Chris Cargill: Will political elites and bureaucrats learn lessons from the election?

Parents and working families might just be the newest “special interest” group.

Across Washington state and the nation, the lesson from Election 2021 was simple: elected leaders are not listening.

Communities large and small saw a surge of concerned parents run for local school board – and many of them won on platforms of asserting parental rights and parental control over raising children.

More than ever, the school board elections were about the needs of kids vs. the entrenched adult interests. In most cases, union-backed candidates supported the adults in the school system while challengers believed education should be about funding children, not systems.

In thousands of school board races, the latter argument prevailed. But this year’s election wasn’t just a school board wave.

Yakima voters approved a measure to ban a local income tax with nearly 80% support. Yakima becomes the 11th local government in Washington state to have such a restriction.

Speaking of income taxes, voters in 38 of Washington’s 39 counties voted against the new capital gains income tax put in place by the Legislature this year. Sadly, the vote is nonbinding. Legislators didn’t want voters to have a say on this issue. Now we know why.

In Bellingham, voters rejected rent control restrictions and new mandates to require landlords to pay for relocation costs.

In Seattle, voters said no to extremist left-leaning candidates for mayor, City Council and city attorney. In fact, Seattle elected its first woman and Republican city attorney, Ann Davison, over a police abolitionist who had called people destroying public property “heroes.” In an about face, the city of Seattle is now offering a $25,000 bonus to recruit and retain police officers.

In Minneapolis, voters soundly rejected an effort to defund the city’s police department.

In Buffalo, New York, voters rejected a socialist mayoral candidate, approving a write-in candidate instead.

In Virginia, Republicans swept the three statewide races and elected candidates who sided with parents and working families over insensitive bureaucrats.

Political candidates come and go, but issues tend to stick around.

“What went wrong is stupid wokeness,” Democratic strategist James Carville said.

“Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle. I mean this ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools, people see that. And it really has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something.”

Here in Washington state, the 2022 election is approaching, and voters could go the way of 1994. That’s when state Democrats were swept out of power following an overwhelming legislative session filled with deeply unpopular legislation.

Is history repeating itself? Many of the policies adopted by lawmakers and Olympia bureaucrats in the last few years have been deeply polarizing.

This month alone, hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians have sought to escape the state’s troubled long-term care program and new payroll tax.

Gov. Jay Inslee’s unending emergency rule has frustrated thousands of small businesses, who are being governed by news conference. The Legislature has so far refused to follow its constitutional duty and check the governor’s powers.

The state schools’ chief has lowered academic standards while adopting “ethnic studies” programs that look very similar to critical race theory.

The state’s insurance commissioner has issued an unnecessary rule on credit scores, claiming they are discriminatory. The move has caused car insurance rates to surge.

And state lawmakers continue to push for an income tax even though voters have said no more than 10 times.

Is it any wonder the political consequences of so many unpopular moves could be so severe?

The lessons from this year’s election are clear: parents, frustrated neighbors and concerned citizens see that their concerns are being ignored. And it looks like they’re not going to take it anymore.

Chris Cargill is the Eastern Washington director for Washington Policy Center, an independent research organization with offices in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Seattle and Olympia. Online at washingtonpolicy.org. Members of the Cowles family, owners of The Spokesman-Review, have previously hosted fundraisers for the Washington Policy Center, and sit on the organization’s board.