Spin Control: Talking more about politics? Lots of Washingtonians are these days, poll shows

If you find yourself thinking about politics, talking about politics or worrying about politics just about every day, you’re not alone.

In fact, you’re pretty much average, based on a recent poll by Elway Research for Cascade PBS.

In a survey of 403 registered Washington voters in early April, 58% said they’d had a conversation about government, current events or politics in the previous 24 hours. Another 19% had such a conversation in the previous two or three days, and 10% within the past week.

Asked what that conversation was about, 63% said something to do with President Donald Trump or his administration. Two-thirds said they look at news every day, and 51% said they are paying more attention to news about government and politics than they used to. Only 8% said they were paying less attention to it.

This being Washington, where Trump has done poorly in all three of his presidential bids, it’s probably not too surprising that slightly less than a third had a positive or optimistic reaction to the Trump administration so far, while 53% had a negative reaction. Compared to three months into his first term, those surveyed were a bit less likely to say they thought this second go-round for Trump was changing things for the better and considerably more likely to say things were changing for the worse.

In April 2017, 34% said they thought Trump was bringing the right kind of change; that was down slightly to 31%. But the numbers for those saying he’s bringing the wrong kind of change rose from 46% to 60%.

Those numbers pretty well line up with feelings about Trump’s style of leadership, with 63% saying they disapprove or strongly disapprove of it, compared to 56% in 2017, while 35% said they approve or strongly approve of it, down from 40% eight years ago.

Also noteworthy, if not surprising, is that far fewer people surveyed this time said they thought things were pretty much the same as before Trump was sworn in. In 2017, 17% said they that thought he was “not really bringing much change” in his first four months. This year, the “not much change” contingent is down to just 6%. It would appear that most of those were leaning toward change for the worse.

Proposal triggers blast from past

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, Eastern Washington’s freshman GOP congressman, is getting notice and notoriety for a recent proposal to get the federal government involved in controlling college sports. Among other things, it would dissolve the NCAA, create a commission whose leader would be nominated by the president, and redistribute money earned by athletes under name, image likeness deals.

Whatever you might think of it – and many of the newspaper’s letters-to-the-editor scribes seem to hate it – one should note this is not Baumgartner’s first foray into legislation aimed at correcting a problem he sees with college sports.

In 2014, as a state senator, Baumgartner introduced a bill that would require the University of Washington men’s basketball team to play Gonzaga every year. This was after a 10-year cross-state series had been dropped with the Zags up 8-2 and efforts to set up a three-game series foundered on a UW proposal to play the next three at Key Arena.

Neither university would comment on the proposal, which was hard to take seriously as it was introduced with two days left in the legislative session, when any chance of a hearing, let alone a vote in each chamber, was nil.

The next year, the two teams met in a nonconference invitational tournament, followed by a five-year run of home-and-home games that was interrupted by the pandemic.

The “end the NCAA” proposal has far more time to percolate, considering the 19th Congress could go until December 2026. It was sent to the House Education and Workforce Committee, with no word yet on a hearing.

State likely to dodge DOGE

As the Elway Poll shows, there are some people in Washington who are happy with what the Trump administration is doing. Chief among them, perhaps, would be Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, and state GOP chairman, who introduced a bill last week for Washington to form its own Department of Government Efficiency.

WA DOGE would be tasked with auditing state agencies, rooting out duplication and unnecessary functions, and fighting red tape. Unlike its national counterpart, which is not a real department and not beholden to Congress, WA DOGE would operate under the Legislature and submit reports to lawmakers and the governor.

A news release announcing the bill describes it as “currently being considered by the State Government and Tribal Relations Committee.” That might be overselling the bill’s prospects a tad. Although the bill was referred to that committee, the panel has no hearings scheduled as the deadline for considering new bills has long passed and the session is due to end next Sunday.