Sen. Mark Schoesler: Former Senate majority leader reflects on eight memorable years

The voters of the 9th Legislative District first elected me to the House of Representatives in 1992, the same year that the late Jeannette Hayner stepped down after 20 years of service as a legislator from the neighboring 16th District.

There was no way to know that I would someday have the honor of serving as Senate Republican leader for eight years – the longest run since the legendary Senator Hayner, who held the position for 13 years until retiring. Now that I’ve let go of the top spot, which included two turns as Senate majority leader, it’s satisfying to look at some of what was accomplished during that stretch.

The 2013 legislative session, my first as leader, saw our 23 Republican senators and two principled, politically courageous Democrat senators – Sen. Tim Sheldon of Mason County and former Sen. Rodney Tom of Bellevue – unite to assume leadership of the 49-member Senate. For the next five years our philosophical majority showed how much good can be done when the Legislature is politically balanced.

Take higher education. Coming from the district that includes Washington State University, I had long wanted families to have more certainty about the costs of college. Our majority coalition led the way in 2013 toward a first-ever freeze on in-state college tuition, giving students relief from the back-to-back-to-back 14% tuition increases they’d just endured.

In 2015 we doubled down, delivering the first tuition cut in state history and filling a $500 million deficit in the Guaranteed Education Tuition program caused by the earlier tuition hikes. That same year we authorized WSU to open the medical school now named for my late, dear, visionary friend, Elson Floyd. In a shining example of bipartisanship, then-Sen. Michael Baumgartner sidelined his bill after its passage so identical legislation from a fellow Spokane lawmaker, Rep. Marcus Riccelli, could become the law.

The state’s transportation system gained as well. Two years after blocking a poorly structured House package that ignored many infrastructure needs, we led the development of 2015’s “Connecting Washington” package. The support it received due to our bipartisan efforts – approval by two-thirds of the Senate and a supermajority in the House – may never be matched. It continues to support critical projects statewide, especially east of the Cascades.

Our successes continued in 2017 with landmark reforms to public-school funding. These helped to address the Supreme Court ruling in the McCleary case and represented a big step toward fairness for taxpayers and equitable educational opportunities for students, particularly in more rural areas like Eastern Washington.

Control of the Senate changed in 2018. During three years in the minority, however, we’ve continued working for all of Washington. That’s included protecting the water rights of rural families against the Supreme Court’s controversial Hirst decision and standing up for Washington’s Snake River dams.

Of course, Republicans have never stopped looking out for hardworking taxpayers. When others tried in 2013 to extend $630 million in “temporary” tax increases they’d approved in 2010, we said no – temporary means just that. We’ve repeatedly defended against the so-called “capital gains” tax – in truth, a state income tax – and proposals to raise the cost of energy, including fuel.

Going into a new four-year term as 9th District senator, and my 29th annual legislative session, I’m expecting the majority will push a new transportation package containing divisive energy taxes that would devastate our agricultural sector. I’m concerned about the majority’s ability to support manufacturers, like our food processors and Washington’s world-leading aerospace industry. I worry that progress we’d made toward expanding educational and economic opportunities for rural families and marginalized communities could be lost to a wave of increased government control.

I am a fifth-generation dryland wheat farmer. We plant. We nourish. We harvest. We are committed to the land. My Republican teammates are committed to the people of Washington. It has been the honor of my life to serve as their leader.

Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, serves the 9th Legislative District, which comprises parts of Spokane and Franklin counties and all of Adams, Asotin, Garfield and Whitman counties.