A Seattleite’s guide to the 2024 Washington state ballot

Summary

Initiative 2066 would preserve access to natural gas at a time when the state is working to ditch fossil fuels. Supporters of this measure say it would prevent the state from banning the use of natural gas, while opponents say no such ban exists and concerns of one are overblown. I-2066 aims to modify key pieces of ESHB 1589, a law passed earlier this year that was designed to help the state’s largest utility company, Puget Sound Energy, plan a transition to 100% clean energy by 2045.

I-2066 would prohibit penalties for the use of natural gas in new construction, limit the ability of building codes to discourage the use of natural gas, and prohibit utility officials from making planning decisions that would lead to higher costs for natural gas. It would mandate that natural gas remain an energy option for utility consumers, limiting the utility’s ability to promote electrification exclusively.

I-2066 would also reduce the number of assessments Puget Sound Energy is required to undertake to potentially replace its aging natural gas infrastructure with electric alternatives, and would strike dedicated funding for “electrification readiness.”

Yes Campaign

Initiative supporters say a “yes” vote would protect energy choice by requiring utilities to provide natural gas into the future.

Backers of this initiative include the Building Industry Association of Washington, which is concerned with how a transition to clean energy might affect new construction. They point to cities and agencies across the country that have attempted to phase out natural gas use in favor of cleaner alternatives in new builds. Up to this point, outright bans have run into legal hurdles blocking such measures. Instead, cities like Seattle and agencies like the Washington State Building Code Council have instituted stringent codes with high energy-efficiency standards. Initiative proponents say those standards make it cost-prohibitive to use natural gas in new construction and amount to a de-facto ban.

Advocates for this initiative also say it would level the playing field with electrification for those who want the choice to use natural gas. These advocates express concerns with the cost to consumers of electrifying their homes, the potential increases in utility rates driven by the need to expand electrical infrastructure, and the ability of the state’s electrical grid to accommodate a transition to all-electric energy.

Listen to our full interview with Greg Lane, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association of Washington.

No outright ban on natural gas use currently exists in Washington state, as opponents of the initiative point out.

They also note that Puget Sound Energy is obligated to serve natural gas to customers who request it. Puget Sound Energy – which played a large role in crafting the legislation that this initiative targets – has emphasized that ESHB 1589 is just a “planning” measure that requires the utility to look at cost-effective alternatives to natural gas use, as well as demonstrate how the utility plans to reduce its overall use so it can stay in line with the state’s long-term climate goals. They have further emphasized that that law does not include rate hikes or force any consumers to electrify.

Opponents say that the initiative would shackle the utility to natural gas, a climate-harming form of energy that they say will be outmoded by cheaper electric infrastructure in the future. They are concerned that I-2066 will change recent building codes designed to boost efficiency and remove assessments and funding that will keep utility rates – regardless of preference – low for consumers.

Listen to our full interview with Leah Missik, acting Washington Director of the nonprofit “Climate Solutions.”

Summary

Voting “yes” on Initiative 2109 is a vote in favor of repealing the state’s capital gains tax. Passed by the Legislature back in 2021, the measure took effect two years ago. It applies a 7% tax on profits exceeding $262,000 from the sale of certain assets — like stocks, bonds, and business interests. Real estate, retirement accounts, and certain small businesses are exempt. Revenue from the tax goes toward education: The first $500 million raised is earmarked for schools, early learning, and child care programs. The rest goes toward school construction and renovation. The measure applies only to a small group of Washingtonians – just 4,000 people (0.001% of the state’s taxpayers) in 2022. That year, the tax produced $786 million in revenue. Last year, the amount decreased to $433 million.

Yes Campaign

Proponents of I-2109 (in favor of repealing the tax) argue that capital gains are an unstable source of revenue for education. They say that deregulation of home childcare centers, and diversion of funds from the state’s surplus budget could instead support childcare and early education needs. Proponents also argue that the tax is another form of an income tax, which is illegal in Washington State, and that taxing sales of stocks will drive tech employees and companies out of the state. Proponents of the repeal measures contend that, if wealthy tech employees leave the state, the Legislature would expand who the tax applies to, in order to keep funding stable.

Listen to our full interview with advocate for I-2109 and former Google engineerVijay Boyapati.

No Campaign

Opponents of I-2109 (in favor of keeping the capital gains tax) argue that it’s providing needed funds for Washington’s education and childcare system. They also argue that this is common practice: 42 other states also have a capital gains tax. Opponents say that 99.8% of Washingtonians will not have to pay, and creating this measure made Washington’s tax system less regressive. If the tax were repealed, opponents say the state would still need funding for education, and would have to create other taxes in order to raise the money.

Listen to our full interview with Treasure Mackley – executive director of Invest in WA Now, a Seattle-based organization advocating for progressive revenue measures in Washington State – including the Capital Gains tax.

Summary

Initiative 2117 would eliminate Washington’s cap-and-trade system and ban the state from putting in place a similar market-based greenhouse gas-reduction mechanism for two years.

This trading system, also referred to as “cap and invest,” is an auction for major polluters in the state to bid on the right to spew carbon into the atmosphere. There are a limited number of these carbon allowances available to purchase through the auctions, which take place several times a year. Over time the state plans to reduce the number of allowances it sells at the auctions, in other words, lowering the “cap” on carbon pumped into the atmosphere. The money generated from the auctions goes to green transportation projects and climate resiliency work. The cap and invest system was created by the state’s Climate Commitment Act, which passed in 2021. The auctions began last year.

Yes Campaign

Proponents of I-2117 say the carbon auctions increased the price of energy – particularly gasoline – for Washington residents. Though the precise increase in prices at the pump as a result of this program is a matter of debate, estimates range from 20 to 50 cents per gallon. Proponents also say that the state’s investments of money generated from the auctions are not working toward meaningful progress in the state’s climate goals, and they’ve raised concerns that there isn’t enough data to support whether the auctions are lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Listen to our full interview with Todd Myers, Vice President of Research at the Washington Policy Center.

No Campaign

Opponents of I-2117 say this initiative would prevent the state from hitting its ambitious emission-reduction goals. They also note that the state has already allocated money from carbon auctions for future projects. For example, the “Move Ahead Washington” bill allocated more than $5 billion from carbon auctions to transportation projects. Legislators would need to find additional revenue, like a tax, or take money from other projects to cover the loss of funds.

Listen to our full interview Representative Joe Fitzgibbon, State House Majority Leader, who helped create the Climate Commitment Act.

Summary

Initiative 2124 would let employees and self-employed individuals opt out of participation in WA Cares, the state’s long-term services insurance program. Designed to help supplement certain health care costs near the end of a person’s life, it’s the first program of its kind in the nation. A payroll tax funds WA Cares – workers pay 58 cents into the program for every 100 dollars earned. (For those making $50,000 dollars a year, that’s about $24 a month.) The tax went into effect last year.

Yes Campaign

Supporters of I-2124 say the program’s one-time benefit of $36,500 is typically not enough for long-term care needs. They also point out that not everyone would qualify for the benefit.

Listen to our full interview with Elizabeth New – Policy Analyst and the Director of the Centers for Worker Rights and Health Care at the Washington Policy Center.

No Campaign

Opponents of I-2124 argue that making the payroll tax optional would tank the fledgling long-term care program. They say that the money from the program can help pay for caregiver assistance, transportation, meals, and should last from 12 to 18 months.

Listen to our full interview with Cathy MacCaul, a member of Washington State’s Long-Term Services & Supports Trust Commission that helps oversee WA Cares. She’s also the policy & advocacy director for AARP Washington.

Summary of the Office

The governor is the head of the state’s executive branch. The governor appoints hundreds of positions, including the heads of state agencies, and signs or vetoes bills from the Legislature.

Bob Ferguson

Bob Ferguson is the current attorney general in Washington and previously served as a King County councilmember.

Both Ferguson and his opponent, Dave Reichert, believe the state needs to hire more police officers, but their approaches differ. Ferguson plans to include in the state budget $100 million in grant money for local municipalities to offer hiring bonuses for officers. Ferguson has been attacked by his opponent about his 2021 position to decriminalize drugs, a position Ferguson has since walked back. To address homelessness, Ferguson has vowed to pull housing out of the Department of Commerce and make it a cabinet level position. He wants to build 200,000 housing units in his first year in office and believes there is bipartisan support for building housing.

Listen to our interview from July 24.

Dave Reichert

Dave Reichert is a former King County sheriff and congressman representing Washington’s 8th District from 2005-2019.

Both Reichert and his opponent, Bob Ferguson, contend that the state needs to hire more police officers, but their approach differs. Reichert believes that the state needs to be more welcoming to cops officers, including protecting qualified immunity for officers. Regarding homelessness, Reichert wants to appoint the state’s first director on homelessness, increase arrests for the “2-3% of homeless committing serious felonies,” and re-direct state homelessness spending into treatment-based housing. Though Reichert voted to ban most abortion procedures after 20 weeks in Congress, he has stated on the campaign trail that he would not change abortion laws in Washington.

Listen to our interview from July 24.

Summary of the Office

The commissioner of public lands heads the state Department of Natural Resources, which oversees more than $450 million in revenue and more than 5.5 million acres of public land – from forests, to plains, to water. The agency is in charge of wildfire preparedness, forest management, and the protection of critical habitat throughout the state. The commissioner helps secure funding and sets policy priorities for the agency.

One important point in the campaign this season is the agency’s role in approving timber sales on public trust land. Revenue from those sales helps fund infrastructure and school construction in some of Washington’s most rural counties.

Jaime Herrara Beutler

Republican Jaime Herrera-Beutler represented southwest Washington in Congress from 2011 to 2023. She has campaigned on supporting rural school districts and counties that rely on revenue from timber harvested from the state’s public trust forests. She said she would maintain current timber harvest levels. She opposes Upthegrove’s plan to set aside 77,000 acres of public trust forest to preserve more mature forest land, arguing that the state’s long-term conservation plans already account for the protection of critically complex forest stands. Herrerra-Beutler has also campaigned on better managing state forests to prevent wildfires, stating she supports ongoing funding pushes and recent programs like prescribed burning to mitigate the size and severity of wildfires.

In a Soundside debate, she expressed interest in further evaluating the sustainability of the state’s nascent carbon sequestration program.

Dave Upthegrove

Democrat Dave Upthegrove is chair of the King County Council. He’s campaigning to conserve more mature, structurally complex forest stands last logged before WWII, and promises to set aside 77,000 acres of those forests on day one if elected. In response to concerns that setting aside those acres will hurt local counties and schools that depend on timber harvesting revenue, he plans to identify and harvest forest stands elsewhere in the state. He also says he’d grow the public trust acreage by potentially purchasing private timber lands.

In a Soundside debate, he expressed interest in further evaluating the sustainability of the state’s carbon sequestration program, as well as sustaining the wildfire management and prevention strategies enacted under the current commissioner, Hilary Franz.

Listen to the debate we hosted between the two candidates.

Summary of the Office

The Washington Supreme Court is the highest court in the state. Justices are elected to staggered six-year terms and must retire at age 75. There are nine positions on the court, all of them non-partisan. The duty of the justices is to interpret state laws.

Sal Mungia

Sal Mungia is an attorney for Gordon Thomas Honeywell, a law firm in western Washington. He’s specialized in medical malpractice, serious injury, and personal injury law. Though Mungia has no experience as a judge or elected official, he emphasizes his experience doing civil, trial, and appellate work at every level of state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

When it comes to drug possession policy in the state, Mungia agrees with his opponent in this race, Dave Larson, that individuals unknowingly possessing drugs should not be put in jail. But, Mungia says, he disagrees with Larson about whether the state Supreme Court should nudge the Legislature to fix laws – instead, Mungia believes that justices should determine whether a law is constitutional and strike it down if it’s not.

Listen to our interview on October 28.

Dave Larsen

Dave Larson has been a judge for the Federal Way Municipal Court since 2008. Larson has run two previous times for a spot on the state Supreme Court: Position 3 in 2020 (losing to Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis) and Position 6 in 2016 (losing against incumbent Justice Charlie Wiggins).

Larson and his current opponent in this race, attorney Sal Mungia, face one of their the starkest disagreements over the state Supreme Court’s decision to toss out Washington’s felony drug possession law in 2021. Though both candidates agree that individuals who unknowingly possess drugs should avoid jail time, Larson says that he would have ruled differently if he’d been on the Court. Larson says he would have asked the Legislature to rewrite the state’s drug possession law instead of striking it down.

Listen to our interview on October 29.

Summary of the Office

The Attorney General manages the state’s largest public law firm, overseeing a staff charged with representing public agencies and defending the rights of Washington residents. The office covers issues including consumer protection, civil rights, environmental regulations, and antitrust. This year’s race will not feature an incumbent for the first time in 12 years, as current Attorney General Bob Ferguson is running for governor.

Pete Serrano

Republican Pete Serrano is a city councilmember serving as mayor of Pasco, Washington. He has experience as a lawyer working with the Department of Energy on cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Site and is a co-founder of the legal nonprofit Silent Majority Foundation. He is endorsed in the attorney general race by the Washington GOP. In an interview during this year’s primary election, Serrano said the AG’s office needs to provide better clarity around police use of force. He also discussed his nonprofit’s ongoing legal battle over the state’s ban on sales of high-capacity gun magazines, which Serrano says violates the Second Amendment. Serrano has also been critical of his opponent’s position on the opioid crisis, and said the state needs to levy the harshest punishment possible on drug distributors, with more enforced rehabilitation options for repeat drug users.

Listen to our interview on July 9.

Nick Brown

Democrat Nick Brown is former general counsel to Gov. Jay Inslee, and was the U.S. Attorney for Western Washington from 2021 to 2023. He has endorsements from Inslee, Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell. Brown does not have prior experience as an elected official. Instead, he emphasizes his legal experience arguing complex criminal cases. He also supports proposals to create an Office of Independent Prosecution, a would-be arm of the attorney general’s office with the power to investigate the deadly use of force by police. Brown has also defended his previous statements that prosecutors should pursue the minimum sentencing necessary for drug offenders.

Listen to our interview on July 11.

Summary of the Office

Position 8 is one of two at-large seats on the Seattle City Council. Typically Council seats are filled during odd-year elections. But, when former Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda was elected to the King County Council in 2023, she left a vacancy that needed filling. The remaining councilmembers appointed Tanya Woo to fill that seat, until this year’s special election could determine a replacement to serve through 2025.

Alexis Mercedes Rinck

Alexis Mercedes Rinck is a newcomer to Seattle’s political arena. A 29 year-old renter living in the Central District, Mercedes Rinck moved to Seattle in 2017 to attend graduate school at UW’s Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. Since graduating, Rinck has worked for the University of Washington, and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. In an interview with Cascade Media, Mercedes Rinck said her top priorities are the housing crisis and affordability, public safety and the “fiscal health of the city.” Mercedes Rinck has received a number of endorsements, including former Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, King County Executive Dow Constantine, the King County Democrats, and The Stranger.

Listen to our interview with Mercedes Rinck on October 24.

Tanya Woo

Incumbent Tanya Woo is the current appointed Position 8 councilmember. Born and raised in Seattle, Woo grew up in Beacon Hill. She is the owner of the Louisa Hotel, a workforce apartment building in the Chinatown International District. Her family also owns Kau Kau BBQ, located in the same neighborhood. In an interview with Cascade Media, Woo said her top priorities are affordable housing, small-business support and public safety. Woo has received a number of endorsements, including from The Seattle Times editorial board, the Seattle Firefighters Union, and every member of the current city council except District 2 representative Tammy Morales. Woo has previously run for office: In 2023 she ran for Position 2, which covers Yesler Terrace to Rainier Beach. She lost that race to Morales.

Listen to our interview with Woo on October 24.

Summary of the Office

Washington’s 3rd Congressional District encompasses the southernmost portion of Western Washington. It includes the counties of Lewis, Pacific, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Clark, and Skamania, as well as a small portion of southern Thurston County. The district is represented by Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who defeated Joe Kent in 2022 by 2,629 votes. This year’s election is a rematch of their 2022 showdown.

Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez

Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez is a Democrat, but leans to the right on many policy issues presented by the party, including student loan forgiveness and border security. She is criticized by people on the left for being too far right, but criticized by the right for being too far left, all while trying to maintain a balance that works for her constituents in the 3rd District. A major focus of hers is reproductive freedom. She’s also championed right-to-repair efforts, and border security solutions to help stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.

Listen to our interview on July 18.

Joe Kent

Joe Kent is another relative newcomer to politics in the state. He ran against Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in 2022, after defeating incumbent Jaime Herrera-Beutler in that year’s primary. A former Army Special Forces officer, Kent often touts his military experience on the campaign trail. His major focus is on security issues at the U.S.-Mexico border. He has also claimed without evidence that the FBI stoked the events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.

Listen to our interview on July 16.

Summary of the Office

Washington’s 4th Congressional District consists of Yakima and the Tri-Cities, up to Okanogan County and part of the Colville Reservation. It runs like a pillar through the center of the state, and is heavily agricultural and rural. It’s also the most conservative district in the state of Washington. Two Republicans are running to represent the district: An incumbent who voted to impeach former President Trump after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and a challenger who protested at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but says he wasn’t one of the rioters.

Dan Newhouse

Incumbent Dan Newhouse has represented Washington’s 4th Congressional District since 2015. He made national news in 2021, as one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump after the events of Jan. 6. Newhouse is one of only two of those impeachment voters left in office, after being re-elected in 2022. Newhouse is known for working across the aisle on issues including immigration reform, and agriculture.

Jerrod Sessler

Jerrod Sessler is a newcomer to the political arena. In contrast to his opponent, Sessler is a staunch Trump supporter. He attended the former President’s speech on Jan. 6, although he says he did not attend the riot that followed. Sessler has highlighted an interest in smaller government, and said that if elected he would be a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

Listen to our Sound Politics conversation on the race from September 26