Dover, Parker face off for 6th Legislative District House seat

Democratic legislative challenger Donald Dover acknowledges his campaign to unseat Republican state Rep. Kevin Parker is a longshot bid.

“I couldn’t let the race go uncontested,” said Dover, a former WSU administrator who trailed Parker by nearly 28 percentage points in the August primary and stresses that his election bid is about giving voters a choice. “I thought, ‘Let’s get another viewpoint out here.’ ”

Both candidates for the 6th Legislative District House seat praise each other for running mostly issues-oriented campaigns, and both have a strong grasp of the issues facing the state and the Spokane region.

But while Parker, a coffee franchise owner seeking a fourth term, sticks to a fairly traditional GOP agenda of economic development, fiscal responsibility and government reform, Dover isn’t afraid to shake things up with outside-the-box proposals he openly describes as “third rail” ideas.

“I don’t care what anyone says in their campaign material about what they want to do in Olympia, the next session is going to be about figuring out how to comply with the court’s orders on education,” said Dover, 54, referring to the state Supreme Court’s ruling in the McCleary case and subsequent decision to hold the state in contempt for failing to put a suitable K-12 funding plan together. “There’s a lot of ideas floating around out there … but I think we’re going to have to be blunt and everything has to be thrown on the table.”

Dover’s contribution to the throw-everything-on- the-table approach: taxing video game consoles and Internet porn.

“If we don’t want an income tax, if we don’t want a sales tax increase, if we can’t get there by eliminating tax exemptions, we need to look at something,” he said, adding that he has no idea how much tax revenue his proposals would generate or how a porn tax could be enforced. “I’m just trying to get things moving.”

Similarly, finding money for the North Spokane Corridor could benefit from nontraditional problem-solving as well, Dover said. He advocates shifting millions in state allocations already made for stalled and troubled Western Washington transportation projects to Eastern Washington projects instead. “Why should the money just sit there when we’ve already got projects ready to go over here,” he asks.

Dover said he’d prefer more traditional solutions but the Legislature has been so gridlocked that little is getting done. “Hopefully,” he said, “these kinds of ideas can at least get people talking to each other because that’s how you break a logjam.”

Parker, 40, appreciates his opponent’s enthusiasm but remains focused on his own agenda.

He agrees with Dover that K-12 education spending will be a dominant issue in the coming session but suggests using it as an opportunity to take an overall look at state priorities and spending.

A member of Education Appropriations Committee, Parker is among a handful of legislators who have long advocated fully funding K-12 education first, then deciding how to pay for the remainder of state government. The goal, he said, is to have a discussion about state priorities beyond education.

Strategically for the GOP, though, it also would prevent education from being used as a pitch to increase taxes.

Without spending cuts or tax increases, projected state spending is expected to exceed projected revenue by as much as $3 billion over the next two-year budget cycle.

“I’ve been pushing ‘fund education first’ since 2008,” said Parker, who six years ago was among the few Republican challengers in the nation to unseat a Democratic incumbent on a ballot that also included Barack Obama in his first presidential run.

He cites his efforts to help increase penalties for human trafficking, improve legislative oversight of state agency budget requests and require that state spending plans balance over two budget cycles as his most memorable accomplishments so far. He also helped clarify state law to allow homeless job seekers to list shelter addresses on employment applications.

Parker now wants to focus on policies that he believes would help startup companies, including an initial exemption from the state’s business-and-occupation tax, which taxes gross receipts rather than net profits.

“When we were getting started with our coffee shops, there were times in the first couple of years where the government was making more money from us than we were” because of the B&O tax, he said. “I want to look at ways that we can foster entrepreneurial opportunity.”

Ballots will be mailed starting Wednesday. In order to be accepted, ballots returned by mail must have proper postage and be postmarked Nov. 4 or earlier. Ballots also can be dropped off without postage at official elections drop boxes by 8 p.m. Nov. 4.