4th District candidates Lori Feagan, Bob McCaslin disagree on seriousness of COVID-19
Spokane Valley nurse practitioner Lori Feagan hopes to replace Republican Bob McCaslin Jr. in the Legislature, arguing the district needs an accessible representative who utilizes science and research in decision-making.
Feagan said McCaslin has “flown under the radar” for too long, and though he is not as well known as his colleague, outgoing Rep. Matt Shea, he supports many of the same policies, such as turning Eastern Washington into its own state.
Feagan initially ran for office in the 4th Legislative District to try to unseat Shea, but ended up running against McCaslin after Shea did not file to run for reelection and McCaslin swit-ched to Shea’s vacant seat.
McCaslin, who did not respond to requests for an interview, has signed onto a bill to split the state in two several times since he was elected to the state Legislature in 2014. He is endorsed by Shea and has continued to support Shea after he was accused of domestic terrorism and kicked out of the Republican Caucus.
In a video posted to Facebook, McCaslin said he was running to continue work on transportation, education and human services policy issues. McCaslin is a member of those three legislative committees.
Feagan said in her work as a nurse practitioner, she sees many issues that can’t be fixed by medicine alone, such as inequitable access to quality K-12 education or elderly community members who are struggling to pay for necessities. She said she is focused on health care, and believes a health care perspective is needed when considering the impacts of other types of legislation.
“I will look at every single policy that comes before me with a public health lens to make sure we’re not leaving anybody behind,” she said.
An area on which Feagan and McCaslin differ is how the state should be responding to COVID-19.
In a video on his campaign website, McCaslin said Gov. Jay Inslee had picked “winners and losers” when he allowed marijuana businesses to stay open and shut down other types of businesses.
He advocated for herd immunity, arguing people would be better off if everyone who wasn’t high risk contracted COVID-19 and recovered, citing doctors he saw on YouTube.
“I think we’ve had doctored science, science that’s been doctored by people to promote an agenda,” he said in the video.
According to an analysis from the New York Times of COVID-19 data gathered from counties across the country, more than 7.4 million people have been infected and more than 209,000 people have died from the virus since March.
According to the CDC, people infected with similar viruses were unlikely to be reinfected for about three months, but there is not enough data to currently verify how long immunity from COVID-19 lasts.
There is also currently not a vaccine available for the virus. While many who are infected are asymptomatic, some have developed serious complications that persist after they recover. People older than 65 are at the highest risk of serious complications, but people of all ages have developed complications and some have died.
According to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, if COVID-19 restrictions are lifted and people stop wearing masks, nearly 435,000 people could die of the virus by Jan. 1. If people wear masks, the number of deaths is projected to be about 277,300 by Jan. 1.
Feagan said she supports the governor’s actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19. She said if the state had not shut down or taken precautions, the damage the virus caused would have been worse.
“Burying your head in the sand and talking about conspiracy theories and that we went too far, that is not honoring the severity of this crisis and the human suffering that it has caused,” she said.
Feagan is also focused on is the 2021 budget. The state is projected to have a more than $4 billion budget shortfall over the next three years due to a drop in revenue amid the pandemic. Feagan said the state will need to reduce spending, but called for legislators to protect essential services and only make “precision cuts.”
She said legislators may also need to look to a capital gains tax and reducing the number of tax exemptions it offers corporations. She said the state’s tax system takes the most from those who have the least ability to pay, and said if the state is able to shift its taxes to corporations and the wealthy, it may eventually be able to dial back other taxes that disproportionately affect the poor and working class.
“I think we’re ready for this on a bipartisan level,” she said. “We have to correct our regressive tax structure. We are relying on low- and middle-class working families to fund our services and programs.”
McCaslin has worked as an elementary school teacher in the Central Valley School District and has served on the planning commission before winning a seat in the Legislature. His father, Bob McCaslin Sr., who died in 2011, represented the district for decades.
In the 2020 session, McCaslin sponsored a bill to create a grant program that would support teachers who are job sharing, as well as several other bills related to education that did not make it out of committee.
He’s also voted in favor of a number of education bills, including one that passed increasing the availability of free school meals for children.
In 2017, he was the prime sponsor of a bill that had bipartisan support and modified the growth management act to allow schools that serve urban students to be located in rural areas in some circumstances.
McCaslin also signed on to several other bills in the 2019-20 biennium sponsored by other legislators including a “right to work” bill that barred companies from requiring employees to be a part of unions or pay union dues to work there; another bill that would have created a “vaccine consumer protection act”; and a bill that regulated the safety of vaccines and required new vaccines to be tested to see if they cause autism. That bill also never received a hearing.
According to the CDC, there is no link between vaccines and autism.