Grand bargain on climate, transportation looks dicey
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Grand bargain on climate, transportation looks dicey
Senate refuses House changes to capital gains tax; Culp for Congress looks like a loser, except maybe for the $$
Earth Day came and went without action on either of the remaining pieces of Gov. Jay Inslee’s climate agenda. Meanwhile, the chances of a major new transportation spending package — something that had become increasingly entwined in the climate bills — continued to dwindle.
Expect House action today on Senate Bill 5126, also knowns as the Climate Commitment Act or the cap-and-trade bill. The much-amended measure will require significant time to pass because Republicans who oppose it will likely offer many amendments to slow the process. The Legislature is due to adjourn on Sunday.
The other major climate bill, the low-carbon fuel standard contained in House Bill 1091, has passed both the House and Senate, but the House has refused to accept the Senate’s changes, a conflict we foreshadowed last week. House sponsors and many of the bill’s backers in the environmental community and the biofuels business don’t like provisions that could suspend the standard if it drove the price of fuel too high or didn’t deliver significant production of biofuels and biofuel crops within Washington.
A major sticking point on both is the diminishing chance of any major new transportation spending package, which would layer a gas-tax increase on top of any higher fuel costs caused by the climate bills. Neither chamber has passed such a package.
The Senate version of the fuel standard is explicitly tied to the passage of a transportation package, and five Democratic Senators have threatened to withdraw their support if that link is broken. Meanwhile, the money raised by the cap-and-trade bill is baked into both the House and Senate versions of the transportation package.
In theory, both bills could pass this year with linkages to a transportation package — but without the package itself — because they don’t take effect right away. Lawmakers could then pass a transportation package anytime before January 2023. But that would involve key lawmakers essentially accepting IOUs that their bridges, highways, and other projects would be included.
Senate refuses House changes to capital gains tax
After the House amended Senate Bill 5096 to add language that shields it from a citizens’ referendum, the Senate on Thursday refused to accept the amendments and asked to send the measure to a conference committee.
As we reported in yesterday’s edition, that language could more quickly bring the capital gains tax before the Washington Supreme Court, a longtime goal of progressives who hope the court will overturn the 1932 ruling that effectively bans an income tax.
With some $500 million a year in new tax revenue at stake, look for a compromise before Sunday’s adjournment.
About that Culp for Congress campaign
Loren Culp, who took a historic beating in the governor’s race last year, is expected to announce a run against Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse in central Washington’s 4th District today. Like the governor’s race, this looks less like a serious challenge than a way for Culp and his consultant to strip-mine yet more money out of his remaining followers.
Jim Brunner of The Seattle Times broke the news of this bid for Congress earlier this week, and on the surface, it’s got viability. Newhouse is among the 10 Republican members of the House who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting his followers to storm the U.S. Capitol. That vote prompted howls of outrage and vows of revenge from Trump loyalists. Newhouse has already drawn some would-be challengers from the right over this issue.
Culp, meanwhile, just crushed it in the 4th last year, getting only 56 percent of the vote in Yakima County and north of 60 percent everywhere else in the district.
Could Culp follow in the bootprints of Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting, controversy-courting bar owner who ousted a Republican incumbent in that state’s sprawling 3rd District last year?
The short answer is probably not. The long answer is that he might make it last long enough to make some more bank off the thousands of small conservative donors who fueled his $3.3 bid against Gov. Jay Inslee last year.
Regular Observer readers have followed our coverage of Culp’s 2020 gubernatorial campaign as a long con for months now. To review, campaign consultant Christopher Gergen pocketed more than 10 percent of the money before decamping to Las Vegas while the ballots were still being counted. Culp himself took some $50K out of the campaign in lost wages and reimbursements.
After they got beat by more than 500,000 votes, Culp and Gergen refused to concede for months, spinning a cynical fairy tale of election fraud to bring in even more money from their donors. They can now be found doing DIY conservative talk TV on Facebook and other social media platforms for a dwindling audience.
Will tonight’s “Ignite the Right Freedom Rally” in Kennewick rekindle the Culp flame? Too early to tell, but we can look ahead to a possible matchup with Newhouse. Some important points:
Newhouse seems to be doing fine
The incumbent raised just under $290,000 in the first quarter of this year, according to his filings with the Federal Election Commission. For the 2020 cycle, he raised about $1.1 million, although he had no significant opposition. Meanwhile, major donors to federal officials are shying away from candidates associated with Trump and attempts to overturn the election. So Newhouse figures to have access to all the campaign cash he’ll need.
Culp faces the task of persuading the overwhelming majority of his supporters who live in Washington’s nine other congressional districts to care about beating Newhouse in the 4th. Given that much of that support was likely motivated by animus toward Inslee, Culp may find himself drinking from a shallow well.
Culp is a carpetbagger in the 4th
Culp rose to prominence as the police chief of tiny Republic in Ferry County, which is actually in the 5th Congressional District, represented by GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, who didn’t vote to impeach.
Newhouse, meanwhile, is a native son of the 4th. In addition to his four terms in Congress, he served four terms in the state House, representing the 15th District in eastern Yakima County. His father, Irv Newhouse, represented the same district in the House and Senate for 34 years. One of the Senate office buildings is named for the elder Newhouse.
But Culp looks stronger than Newhouse’s other would-be challengers
So far, Newhouse’s other challengers are state Rep. Brad Klippert, R-Kennewick, and Prosser businessman and former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler. Ideologically, both are similar to Culp, but neither has anything like his name recognition.
The Top 2 Primary
Boebert’s upset win in Colorado came after a partisan primary, where she was able to take out a less conservative incumbent before handily dispatching a sacrificial Democrat in the fall. We don’t do it that way in Washington. If Culp comes after Newhouse from the right, it’s most likely they will both advance to the general election in the heavily Republican district. Newhouse likely gets most of the Democratic vote in November.
Newhouse has been here before
In 2014, Newhouse faced Clint Didier, who was Trumpian before it was a thing, to fill the seat being vacated by Doc Hastings, who had taken it off the last Democrat to hold it, a guy named Jay Inslee, way back in 1994. Newhouse narrowly beat Didier, a former NFL lineman, in 2014, then handily defeated him in a rematch two years later.
So where does that leave us?
Culp has been working his supporters via his theoretically non-political site, chiefculp.com, so we don’t really know how well he’s doing with them right now. We do know the flow of cash to his zombie gubernatorial campaign has all but dried up, and that the New Patriot Political Action Committee, the new organization Gergen set up to try and bottle Culp’s special sauce, hasn’t reported raising any money. So we’ll have to wait and see whether folks reach for their wallets to support Culp for Congress over an actual Republican officeholder.
One wild card is Trump himself. With just 10 GOP votes to impeach, he might choose to make an example of some or all of them by endorsing challengers or even appearing with them. Whether that would sway the voters of the 4th is an open question, but it would almost certainly put some money in Culp’s pocket.
Recommended reading: Details on Tulalip sports betting deal
Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times has an interesting piece on the Tulalip Tribes’ new revision of its gambling compact with the state, which will include sports betting for the first time. The tentative deal apparently calls for geofenced mobile betting on tribal land, not just on the floors of the two tribal casinos.
This is important because the tribes own kind of a lot of land, including a big commercial development along Interstate 5 that includes two casinos, restaurants, a Walmart, a Home Depot, a Cabela’s sporting goods store, and a big outlet mall.
The ability to get a bet down on the Seahawks on our phone while shopping might prove highly attractive for potential customers to some of those businesses.The next step is for the tribes to submit a proposed map of exactly where mobile betting would be allowed.
In his prior life as a strategic communications consultant, your correspondent counted the Tulalip Tribes among his clients.