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Save a cameo from Vanna White, the candidate forum hosted by the Kent and Covington Chambers of Commerce felt like a veritable game show.
Hosted at the Green River College’s campus at Kent Station on Ramsay Way, the Oct. 6 event was free for anyone from the public to attend.
Three legislative districts were represented: the 33rd, which includes Burien, Normandy Park, SeaTac, Des Moines and parts of Kent, Tukwila and Renton; the 47th, which includes Covington and parts of Auburn and Kent; and the 5th, which includes Enumclaw, Issaquah, Maple Valley, North Bend, Renton, Sammamish and Snoqualmie.
King County Elections mails ballots this for the Nov. 3 general election.
In the inaugural “Meet the Candidates” section, candidates had 60 seconds to tell voters who they were.
The 33rd
Candidates from all three races in the 33rd district were present. Incumbent State Sen. Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, made an appearance even though she does not have an opponent on the ballot.
State Rep. Edwin Obras, despite being the incumbent SeaTac Democrat running for Position No. 1, introduced himself as the “new kid on the block,” only elected into office last year. His Republican challenger Chris Martinez, of Des Moines, who registered for the forum too late to be included but was allowed an introduction and closing statement, told attendees he’s a full-time automotive technician and Christian running primarily on tax reform and Second Amendment rights.
In the race for Position No. 2, Yuri Marinchik, of SeaTac, introduced himself as an immigrant from Belarus and owner of a small family business, currently working as an HVAC technician. The Republican challenger is running to unseat incumbent Democrat Rep. Mia Su-Ling Gregerson, of SeaTac, who told attendees she is seeking reelection to “go back and do the hard work.”
The 47th
Most candidates for the 47th district were present.
Kristina Soltys, currently a Covington City Council member running as a Republican to unseat incumbent Democrat Sen. Claudia Kauffman, of Kent, told attendees that she is first and foremost a “community member that feels the same pressure all our families, businesses and maybe even you feel in this room.” Kauffman said she was running to “continue the great work we’ve been doing.”
In the race for Position No. 1, Rep. Debra Entenman, the incumbent Democrat, of Kent, said that she is seeking reelection to advocate for the most vulnerable, emphasizing police accountability and access to education. Entenman’s Libertarian challenger Cobi Clark, of Auburn, with a background in real estate development, said he is running to “defend our constitutional rights and people’s rights as a political market.”
Only incumbent Democrat Rep. Chris Stearns, of Auburn, showed up in the race for Position No. 1. Republican challenger Ted Cooke, of Covington, was not present.
The 5th
Only the Republican challengers in the 5th District made a show.
Michelle Bennett, running to unseat Democrat incumbent Rep. Zach Hall for Position No. 1, told attendees she has 36 years of experience in law enforcement, currently serving as Mercer Island’s police chief. She pitched herself as an approachable, no-nonsense outsider that would tell it to voters exactly how it is.
“I will be honest and transparent,” Bennett told attendees.
Patrick Peacock, running to unseat Democrat incumbent Rep. Lisa Callan for Position No. 2, also introduced himself with his background in law enforcement, telling attendees he has served as a warrant officer for the U.S. Army in the intelligence field. He positioned himself as a challenger ready to shake things out of the Democratic status quo.
“Reality check: We’ve had four years of Democratic governors. We’ve had four years of Democratic governors appointing judges. We’ve had 20 years of Democrats in Congress,” Peacock said. “Perhaps it’s time to give some other people a chance.”
After introductions, candidates launched into the topics, selecting questions written on pieces of paper from a fishbowl passed around by the moderator.
Crime
The first topic was crime.
Candidates mostly agreed that efforts to address crime should entail a mix of police and non-police responses, with Republican candidates tending to lean more heavily on the former and Democrats tending to spend more time discussing ideas for the latter.
“It’s community, it’s police, it’s all of us working together,” Entenman said, telling attendees about how she advocated for non-police response to be included in the $100 million public safety bill passed last legislative session, which she said was originally pitched as going only toward police.
“Police and schools can’t do it alone,” Obras similarly expressed, talking about a collaborative approach between community-based and human service organizations and police.
Stearns shared a more police-centric response than some of his Democratic colleagues, telling attendees the first thing he did once elected into office was to lower the standard for police to make arrests from probable cause to reasonable suspicion, making it easier for police to make arrests.
Bennett and Peacock, both from law enforcement backgrounds, talked about bolstering resources for police.
“The cornerstone of any safety is deterrence,” Peacock said, which he defined as “following through with arrests and prosecutions.”
Bennett criticized the lack of police stakeholder input in the formulation of a recently passed law that she said effectively banned the use of non-lethal weapons, which she said has resulted in police officers resorting more commonly to lethal force.
“Lives have been lost by some of the poorly thought-out legislation that has passed in the last several years,” Bennett said.
Clark was in his own camp on crime, advocating for private security companies to play a role in addressing it. Frustrated with a lack of police response to smaller crimes like theft and vandalism on his real estate development sites, Clark said private security officers should be lawfully emboldened to make arrests.
Marinchik also shared a hardline approach to theft. He said the problem of theft has forced many many stores to close around where he lives near South Central Plaza, which he called “a horrible place.” To fix the issue, Marinchik said criminal punishment for theft needs to be ramped up.
“The standards to send people to the jails or punish them are too low,” Marinchik said. “[People] will repeat it tomorrow evening.”
Taxes
All were in agreement that Washingtonians are currently facing an affordability crisis, but candidates shared different approaches to ease the strain on pocketbooks for taxpayers.
Soltys, Bennett and Marinchik advocated for cutting taxes by cutting state spending on clean energy–specifically, the 2021 Climate Commitment Act.
“We have to look at measurable results,” Bennett said, asking attendees whether reducing carbon emissions by a few percentage points is “worth it for working families.” Bennett said it has been hard for her personally to make ends meet with rising taxes and costs, a single mom raising four kids.
“Cancel it immediately,” Marinchick said about the law, saying that it would not produce measurable outcomes worthy of the cost for taxpayers.
Clark advocated for slashing funding for public housing. “We need to stop spending the extra money and let the private sector do what it does best,” Clark said.
Gregerson said lawmakers needed to consider the “return on investment” when balancing the budget, ensuring that any cuts to public services should avoid sending expenditures “upstream,” like from the foster care system to state prisons.
Stearns focused on economic growth, talking about how the millionaire’s tax, already passed by the legislature but vulnerable to being repealed by a ballot measure this fall, would bring in $3.5 billion starting 2029.
Until then, Stearns said “we need to grow what we have,” telling attendees about how he and Kauffman have worked together to advance the $12 billion space economy in the valley.
Drugs
Candidates were divided on the role of treatment and transitional housing in responding to drug addiction and homelessness in their communities.
Stearns talked about his work supporting an opioid treatment center 300 yards from where he lives through the Muckleshoot Tribe’s We Care Program, which he said has had a high success rate and actively lowered crime in his community.
Entenman advocated for transitional housing options like tiny houses and motels to address homelessness and addiction, which she believes are cyclically related problems.
Peacock, on the other hand, suggested that transitional housing could actually facilitate drug use. “By giving [people] a place to stay, am I actually facilitating [the problem]?,” Peacock rhetorically asked attendees.
Clark was likewise concerned about enabling, criticizing drug treatment programs that provide safe needles and other equipment for people in recovery as effectively “subsidizing drugs.”
Clark wasn’t against all treatment though. To ease the pathway to build new treatment centers, he pitched doing away with Certificates of Need, regulatory permits the state requires healthcare providers to have in order to build new facilities. He also said funding for drug treatment should come from taxes collected on alcohol and marijuana sales.
“The people who are using those drugs should be paying to ensure that society doesn’t have to bear the burden of those same drugs,” Clark said.
Bennett shared a hardline approach founded in her experience as a street cop and personal life. “In 36 years out on the street, I’ve come in contact with two people that actually took my help when I offered it,” Bennett said.
Bennett also shared that her sister is homeless and addicted to fentanyl and has lost her job, house and four kids. “I have a lot of empathy for it,” Bennett said “But there has to be consequences. Can’t just give, give, give.”
Marinchik said people suffering from addiction should be offered treatment, but “after that, we need to put the rest in jail.”
