In race for attorney general, candidates clash on gun control, vision for office

SPOKANE — Gun control and the Jan. 6, 2021, storm on the U.S. Capitol spurred arguments Wednesday between two men vying to become Washington’s next top lawyer.

Pasco Mayor Pete Serrano and former U.S. Attorney for Western Washington Nick Brown are facing off in the race for the post that supervises 800 state-employed attorneys and shapes the state’s legal policy.

Serrano, a Republican, and Brown, a Democrat, shared a stage Wednesday at the Historic Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane for a debate put on by the Association of Washington Business, a lobbying organization that represents small businesses and large corporations based in the state.

Before they launched their campaigns, Brown and Serrano battled in courtrooms over challenges to the constitutionality of current state laws in the books that prohibit the sale of high-capacity magazines and assault-style guns.

Along with serving as the mayor of Pasco, Serrano helped found the Silent Majority Foundation, a conservative nonprofit behind unsuccessful lawsuits aimed to overturn those gun safety laws in the state.

The debate moderator pointed to the Pasco mayor’s attempts to overturn gun safety laws and asked Serrano what role the attorney general’s office should play in gun control. Serrano said he does not believe the attorney general should play any role.

The attorney general’s office’s role is to “advise the Legislature” based on its reading of the U.S. and state constitutions, Serrano added.

“These are unconstitutional laws,” Serrano said. “So the (attorney general’s) office is there to advise that.”

In response, Brown said firearm violence is one of the most pressing problems in the state.

“The idea that we wouldn’t play in that area is shocking to me,” Brown said. “That we wouldn’t do everything we could as an attorney general to help lead an increased public safety around firearm violence I think is disqualifying.”

At one point in the debate, the moderator allowed each candidate to ask their opponent a question.

Brown asked Serrano about a comment he reportedly made about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol over false claims that the election was stolen.

“Despite what we saw with our own eyes, Pete, you’ve referred to those people as ‘political prisoners,’ ” Brown said. “How can we trust you to uphold the rule of law if you’re not going to uphold the rule of law when we see it being violated?”

In Serrano’s response, he said it was clear the arrests of people charged with insurrection were a “political process,” saying those people were held in cells without counsel.

“The issue with those individuals is that they were held in cells without council,” Serrano said. “That is a fundamental right that the government should be protecting, arguably that it’s mandated to protect. Yet the government absolutely failed those individuals. So yeah, when I said they were political prisoners, that’s what I meant.”

Brown responded that he didn’t understand how assaulting a law enforcement officer or damaging federal government property is a political charge.

Serrano argued Brown has not said anything in response to pro-Gaza demonstrations on the University of Washington campus earlier this year.

When Serrano was given a chance to ask Brown a question, he pointed to a previous interview in which Brown reportedly said he would use the least amount of sentencing necessary in the state’s criminal justice system. Serrano argued that the current attorney general’s office has failed the people in stopping crime.

“You’ve mentioned our fentanyl crisis, our high crime that’s rising, and whether or not you like it, Bob Ferguson has done very little,” Serrano said. “How can you move away from that position?”

Brown said the question demonstrated a “total lack of experience” surrounding criminal justice and public safety issues.

He went on to add that what he meant in his comment about low sentencing times was that the attorney general’s office should advocate for the least lengthy sentences needed to keep people safe.

“If anybody thinks we should advocate for more than is necessary, then I just have a fundamental disagreement with you,” Brown said.

Brown, 47, stepped down from his post as U.S. Attorney for Western Washington last summer to launch his campaign for attorney general. A lifelong Washington resident and former appointed legal counsel to Gov. Jay Inslee, Brown has never held an elected office.

Serrano, 43, is serving his second term on the Pasco City Council and also serves as the city’s mayor. Serrano and his family moved to Pasco in 2015, and he previously worked as an environmental lawyer for the U.S. Department of Energy at Hanford.

General election ballots will be mailed in mid-October for the Nov. 5 election.