The Washington Observer

Last month we brought you news of some right-leaning millionaires putting up cash for a campaign to repeal the state’s new income tax on its highest earners. Since then, conservative initiative machine Let’s Go Washington has turned in more than 500,000 signatures to do just that. Enter the deep pockets on the left. Three progressive-leaning unions have pledged $3 million to defend the tax at the ballot this fall.

The intra-party battle for a state House seat in Seattle’s reliably left 46th LD features some standard-fare, red-meat (or in this district, blue-meat) campaign issues — Trump-proofing WA, schools, income inequality, affordable child care. But thanks to two strong challengers to seven-term Rep. Gerry Pollet, AI regulations have become a spicy new ingredient and an interesting battleground for the fundraising race.

A wood pellet plant in the works near Aberdeen has caught a local middle school in a neighbor war over two kinds of green. Blocks away from Hoquiam Middle School lies a fenced-off lot where Pacific Northwest Renewable Energy hopes to churn out almost half a million tons or an Empire State Building worth of the stuff per year. The Massachusetts-based firm is leasing the spot from the Port of Grays Harbor with the intent of shipping its wares off to Asia.

When things go wrong in government, especially in public infrastructure projects, elected officials often try to save face with tight smiles and platitudes worthy of a halftime speech when a team is getting its butt kicked. So a King County Council1meeting last month on a potential boondoggle brewing on a mega-construction project at Harborview Medical Center was refreshing.

A heavyweight list of political donors on the right poured more than $1 million into Let’s Go Washington’s bid to repeal the state’s new income tax on its wealthiest citizens via ballot initiative. The conservative initiative machine had thus far gotten most of its 2026 money from founder Brian Heywood, but he’s got help now.

The highly unusual two-day hearing in Olympia this week regarding Rep. Tarra Simmons’ alleged ethical lapses cast a spotlight on some murky corners of electioneering and lawmaking. The ethics allegations against the three-term Bremerton Democrat of the self-dealing variety — earmarking $1.1M in state money to a nonprofit where she worked and misusing $50K in surplus campaign funds to get her apparent boyfriend hired at another nonprofit.

When the Let’s Go Washington initiative factory announced a sprint to a November challenge of the millionaire’s tax, there was heartburn among some right-leaning political strategists, and not just because Tim Eyman, of all people, laid out its long-shot odds. There is more interest from at least some of that crowd in tackling a related but different electoral goal: shifting the Supremes to the right. If you’re a close political reader, that might cause some cognitive whiplash.

Plus a boatload of recommended reading and viewing Counting votes to depose the Speaker of the House is a common parlor game in and around legislatures all over the country. Somebody’s always cranky with the speaker, and every statehouse features folks who see themselves as better suited for the big office than its current occupant.

We’ll have to wait until the next Public Disclosure Commission filings to see how big the catch was at Gov. Bob Ferguson’s 21st annual shrimp feed/fundraiser last weekend. But you won’t see direct checks from corporations, as Ferguson reiterated on Instagram yet again this week: “I’m the only governor in the country who doesn’t accept donations from large corporations or corporate PACs.” That can be both true and more than a bit misleading.

Plus snubs by the Labor Council, Facebook hokum, an ethics showdown, and some puppy goodness. A family farm’s enduring feud with the state Department of Ecology spilled into Olympia this month where the Supremes may all but rewrite how it polices water rights. This story begins in January of 2017, when Grant County farmer Ron Fode was vying for a nod from Ecology to irrigate his fields in lieu of owning the groundwater rights to do so. The agency shot down his bid later that February.