Between his budget priorities and his inaugural address, incoming Governor Bob Ferguson has put progressives on edge since officially assuming office last month. Democratic legislators were just gearing up to fix the state’s major budget shortfall by raising new progressive revenue, a plan of a piece with Inslee’s parting proposal late last year. Then in rides Ferguson, slashing his sabre at the wealth tax and trumpeting words like “lean,” “efficiencies,” “hard choices,” and “right-size.” 

Ferguson’s plan leads with cuts and refuses to contemplate new revenue until “we have exhausted efforts to improve efficiency.” And his inaugural address? In the words of Paul Query at The Washington Observer: “The most interesting part of it was how Republican it sounded.”

Wait a minute. Is this the same progressive crusader this very publication gushed over in 2017? Who exactly is Bob Ferguson, and why isn’t he down to tax the rich?

Let’s be clear, I am no Ferguson oracle. I have not followed our new governor’s political career closely. I’ve never met the man in person. Heck, I don’t even play chess. But I’d like to think my naïvety is an advantage. When I started asking people with more informed opinions than I about our state’s new leader, I didn’t have a lot of preconceptions. In those conversations, I discovered not one but four Bobs. I present them to you now.

Strategic Bob

Maybe Ferguson is actually fine with taxing the rich, he just has his own clever way of getting there. This is Danny Westneat’s Bob, Bob the chess master. By sacrificing the wealth tax, he’s opening up other moves. Make some noise about “savings and efficiencies” now, and build support among moderates for progressive revenue later: Ferguson comes out looking like the reasonable adult while legislators take any political heat for their more expansive tax dreams. Ultimately, the Legislature will pass a budget that includes substantial new revenue and he will sign it.

There’s some solid evidence for this Bob. After all, even Ferguson’s proposed cuts, which amount to $4.4 billion on top of the two or three billion in Inslee’s budget proposal, don’t come close to fixing the deficit, estimated at $10-12 billion over four years. Ferguson supported the capital gains tax, and Sen. Jamie Pedersen is already hinting that he may want to expand the B&O tax on large corporations.

Even Ferguson’s big ‘no’ on the wealth tax may be overblown. “He does not say outright that he's opposed to the wealth tax. I think that’s something the media is taking and running with,” said Emma Scalzo, Executive Director of the Balance Our Tax Code Coalition. “He’s said he’s skeptical of the wealth tax and has questions. There’s a study already on wealth tax implementation [that addresses many questions]. Just like capital gains, there will be pushback, but I feel like we are fully prepared. We know what Washington state stands for. We don’t hate taxes, we know how taxes create the communities we all want to live in.”

Maybe. But the Strategic Bob theory has its problems, too — notably, that this strategy might not be all that smart.

“If that’s where he wants to go, great, that’s fine, but he’s not setting himself up to pull that off effectively. If he does this pivot, he’s going to look like he’s flip-flopping,” said Robert Cruikshank, a Precinct Committee Officer in the 46th District Democrats (Ferguson’s home district). “Ferguson coming in and immediately picking a fight with his own base doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It feels like a slap in the face to the people who care about public schools and progressive revenue,” said Julianna Dauble, president of the Renton Education Association. “It’s been surprising to me how many people in our local, people who I didn’t think had any inclination to pay attention to state budgets, have reached out to me.”

Voters have made clear that they support more funding for public schools, with at least some of this coming from new taxes. Why not start there, instead?

“Maintaining a united base with the mainstream of the Democratic party with a message of ‘we need a mix of cuts and new revenue’ — that’s worked well for Inslee,” says Cruikshank. “Democratic majorities have grown throughout his time in office.”

Instead, Ferguson came out of the gates angering or bewildering many of his supporters. And, in our hyperpartisan times, it’s unlikely that Republicans are going to warm up to Ferguson just because he parrots some of their talking points. This raises what for progressives is a more troubling possibility: What if the fiscal conservative schtick isn’t a clever gambit, it’s just Bob?

Conservative Bob

Ferguson wasn’t always The Stranger’s “American Heartthrob.” He first won public office back in 2003 on skepticism of Sound Transit light-rail spending and support for shrinking the King County Council from 13 seats to 9. This plan was proposed by two of the council’s Republican members, cheered by Tim Eyman, and placed on the ballot by the King County Corrections Guild, angry over layoffs and insistent that the county should trim from the top.

Ferguson may have won progressive hearts as Attorney General by doing battle with Trump, but he’s never pretended to repudiate fiscal conservatism. As this publication’s endorsement last year noted, he “refuses to advocate for new taxes on the rich” and “routinely asserts the need for the state to cut waste, not to increase its coffers.” If progressives assumed Ferguson was on board with their agenda, maybe that was a bit of a wishful projection.

But this Bob isn’t entirely a straight shooter. He has a devious, bait-and-switch side, too. While Strategic Bob presents himself as less progressive than he really is, Conservative Bob does the opposite. His budget priorities make a big deal about increasing “the percentage of the budget” that funds K-12 education, calling Inslee’s proposed 41.9% “unacceptable.” But read the fine print and you’ll find no mention of added funding for operations, closing deficits, or keeping schools open. The “boost” appears to be a slight of hand: the percentage for education goes up simply because the overall budget goes down.

“It’s about a bigger pie, not how big our slice is,” said Dauble. “Especially with more billionaires in our region than ever in human history.”

And Ferguson did make promises. Dauble says he claimed to support progressive revenue in the candidate questionnaire he filled out for the Washington Education Association, which endorsed him unanimously. According to Cruikshank, “Ferguson deleted the ‘Plans’ section of his website just a week or two after the election, including his promises to spend more on smaller class sizes and special education.”

Conservative Bob could well end up at loggerheads with an increasingly progressive, activist Legislature — and with his own electorate. 

“Bob Ferguson was elected on the same night that voters rejected tax cuts for millionaires and voted for vital services that lower costs for working families,” said Rian Watt, Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute. “His mandate is that mandate: to protect vital programs and right our broken tax code.”

Ambitious Bob

But what if Ferguson doesn’t care all that much about that mandate or what Washington voters think about his performance over the next four years? What if he has larger ambitions?

In political time, 2028 is right around the corner. How might the governor of one of the most liberal states in the nation position himself for a serious presidential run? He might not want to look like a tax-and-spend Democrat. He might even want to look like someone unafraid to slap down the progressive excesses of his own constituents, channeling the soul of a more centrist national electorate. The rumor mill is churning, and I’ve heard several second-hand reports that Ferguson has threatened to veto progressive taxes. Hard-nosed brinkmanship might not play well in this Washington, but could it set him up for success in the other one? 

Those aren’t the lessons I would draw from the 2024 national election results, but this line of argument is certainly in the air; maybe Ferguson buys into it. Maybe he’s looking out for the future President Bob.

Ambitious, competitive, ruthless? You could build the case. Consider the number one target of Ferguson’s proposed cuts: the Attorney General’s Office he just vacated. In addition to the six percent cuts Ferguson wants most state agencies to prepare for, he’s called for a $35 million or 50% “sweep” of the fund that supports the office’s civil law enforcement divisions, including its Consumer Protection Division. That revenue is generated by case settlements and in turn has powered many of the high-profile victories the office won under Ferguson’s watch — a virtuous circle for Washington consumers.

To say that Ferguson began the cost-cutting “with his own longtime agency” (as his budget priorities announce) sounds like self-sacrifice. But remember, it’s not Ferguson’s office anymore. It’s Nick Brown’s office, and Brown has made clear he believes these cuts would have a “really devastating impact” on the office’s ability to prosecute civil rights and antitrust cases.

If Ferguson wanted to set a belt-tightening example, perhaps he should have trained his zealous eye for efficiency in the Governor’s Office. Knee-capping your successor to score political points with the right? That has a much less noble ring to it.

All the other law enforcement agencies — the Washington Department of Corrections, the Criminal Justice Training Commission, and the Washington State Patrol — were ostentatiously placed out of reach of the budget-shredding machine. Maybe Ferguson’s enthusiasm for catching corporate criminals is somewhat muted now that he’s no longer the one getting the glory.

Earnest Bob

That, however, is not the man described to me by some long-time supporters. Instead, I heard about a Ferguson who cares deeply about inequality and will bring new energy and effective leadership to the governor’s office.

“I think one thing that really had a big impact on him is a year he spent in Arizona, working on an Indian reservation,” said Steve Finley, one of Ferguson’s consultants for his first two races for the King County Council. “I think that really opened Bob’s eyes to how people suffer. I just think his first goal and what he’ll look for as governor is how do we help the poor.”

I also heard about a true public servant who “walked the walk” — literally. In his first campaign for King County Council, Ferguson said he visited the homes of more than 22,000 voters. And, say the Ferguson faithful, he didn’t just hand out campaign literature and deliver his elevator pitch; he listened and learned, inviting people to tell him about their problems and priorities. Although Ferguson truly is a progressive Democrat, in this telling, he also believes his job is to represent the entire community, bridging diverse perspectives by looking for areas of agreement. 

Is Ferguson still listening? If so, perhaps he has a keener sense of how Washingtonians really feel at this moment than the politicos do. And perhaps it’s in this spirit that we should understand his inaugural address’s paean to former Washington Governor Dan Evans, a Republican unbound by the straightjacket of party politics. Improbably, Evans created the nation’s first statewide Department of Ecology and — germane to our current moment — was an unapologetic champion for that third rail of Washington politics, a state income tax.

Maybe what Ferguson is really doing is correcting for some of the ways Democrats have lost the plot in recent years, becoming uncritical defenders of an establishment that appears to the public quite obviously broken. “So let me be clear: I’m not here to defend the government. I’m here to reform it,” he said in his address. If that sentiment feels foreign to many in his party today, maybe that’s the problem.

Some of Ferguson’s priorities should be heartily welcomed by progressives. Free breakfast and lunch for every student attending K-12 public schools. Reviewing all regulations that impact housing permitting and construction, with the aim of streamlining or removing barriers to building more housing. Protecting reproductive freedom. And, just last week, a rapid response team to aid the families of immigrants targeted for deportation by the Trump administration. If some of Ferguson’s turns of phrase are setting off our Republican alarm bells, maybe that’s on us. Maybe we need to get out of our bubbles and listen more, too. Maybe.

Who’s the Real Bob?

Which of these four Bobs did we just elect to the governor’s office? All of us contain multitudes, of course, and our new governor is no exception; more than one Bob may lurk behind those rectangular glasses and disarming smile. As for what any of this means for the state budget, I guess we’ll find out. Progressive tax champions in the Legislature, for their part, are staying on message and not giving up.

“I look forward to continued conversation with the Governor and his team about how we meet community needs while also addressing our upside-down and regressive tax code,” said Senator Noel Frame. “I believe that they agree that the tax code is regressive and we need to do more to improve it. So I’d like to do the work with them to talk through the details of what it means to do that.”