There’s a scene on NBC’s “30 Rock” in which Republican Jack Donaghy asks Dennis Duffy, “What are your politics?” Duffy responds, without irony: “Social conservative, fiscal liberal.”
That was the mood in Washington state on election night as the first batch of votes were counted. Washingtonians were happy to tax the wealthy – households earning more than $1 million a year – rejecting the repeal of the millionaires tax by more than 16 points.
It’s a sea change for the state, where there has never really been an income tax and voters have rejected both corporate and income taxes ten times over the last century.
But with the same pen, many also voted to prevent trans girls from playing girls’ sports. That initiative, 638, was in the lead with about 57% of the vote Tuesday night.
That could, of course, change: Seattle leftists tend to procrastinate and vote at the last minute, meaning their votes are counted last. Socialist Mayor Katie Wilson had only 46% of the vote on election night, but won a week later by about 2,000 votes. But this was a Seattle race, and 57% is a big number coming from across the state.
It’s worth noting, however, that just as the ban on trans girls in sports appeared to be moving forward, Seattle elected its first openly trans lawmaker to the Legislature. Jaelynn Scott, a democratic socialist, will represent Seattle’s 37th District, encompassing the Central and South Seattle neighborhoods, in the State House.
Elsewhere, Democrats were doing well: Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez was ahead of her Republican challenger by more than 10 points, and even in typically red Eastern Washington, Spokane Republican Michael Baumgartner was in a tight race with his Democratic challenger Carmela Conroy.
This race and many others will be decided in the coming days.
But here are a few things that are becoming clear on election night in Washington.
An income tax, thanks to Brian Heywood?
In 1932, Washingtonians approved an income tax by a margin of 70 to 30. But after it was struck down by the courts the following year, successive attempts to impose the income or corporate tax have failed since the 1930s – 10 attempts in total.
For years, the income tax was seen as a third way in state politics: Even Republicans who wanted to balance the state’s tax code, like Gov. Dan Evans, failed.
Ironically, this may ultimately have been possible thanks to conservative millionaire hedge fund manager Brian Heywood. His challenge to the 2024 capital gains tax was so lost that some say it made Democrats confident enough to pass the millionaires tax earlier this year.
Democrats may have been focused on the wrong fight
Even with a nationwide blue wave, local Democrats did not defend against the trans initiative as fiercely as they did against the repeal of the millionaires tax.
Stephen Reed, the spokesman for the state Democrats, told KUOW that the party hasn’t focused as much on the sports initiative as other ballot measures this year. Reed said the fight over the millionaires tax “sucks a lot of the oxygen out of the room.”
No Hate In Washington State, the campaign to stop I-638 and Initiative 1, the so-called “Parents’ Rights Initiative,” raised little more than Let’s Go Washington, the campaign to pass those two initiatives and the repeal of the millionaires tax.
But she didn’t report on half of the “No to 645” campaign to save the millionaires tax, which raised $13 million, according to the Public Disclosure Commission.
Although polling on the millionaires tax reportedly performed well, both liberal and conservative polls showed that at least some Democrats supported banning trans girls from playing girls’ sports. Some told KUOW that for them, this was an issue of women’s rights and hard-won rights under Title IX.
But some polls also suggest that voters who learned about the initiative that could require girls to undergo genital exams or other types of gender verification have become less supportive.
In the final weeks of the campaign, the airwaves seemed far more dominated by ads about the millionaires tax than by warnings about genital exams of female athletes.
So, if the trans initiative passes and the income tax repeal fails, a question might be: Why did Democrats spend so much on an easy fight, while spending much less on a potentially winning fight?
Democrats who voted against the millionaires tax lose in rich and poor districts
Two state Democratic lawmakers who broke with their party and voted against an income tax on high earners earlier this year were trailing challengers within their own party on election night.
One is from a district where about 2,300 people will pay the millionaires tax. The other is from a district where so few people are willing to pay it, the Department of Revenue wouldn’t release the number for privacy reasons.
On the wealthy Eastside of King County, state Rep. Amy Walen, of Kirkland, lost 1,051 votes to Redmond City Council member Jessica Forsythe. Walen currently represents the 48th Legislative District, one of the richest in the state.
South of Tacoma, incumbent state Rep. Melanie Morgan of Parkland is trailing 741 votes behind Krista Perez, who says she entered the race for the 29th District because of Morgan’s vote on the income tax.
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