Why I Support Jay Inslee for Governor

Last night I watched the gubernatorial debate for Washington state election. Incumbent Democratic governor Jay Inslee faced Republican challenger Loren Culp, current police chief of Republic, Washington.

On the COVID-19 crisis, Jay Inslee's decisive action to implement a stay at home executive order has saved thousands of lives in our state. I have watched for months as Washington state, which had the first known cases in the country, was overtaken by one state after another in counts of cases and deaths whose governors did too little too late.

Loren Culp opposes stay at home orders, mask mandates, and business restrictions to fight COVID-19. His policies sound a lot like those of governors of other states who opposed shutting down or who reopened too quickly, and whose states have now overtaken Washington in cases and death counts.

Viruses are a lot like wildfires. If you don't contain them quickly, they spread out of control. When wildfires come, no one complains about constitutional rights. Homeowners in the path of the blaze are ordered to evacuate, via emergency powers courts have long upheld. Most get out of the way of the fires on their own without having to be told.

An important difference is that you can't see a virus coming, and with a new virus that behaves differently than people have experienced before, it is easy to delude oneself that they are immune. No person alive today experienced the 1918 flu pandemic, but we can certainly read about it and learn from their mistakes, which included organized anti-mask movements that helped the 1918 flu to spread and cost thousands of lives.

I wear a mask in public not because of fear of punishment, but because it helps me and my neighbors stay out of the way of the spreading virus.

Culp's statements about other issues concern me as well.

The murder of George Floyd by police officers was an international outrage. It sparked protests all over the world. Major sports organizations with black players like MLS, FIFA, WNBA and others have had anti-racism campaigns for years, and went further in publicly supporting the idea that black lives matter in recent months.

In the debate, Culp expressed no outrage over the murder of George Floyd, or the killing of any black Americans by police. He said that if it systemic racism exists, it is a problem in cities lead by Democrat mayors, so Democrats should fix it.

He has stated in other interviews that the very phrase "Black Lives Matter" is racist, even though it actually says nothing about white lives at all. It simply calls attention to the value of people who for years have been treated as if their lives are less important.

Culp said in the debate that police officers have discretion, and for me that is a big part of my issue with policing. Discretion means police officers can be arbitrary in their choice to use force in a situation. Black Americans have been telling us for years that police have been using their discretion to treat them differently than white Americans, and there is evidence to support that. By refusing to believe them in this, Chief Culp is saying loud and clear that black Americans don't matter to him. That is unacceptable to me.

The wildfire analogy is apt here too. When a neighborhood is on fire, you help the people in the affected neighborhood. Bystanders who demand attention while crying "other neighborhoods matter too" instead of helping people trying to escape the fire would be rightly ridiculed and ignored. People crying "white lives matter too" when blacks are being executed by police deserve the same.

Culp also said in the debate he would have armed with guns those police officers responding to protests and riots in Seattle. That is just asking for more deaths. Studies have shown that the mere presence of a gun changes human behavior. Arming officers with guns gives them the option to use them. Police killing citizens over property crimes like vandalism is unacceptable to me. People who commit such crimes should be arrested with non-lethal methods.

When it comes to actual wildfires, Culp did worst of all. He made no mention of emissions of greenhouse gases by humans as a cause for global warming, and cited speculative theories from the 1970s, repeating a meme used by climate deniers, as an excuse to ignore scientists who remind us that temperatures are rising every year.

Instead Chief Culp repeated an unsubstantiated claim that recent wildfires in eastern Washington were set by humans. He has also repeated other conspiracy theories that lead me to question his judgement.

Just like my decision to support Joe Biden for President, my decision to support Jay Inslee for governor comes down to protecting my family. Governor Inslee followed the science and took decisive action to save lives from COVID-19. If that were to get into my household, at least one of my family members would be at major risk of dying from it. Inslee showed appropriate restraint in his response to the protests over the killing of black Americans by police. My adult children participated in a peaceful march to protest those killings, and I want to continue to live in a state where they can express themselves without fearing for their lives from police armed with guns.

Finally, Jay Inslee follows the science in combating climate change caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases, one of the contributing factors to wildfires and bad air quality that recently impacted my family's health and continues to do so. I want a future where the climate is repaired and returned to healthy conditions.