their own best interest that we do).
“Washington had
the smallest shift to Trump
in the country in the 2024 election.”
https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2024/11/27/washington-presidential-election-republican-shift
but HOW can That even BE?
all our clamoring for
smokin’ Joe and Kamala
to END THE WAR ON GAZANS*
was what ELECTED Thedonolde
in the First Place! — according to
tS’s Far ‘right’ Commentariat and End-
lessly pummelled uopn this commentariat
since October 7th of two
thousand fucking twenty three.
so:
Wot
gives?
*and to knock it Off with
all the corporate
capitulations
‘The public
is sick and damn
tired of activist politics’
–@welcometournewfascism,fuckers
that’s too bad
cuz they’re about to
get more Activism than
they’d ever dreamed Possible
look for
Thedonolde
to Expel the entire
Left Coast* from Cabo San
Lucas to the North Fucking Pole
*the
Cascades (et al)
being our Eastern Border
What is Sarah Dixit worried about? No man would ever even think about impregnating her, no matter how hard up he is for cooch.
“These wins give progressives the best opportunity in decades to pass bold progressive policies these next four years…” The authors appear to believe they were all progressive wins supportive of progressive policies, but even a cursory look at the candidates show that these were mainstream democrats not “progressives”.
Buddhamat @ #2 – I had exactly this conversation with the person charged by WA DEMS with making it happen when I was a PCO in the 37th … 20 years ago. I was told that we need both sales and income taxes, and that suggesting “either or” was a path to failure.
20 years on and the same politically losing arguments continue to be made.
@6 — When you fell out of the basket of deplorables, did you get an owie? Is that why you’re misogyny is spiking?
Also, I think I just set a new speed record scrolling past kristofarian’s comments. Whoosh!
@8 — *your (ugh)