Washblog

Roger:  In the beginning, it seemed all sweetness and light, and then almost as predicted, from past campaigns he has run, the attacks have begun, but in a sort of sneaky, insidious way.  There were already signs earlier on.  I've been secretly videotaped, for instance.  

Lee: You've gotten phone calls?

Roger: We received some threatening phone calls.  Our yard signs have been torn up and destroyed.  And the most disturbing, I guess, was when the candidate called my home the other day in response to our complaint and happened to talk to my wife, who is six months pregnant.  When she said she was distressed about the negative tone of the campaign, he said, "well, get ready, because it's just gonna get worse."  So that's, I guess that's the kind of signature of their tactics.  

Lee: What can you do to fight back?  

Roger: Well, I'm an upstanding candidate and I'm going to continue to be.  My approach is to talk about the issues and to be full of substance, but also, if I'm going to go negative, it's going to be about negative campaigning, not about the person or any smears or distortions.  My opponent is not about substance.  If you try to dig deep into any policy proposals, you don't find anything there.

Lee: Initiative 933 is an initiative dealing with the rights of property owners and dealing with environmental regulation.  What are your thoughts on this issue?

Roger: 933 is a pretty transparent attempt to do an end run around the Growth Management Act.  Without a doubt, "growth" and all the issues around it are the most important concern of the voters in my area.  I've visited almost 9000 households personally at this point and people are concerned about property rights, but they're also concerned about the preservation of habitat and species.  They're also concerned about unfair and arbitrary permitting practices and a host of issues related to growth, including the transportation system, which is frankly broken.  We're stuck in traffic and we're not getting out of it.  Affordable housing is an oxymoron.  An initiative to try to address such a complex host of problems is a blunt instrument and inappropriate.  I'm opposed to the initiative.  Instead, I want to be part of a bipartisan conversation in order to address all of these issues, as complex as they are.  I want to have a seat at that table.

Lee: You mentioned transportation.  There are a lot of issues with transportation here, including fixing the 520 bridge and the question of adding more roads.  What are some of the things you'd like to see done to fix these problems?

Roger: Well, thanks to legislative action, we finally have planning money for the 520 bridge and some other projects, but it's going to be many years until anything gets done.  We should have had a six-lane bridge from at least the late 1950s on.  And I support the six lane expandable which would have pontoons in place for expansion to either general purpose lanes or elevated rail or transit options.  That's the beginning, however, because there are so many other transportation needs.  We have to address other choke points on the major freeways and arterials, but I'm certainly opposed to paving over the eastside.  The people live here for a reason, and it's not to be on asphalt.  So this means getting light rail all the way into downtown Redmond, doubling or tripling the number of transit buses, and just accelerate what we need to get done to give people more choices for transportation.  And that means for equity sake, helping those who are elderly, or students, or can't afford to pay the high gas prices.  It's a whole host of things, but honestly, we're going to be stuck in traffic because we didn't plan and act in time.  With the population growing out here, we just have to be upfront with the voters that they're not going to get out of traffic.  They laugh, but they realize I'm telling the truth.

Lee: Washington state trails a lot of other states in how much we invest in our schools.  Is more money the answer?  Are there other solutions?

Roger: I've heard from disgruntled voters that all we do is pour money in schools so it's just a waste.  If you take a close look, we're not pouring money into our schools.  There are two principal concerns.  One is to make major investments to reverse the course from 30-35 years now of disinvesting in the schools on the state level.  And the second is to invest more wisely.  And so when we rank near the bottom in teacher pay, in classroom size, and in per-pupil expenditure, we have to continue with what the last legislature did in the 05-07 budget cycle and make the tough allocation decisions to focus on the classroom, teachers and students, rather than quick bureaucratic fixes like high-stakes tests.  If we're going to focus on education, I'd like to focus on what's actually happening in the classroom.

Lee: You've worked with the King County Bar Association for a long time and done a wide variety of things with them.  Can you elaborate on some of the work you've done and how it will help you become an effective legislator for Washington state?

Roger:  The work I've done for the King County Bar Association is a good example of how I'm able to bring together disparate groups to the table on very controversial topics.  And so through my work at the Bar, we've brought lawyers and doctors and public health workers and pharmacists, scholars and religious leaders to talk about what used to be a taboo subject, the so-called war on drugs, and make concrete progress by getting the legislature in the last series of sessions to reduce funding on wasteful incarceration and transfer it into public health.  Where it used to be a radical idea not to incarcerate those who have addiction and mental health problems, now it's become a mainstream idea because of the work that I've done.  And we've saved tens of millions of dollars, and treated the people who have health problems in a more humane way.  

My past work at the Sentencing Guidelines Commission in Olympia bringing prosecutors and defenders, judges and citizens together to get tough on domestic violence, for instance.  And my work as a Congressional staffer in Washington DC, again, bringing parties together to handle complex and controversial issues.  My work continues in that vein.

Roger's website is here.  Let's keep the tradition of moderate, bipartisan, leadership alive in the 45th.