Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, D-Medina, speaks at Tuesday news conference. He is flanked by Sen. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup, Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, Sen. Barbara Bailey, R-Oak Harbor, and Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee.
OLYMPIA, Dec. 11.—When two Democrats bolted from their caucus to join with the Senate Republicans a year ago, many wondered how long their new majority coalition would hold together. Maybe a month — maybe two, tops. Some figured about lunchtime.
Twelve months later, it’s still here. At an anniversary news conference Tuesday Senate leaders said they plan to drive the course of debate in the Legislature just as they did in 2013. Certainly their message came with a bit of self-congratulation and hornblowing, but when you consider how low those expectations were a year ago and how the coalition changed the course of the Legislature – perhaps it might be excused.
“In Washington, D.C., they continue to bicker and plod along, while our bipartisan coalition now moves into a second year of working cooperatively,” said Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, D-Medina. “We’ve become the voice of reason when it comes to jobs, education and the budget, including the discussions going on right now about a new list of transportation projects and how to keep and attract aerospace work.”
When Tom and fellow Democrat Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, joined with the 23 Senate Republicans last Dec. 10, they created a 25-member voting bloc and left the Senate Democratic Caucus with just 24 members. A Republican-leaning majority to be sure, and yet one that has veered to the center more than a Republican-only caucus might have. Social-issue legislation is off the table. If Democrats and urban Puget-Sound area interests complain that the Senate majority has blocked legislation requiring insurers to cover abortion, they haven’t noticed that anti-abortion legislation hasn’t made it to the floor, either. Bills restricting gun rights haven’t gone through. Neither have bills expanding gun rights.
More important than those sideshow debates are the budget and tax issues that are at the core of the Legislature’s deliberations. Before the revolution, conventional wisdom was that some sort of tax increase was inevitable in 2013 – perhaps $1 billion or more, because of a Supreme Court ruling mandating more money for K-12 schools. It didn’t happen, and perhaps the most stunning thing was how easily it seemed the Senate budget-writers last session found a way to avoid it. Yet the state still managed to avoid a higher-ed tuition increase for the first time since 1986. Today the coalition is stronger than before, gaining an additional member in the last election with Republican Jan Angel of Port Orchard. Angel defeated Democratic appointee Nathan Schlicher, boosting the coalition’s share to 26. Says Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, “The public didn’t think our ideas were too radical because they rewarded us with another member.”
Cracks Were Showing
History was made last Dec. 10 in the Reception Room of the state Capitol as state Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Bellevue, appeared with Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch and Republican members of the new Senate Majority Coalition Caucus.
The break in Democratic ranks had been building for more than three years; tensions between Democratic liberals and moderates had become extreme. It had reached the point that the organizations that underwrite Democratic campaigns – the state Labor Council, teachers, public employees, trial lawyers and others – were actively running campaigns against sitting Democrats who failed to toe the line, so as to teach the rest of them a lesson. The tactic worked in a 2010 Everett Senate race, knocking out a moderate in favor of a liberal. But instead of convincing moderate Democrats of the error of their ways, it encouraged bitterness. The party’s margin of control in the Senate was slim, and divisions within the ranks in 2011 meant Senate Democratic leaders could not pass a budget of their own. Instead they had to look for Republican votes, forcing a more bipartisan process and a more moderate document. Frustrated liberals folded their arms in 2012 and balked at cooperation with the other team. Moderates said nothing doing. Three of them voted for a Republican budget and turned the chamber upside down, handing the GOP de facto control of the Senate for the remainder of the session.
And then, finally, the formal split. Tom and Sheldon maintain they are firm Democrats despite their decision to caucus with the other team; they say it is their party’s insistence on extreme positions that forced them to abandon pretense and organize a coalition with the Republicans. They might have waited until the final budget vote as they had the previous session — but why wait? “All people wanted to talk about was deficits, deficits, deficits; taxes, taxes, taxes,” Tom says. “What we did is say let’s not divide people; let’s not play this bait and switch game. Let’s give people what they want, and what people want is for us to prioritize. That is exactly what we did.”
Under the new regime, Tom became majority leader; Schoesler Republican leader – an unusual arrangement in shared power. The gang of 25 issued a statement of principles. They pledged to support a sustainable budget, a thriving business climate, education reform, programs for the “vulnerable” that put the needs of taxpayers ahead of public-employee unions, and resetting the priorities of state government. They offered to give Democrats several committee chairmanships; the Democratic caucus as a whole refused, though three Democratic senators individually accepted gavels.
The standard line of thought was that the Dems didn’t have to cooperate and probably shouldn’t, for the coalition was sure to fall apart. It wouldn’t take long. Any day now, the more conservative Republicans would begin acting like the more liberal Democrats; they would fold their arms and stop cooperating and that would be the end of it. And so Democrats in the House and the governor’s office spent last spring touting tax increases the Senate majority could never accept – the coalition’s opposition didn’t matter because it would be gone soon enough. There was so little talking between the House and Senate it might have been the Cold War all over again. Thus the session dragged on until the end of June, when a hard and fast deadline approached and it appeared state government would shut down for lack of a budget. Finally the House was forced to negotiate with the Senate. Says Tom, “I think the reason we went into a special session was nobody thought we would ever last, and they were waiting us out, waiting for us to blow apart, so they could go negotiate and raise taxes. And we stuck together.”
2014 and Beyond
At Tuesday’s news conference, majority coalition members said they had doubts, too. Republicans meeting with Democrats? Senate caucus chair Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, who keeps a toy elephant by her gavel, had to go out and find a matching donkey. “I approached it with a little skepticism,” says state Sen. Barbara Bailey, R-Oak Harbor. “Many of us probably wondered, ‘is this going to work?’ It was brand-new; no one had ever really done this that we knew of, not recently. But what was so exciting was that everybody came together and we all agreed on those core principles that we were going to work to achieve in the legislative session. A year later, I believe it is truly exciting that we accomplished these things we said we were going to do.”
Though the Senate Democratic Caucus turned its back on any thought of formal power-sharing, it is worth pointing out that there were many smaller-scale examples of bipartisanship. Perhaps the most important is Democratic participation in the Senate budget-writing process last session. Democrats Jim Hargrove and Sharon Nelson were at the table and their influence showed in the way social-service programs were financed. And then there was passage of education reform legislation, some bills with as many as 44 votes. State Sen. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup says it was proof bipartisanship is possible, he said. “I think a year ago people were skeptical and underestimated this coalition, but if you look at what happened and what we have done in the intervening year, we have delivered what we promised, and we have driven the agenda in the state of Washington to the benefit of Washington citizens, and we are going to come back in 2014 one member stronger.”
Biggest challenge right now for both parties in the Legislature is the negotiation of a transportation package. Members of the majority coalition are insisting on reforms in transportation spending that members of the Legislature’s Democratic caucuses are finding hard to swallow. Chief among them is an end to the sales tax on construction materials, a clever way to divert gas tax money to the general fund that has rankled fiscal conservatives for years. At Tuesday’s news conference, reporters peppered Senate leaders with questions, and their response was like that of weary parents on a car trip who have a small child in the back seat. They’ll get there when they get there.
Even bigger questions lie ahead. The numbers and makeup of the Senate are sure to change in the coming election – what happens if the Republicans pick up an additional seat? At that point the coalition won’t be necessary. Will it continue? Will the coalition attempt to recruit new members? Will it support Democratic candidates? And if the coalition falls into the minority, will the teamwork continue? And so on. It is unclear whether the coalition has a lifespan of more than a year.
But for now, with its survival apparently assured through 2015, coalition leaders say they are in good position to steer the Legislature to the middle in the coming session. Just think, Tom says – the talk going into 2014 is nothing like that of years past. “I think the great thing is coming into 2014, there is no talk of deficits, there is no talk about we’ve got to cut this or cut that, because we did the budget right. We used real numbers. We didn’t play games and we lived up to our principle that we were going to create a sustainable budget. And there is no better proof than in 2014, guess what? Coming back to Olympia there is no deficit.”
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