Chris Cargill: They work for the people, but seldom times show it in their actions

Ask any working mom, retiree or college student what’s wrong with today’s politics and there’s a good chance you’ll get the same answer: “My elected representative doesn’t listen to me or care about my opinion” or “My elected official routinely ignores the public will.”

We’ve seen it here in Spokane, where city leaders have been reluctant to act on a requirement that collective bargaining talks between the city and union leaders, involving millions in public spending, be open and transparent. The voter-approved law wasn’t a suggestion – Spokane voters passed it with nearly 80% support. Yet city officials have been uneasy about following through, at one time saying they didn’t want to disrupt the “city-worker relationship.”

We saw it in recent court paperwork filed by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson. As the Legislature is being sued for adopting an unpopular and unconstitutional income tax, the attorney general disparaged the citizens who filed it – saying they must have “clairvoyance” and if they do “that’s an even bigger problem.”

Official arrogance was apparent in 2019, when voters – again – passed an initiative limiting car tab fees in Washington. What was Olympia’s response? To threaten projects like Spokane’s North-South Freeway.

Last week – in an attempt to urge vaccinations – Washington Gov. Jay Inslee attacked male Trump voters in our state, calling them “bioreactor facilities” who were a danger to children.

“If that’s judgmental, so be it,” he said.

How did we get to this point where elected officials so routinely disparage and ignore the people they are supposed to represent?

It appears many citizens have had it with the recriminations. This year, nearly 3,000 people filed to run for local offices in Washington state, including school boards, county commissions, city councils and more.

One pass through the local voter’s guide uncovers a consistent theme: most of these candidates have never run for office before. They see what was happening in the state and their local communities and can no longer stay inactive.

Hazel McGillivray, a candidate for mayor in Deer Park, wrote she had no experience.

“Absolutely none. I may be overqualified,” she said. “I had no aspiration beyond the management of my business, home, and raising my children.”

Wayne Fenton, a city council candidate in Spokane Valley, expressed the same feelings.

“Until recent events of the last year, I was content,” he wrote. “It is impossible for me to sit back, say and do nothing about the tyranny of Olympia and the overreaching fist of Washington, D.C., which is affecting our city, lives and livelihoods.”

And so it is with candidate after candidate, doing the noble thing and running for local office this year. As President John Adams once said, “Public business … must always be done by somebody – it will be done by somebody or other – If wise men decline it others will not: if honest men refuse it, others will not.”

The hundreds of new candidates running for public office this year might not have all the answers, and that’s OK. Independent policy organizations like Washington Policy Center can help fill in the gap. You, as a citizen, can give them feedback, and chances are, because they aren’t a lifelong politician or bureaucrat, they will listen.

The average citizen doesn’t expect all the answers, or the arrogance that too often we have seen. Because, as the Washington state Constitution proclaims, “all political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Chris Cargill is the Eastern Washington director for Washington Policy Center, an independent research organization with offices in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Seattle and Olympia. Online at washingtonpolicy.org.