Paul Queary

Donald Trump’s endorsement didn’t do much to enliven failed gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp’s dwindling ability to squeeze money out of his base of small conservative donors for his challenge to U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse. Despite getting the blessing of the grifter-in-chief in February, Culp took i…

Washington’s new political map has drawn another legal challenge, this time from the right, in a lawsuit that condemns a majority-Latino legislative district in the Yakima Valley as unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court was brought by Benancio Ga…

Plus: a truce in the weed wars, unionization for the Legislature’s staff, and more redistricting weirdness Today’s the day the big budget compromises get rolled out in the Legislature. The operating and capital budgets have been in closed-door negotiations for several days as lawmakers wrangled over…

We’re in the final week of the Legislature’s session when lawmakers must negotiate a complex deal to get out of town. Friday marked the last significant procedural deadline, for House bills to pass the Senate and vice versa. Nearly everything with a chance of passing has been approved by both the Ho…

That plan to tax gasoline and other fuels exported from Washington apparently isn’t going over too well in the places where the tax would be paid, especially Oregon. To review, the $16.8 billion transportation plan rolled out by majority Democrats last week included a 6-cent per-gallon tax on fuels …

Lawmakers are full of ideas this year about how to spend the state’s significant budget surplus, some of them with an eye fixed firmly on November’s election. We’ve seen proposals to eliminate the toll on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and lop a full percentage point off the sales tax, both from state Se…

We recently wrote about the politically fractious legal marijuana industry at The Washington Observer. Factions of the business are wrangling in Olympia over significant proposed changes to the way the industry operates and is regulated. One of the battlefields of the Weed Wars turns out to be the o…

Two significant proposed changes to Washington State elections that might dramatically alter the landscape of local races are moving through the Legislature. The larger proposed change is House Bill 1727, which would get rid of most elections in odd-numbered years. The bill’s sponsor, SeaTac Democra…

Last week the Wire reported that Lyft had dumped $2 million into a ballot initiative committee for an as-yet-to-be-filed measure. The Washington Coalition for Independent Work also includes Uber, Doordash, and Instacart. The gig-economy giants are hoping to get more favorable treatment at the state …

Sen. Reuven Carlyle, chair of the Senate Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee, announced Monday that he won’t seek reelection later this year. The Seattle Democrat is coming off a historic win after last year’s passage of the Climate Commitment Act, the state’s new cap and trade system for …

A California-based group has poured $160,000 into a campaign to aggressively revamp Seattle’s primary election system. That’s likely enough to collect the signatures necessary to put “approval voting” before Seattle voters later this year. Under that system, voters could choose as many candidates as…

Sen. Reuven Carlyle wants to pay you to upgrade that gas-powered leaf blower you’ve been using to clear your yard and antagonize your neighbors. Carlyle, D-Seattle, the chair of the Senate Environment, Energy & Technology, held a hearing this week for Senate Bill 5543, which he styled “cash for lawn…

The massive generational fight over America’s retail customers was on display in a House committee this week as name-brand brick-and-mortar retailers sparred with their rivals among the giants of online retail. At issue was House Bill 1614, which is aimed at reducing organized shoplifting of retail…

The state’s largest non-tribal gambling operator went to court Tuesday to try to overturn the monopoly on sports betting that the Legislature awarded to Washington State’s 29 Native American tribes. The lawsuit filed by attorneys for Maverick Gaming in the U.S. District Court for the District of Col…

The Sunday Observer is a weekly feature of The Washington Observer, the Wire’s new sister publication. For more of the Observer, check it out on Substack. Gov. Jay Inslee got a lot of ink out of his November trip to the climate summit in Glasgow, but we were more intrigued by a political side trip

As lawmakers convene, the real action is in the committees.