Most of the ballots have been counted from the recent primary election, though there is still a small number to count. Just about all the candidates we endorsed did very well. 1st and 2nd place finishers move on to the general election. At this point, we can tell you most of the candidates who will be in the general election this fall:
Governor – Incumbent Jay Inslee is 1st at 50%
Lt. Gov – Denny Heck is 1st at 26%, Marko Liias is 2nd at 17% (both Dems)
Secretary of State – Gael Tarleton is 2nd at 43%
Treasurer – Mike Pellicciotti is 1st at 53%
Auditor – This is a race about which we weren’t able to find information, so we will work on that for the next round. Incumbent McCarthy is 1st at 47%, Leyba is 2nd at 42%, both are Dems
Attorney General – Incumbent Bob Ferguson is 1st at 55%
Public Lands Commissioner – Incumbent Hilary Franz is 1st at 51%
Insurance Commissioner – Incumbent Mike Kreidler is 1st at 59%
Public Instruction Superintendent – Incumbent Chris Reykdal is 1st at 40%
Congress – Incumbent Rick Larsen is 1st at 50%, Jason Call is in 3rd place at 13.5%, trailing the 2nd place candidate by 1% and about 2,500 votes
State Senate – Liz Lovelett is 1st at 72%
House Position 1 – Debra Lekanoff is 1st at 96% (her only opponents are write-ins)
House Position 2 – Alex Ramel is 1st at 71%
County Council Position 1 – Ryan Palmateer is in 2nd place at 32%, 7% behind Chris Minney
County Council Position 2 – Cindy Wolf is in 1st place at 45%, 2% ahead of Rick Hughes
Both Lopez and Orcas school levies are passing handily
Thanks to everyone for voting and making this a very successful election. Thanks especially to those of you who participated in making calls to voters. Stay tuned for the general election this fall.
Related to the election, our local group decided to donate funds to both of our endorsed county council candidates. In addition, if you would like to help them get elected, you can go directly to their sites to contribute: For Ryan Palmateer, go to https://www.ryanpalmateer2020.com/support-ryan. For Cindy Wolf, go to https://votecindywolf.com/donate/
Both candidates are also looking for personal endorsements, so please go to their websites to endorse. In addition to supporting these two candidates, you can support any of our LD and statewide candidates, as well as candidates for US Senate in crucial states so we can take the majority in the Senate. Look for a future email containing names and links.
There is an opportunity for locals who are not familiar with Ryan Palmateer to tune in to a meeting of the Lopez Huddle group this Tuesday from 3:00 to 5:00. The Huddle group is going to have the two finalists for county council position 1, Ryan and Christine Minney, present at their meeting to do Q & A. Please encourage people you know who may not be familiar with Ryan to watch this video. Any of you who watched the League of Women Voters forum know
that Ryan was in a much higher league than any of the other candidates, including Christine. Ryan is the future of our county government, and we need to do everything we can to get him elected.
The virtual San Juan County Fair is coming up this Wednesday through Saturday. A committee led by our own Ryan Palmateer has created an online video in which a number of local Democrats speak to why they are members of our party. It will appear on the fair website as well as on this website shortly. See how many of the speakers you can recognize.
We had a discussion today about adopting a platform plank related to the Growler jets that cause so much noise to so many of our residents. It was pointed out that they also put a tremendous amount of carbon into the atmosphere. We know that the Sound Defense Alliance is working on this issue, so a small committee was formed to look into this issue further. Members are Sharon Abreu, Jeff Hanks, and David Dehlendorf. In addition, Bob O’Connell will share language with the committee. Because the naval base is so entrenched and the community there is so entwined with the base, the committee will be looking at alternatives to having the base moved, which is probably not likely to happen anytime soon. For your benefit, here is the language we were considering:
We call for the Growler mission to be moved to more appropriate sites that are not as densely populated and environmentally fragile. We call for no warfare training to be allowed in Olympic National Park or Olympic National Forest, including Growler overflights. Mobile emitters should be moved to sites nearer the re-sited Growlers. We call for ceasing all fixed wing flight operations at Outlying Field Coupeville.
We also briefly discussed the idea of Just Transition, which is the need to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy while taking care of the workers who will be displaced. The more we can communicate this to our state legislators, the better chance they will act on it. If you would like to write our legislators on this matter, here is their contact information: Senator Liz Lovelett: liz.lovelett@leg.wa.gov Rep. Debra Lekanoff: debra.lekanoff@leg.wa.gov Rep. Alex Ramel: alex.ramel@leg.wa.gov
Our main item of interest today was a presentation on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) by Sharon A, Bob O, and myself. Bob and I each read the recent book by Professor Stephanie Kelton called The Deficit Myth. She argues that because we no longer use the gold standard, the Fed simply creates new money with a keystroke on its computer, that it spends money into our economic system. The reason we can do this is because the US is a currency issuer. As long as we keep inflation under control, we can continue to issue money to be spent. Only a government that is a currency issuer can do this. For instance, state governments cannot do this and have to balance their budgets, much like family households have to do. The benefit to understanding our economic system through an MMT lens means that we don’t have to worry about deficits, that as long as inflation is under control, we can spend money on projects for the public good. Obviously, this goes against everything we have always believed about government and budgets, that we have to collect tax revenue or borrow by selling bonds in order for the government to have money to spend. Everyone is always skeptical about this at first, and we had some skeptics
at our meeting today. But this way of looking at our system has the possibility of issuing money to take care of all of the problems in our country, and this can help us in helping the rest of the world also. I encourage you to read the book, and for a shorter introduction, you can read the article I wrote for Orcas Issues earlier this week at https://orcasissues.com/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-and-the-deficit-myth/. The more people to whom we can introduce this concept and convince them that it is real, the more we will be able to convince our members of Congress to spend funds on needed public services.
That’s it for now. If there is anyone you know who you think would be a supporter but is not getting our emails, I would encourage you to have them contact me so I can put them on our list. The more people we have on our list, the more impact we can have on the direction of our county and beyond.
Thanks for reading,
David Turnoy
Chair, San Juan County Democrats
360-376-4165
davidgeri@rockisland.com
