(gentle music) (pleasant music) - Good evening and welcome to the Candidate Forum.

My name is Ruvine Jimenez, and I am a member of the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin Counties.

The league is a nonpartisan organization that neither supports nor opposes candidates.

In presenting these forums, it is our goal to provide opportunities for voters to become better informed about the people who are running for public office.

The 2024 General Election Candidate Forums have been prerecorded in person by Northwest Public Broadcasting at WSU Tri-Cities.

They will be available through November 5th, general election day, on YouTube, the league's Facebook and website, on NWPB, and through the league's additional partners, the cities of Richland and Pasco, and the Columbia Basin Badger Club.

At this time, I would like to introduce our moderator, Matt Loveless, from the Murrow College of Communications at WSU Pullman.

Please welcome Matt.

- Hello, everybody.

And hello to those out there watching here on Northwest Public Broadcasting.

And thank you to the League of Women Voters.

Welcome to NWPB Vote 2024 coverage of legislative races here in Washington.

I like to call these snapshots, as we'll address three races in three separate districts over the next hour.

And before we begin, we'd like to remind viewers, the views expressed in the following program are those of the candidates on stage and do not necessarily represent the views of Northwest Public Broadcasting and/or the League of Women Voters of Benton-Franklin Counties.

And we mentioned we're here on the WSU Tri-Cities campus in Richland.

WSU Tri-Cities is located on shared traditional homelands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation.

All right, so here's how today's program will work.

We have a series of questions from the League of Women Voters of Benton-Franklin County.

All candidates will have time for 60-second responses to those questions.

We do have a bit longer for closing statements when the candidates will get a chance to wrap up their thoughts.

It will go quickly.

But as moderator, within the time parameters of this program, I do reserve the right to include more questions or adjust some of our time parameters.

We'll see when we get there.

Of course, we just wanna do our best to stay on time and on topic for the sake of this program.

Now, let's introduce you to the candidates for the 8th district representative, position 2.

The 8th district represents a portion of Benton County.

And joining us today are April Connors, who is here a couple of years ago, ahead of her first term in the position, and John Christenson, a former fire district commissioner, currently chair of the 8th District Democrats.

We wanna thank you both for being here today.

We appreciate your time.

As we mentioned, no opening statements, but as we usually use this time to talk about some priorities, let's go ahead and do that with our first question.

Ms. Connors, we'll start with you.

In your opinion, what's the greatest priority in the 8th legislative district and how would you advocate for it?

- Well, right now, I would say there are a number of priorities because we have a critical crisis in Washington state, especially when it comes to affordability.

So we have a crisis when it comes to housing, we have a crisis when it comes to gas prices, grocery prices, we have a childcare crisis.

So I think there is a catalog of crisis that's really happening right now in Washington state.

I am the assistant ranking member on the House Housing Committee.

And for me, housing has been a top priority.

It was a priority when I ran two years ago.

It's been a priority for me when I was in the house this year.

And it has been where I've been able to accomplish a lot of things, including the passage of a bill recently on affordable housing on Department of Natural Resources Land.

We are trying very hard in the state to create more housing.

We're going to be about a million units short in the next 20 years.

And that crisis also affects Washington state.

It affects the Tri-Cities and it affects the folks that are living here.

- Thank you, Ms. Connors.

Chance to dig into some of those issues here today.

Mr. Christenson, what's your biggest priority for the 8th district moving forward?

- My biggest priority is to gain effective representation for the 8th legislative district.

Because for more than 40 years, Democrats have been in control in Washington state.

The governor has been a Democrat for the last 40 years and very likely will again be a Democrat because Bob Ferguson, not Bob Ferguson number two or three, Bob Ferguson, the attorney general, is running and very likely will succeed Governor Inslee.

It's pretty difficult for a Republican in the legislature to be effective when all the decisions and the decision-making, the discussions, the writing and amending of bills is performed in the Democratic caucus.

- All right, Mr. Christenson, thank you very much.

Let's move on to our second question really briefly here on the topic of property tax increase and the limits on them in the state of Washington.

Washington law caps increases in property taxes at 1%.

Mr. Christenson, we'll start with you here.

Should cities be allowed to consider raising property taxes between that current 1% limit and why or why not?

- Well, I don't think that any increase in the property tax is needed.

Property taxes are high enough as they are.

- [Matt] All right, you have 40 seconds, is that your time, sir?

- That's all I have to say.

I'd be against increasing the property tax.

- All right, Ms. Connor, same question to you, especially as cities try to manage those budgets.

- Sure, and I think that most of our cities, our schools, everyone is in a crisis financially because of the price of everything that has gone up so much, from insurance costs to the cost of salaries, to just the cost of living generally.

I know Association of Washington Cities, it was a priority of theirs last year to try to increase the property taxes where the cities could add an additional 3% onto home buyers' property sales tax bill.

However, in Washington state, it has been a fundamental voice of the people of the State of Washington not to increase them more than 1%.

And I have stood with the people who agree with that.

I do find that our cities are in need.

I think there's a lot of confusion within our residents on what property taxes mean and how they're taxed because we've seen the increases that we've received.

I know in the last two years, I've had a 40% increase on my personal home, but I don't know that we do a really good job as a state explaining how those increases happen.

And so that's something I think we could get better at.

- All right, Ms. Connors, thank you very much.

All right, let's move on to- - Could I add to what I said?

- Sorry, just for the sake of the format of the program, we'll get a chance at some closing statements if you'd like to add or clarify to one of your statements.

- I understand and I appreciate the format and this opportunity.

- All right, thank you, Mr. Christenson.

All right, let's move on to question number three.

Now, let's talk homelessness here, because Washington's homeless rate has increased pretty steadily for the past eight years.

In fact, the Department of Commerce said that the rate increased 9% from 2022 to 2023.

In a recent report, a federal report released this year has Washington with the sixth highest rate in the country.

So, Ms. Connors, we'll start with you here, what do you see is the state's role in combating homelessness?

- The state has been working on the encampment issue, which you might be aware of or might not be aware of.

Washington state right now I have the number, we are the fourth in the nation with the largest homeless population.

I do believe that there are a lot of reasons for homelessness.

Some of it comes to cost of living, some of it comes to the addiction crisis that we're having in our communities right now.

And I do believe we need to do a lot more focus on mental health and helping with recovery.

And that's why in the 8th district and the 16th and the 15th and beyond, we worked really hard the last two years to bring money back home to the Tri-Cities to help fund our recovery center that we're trying to be leading the state of Washington in.

I think the more we can do to help folks in crisis and get off of the streets and help them get the help they need in order to succeed and recover is really where we need to be focused in the State of Washington right now.

- [Matt] All right, Ms. Connors, thank you very much.

Mr. Christenson, same question to you.

What do you see is the state's role in combating homelessness?

- Well, I appreciate what Representative Connors had to say on the matter.

And I certainly agree that the state has an important role in helping people who are in need and, of course, homeless people.

That's all.

- All right, thank you very much, Mr. Christenson.

Let's move on to our fourth question here.

As we approach the time to vote in this election, actually seeks your opinion on the reliability of those vote counts.

The question, we'll start with you Mr. Christenson, what is your level of trust in the election process and will you abide by the results in this election regardless of the reported outcome of the vote tallies?

- Yes, I will.

I participated in the election observing which was conducted by the Benton County Election Department.

By the way, you misspoke, Matt, when you described the 8th LD.

Of course, there's been redistricting here.

There's actually a part of Franklin County in the new 8 legislative district.

I also should correct your statement and I hope it was not wrong of me to state among my elected experience that I, it says, "chair, 8th Legislative District Democratic Organization."

And indeed I chaired that organization for nearly three years and wrote the bylaws.

But I am no longer the chair.

That is, however, part of my elected experience.

- All right, and I'd like to turn that question to Ms. Connors here.

What level of trust do you have in the election process?

And would you abide by the results of the election regardless of how those initial vote tallies come out?

- Yeah, starting with the end of your question, yes, I will always abide by the vote tallies that come out from our election system.

Regarding the first question, I have toured our auditor's office and know personally the auditors in Benton and Franklin counties.

My tour with Benton County included going through the voter system, how it works, how the ballots come in, how they are checked by hand first and by eyes on those signatures, on those voter cards.

I think the recent recount of the Public Lands Commissioner race showed that our voting system was very fairly intact.

The results came out with just a couple variances on each side of those ballots.

And I think they did a really good job to have not very much disparity.

So I do have faith in our voting system.

- Thank you, Ms. Connors.

Appreciate it.

And we do have a little bit more time.

I wonder if we can reset the clocks just at one minute.

And I wanna ask about that redistricting, 'cause you did bring up a portion of Franklin County.

In fact, many parts of the 14th, 15th, 16th have all done this as well.

And so we'll start with you, Mr. Christenson.

Just how has the redistricting, in your opinion, changed your constituency here in the district?

- Hanford used to be in the 8th legislative district, but, of course, there are not very many voters that live out on the Hanford site.

The main shift has been from the north part of Richland, north of Yakima River, which has been moved into the 16th and replaced in the 8th legislative district of ours by a big part of West Richland.

The south part of West Richland also.

So the 8th LD goes along the Columbia River from the Cable Bridge and it goes to the Yakima River where the Yakima flows into the Columbia.

And then it goes roughly west from that point all the way over to the edge of the county.

But nearly everybody is in Kennewick, that's number one, Richland, and West Richland.

- All right, thank you, Mr. Christenson.

Ms. Connors, in your view, how has the redistricting changed your constituency in the 8th?

- It has not changed the number of people.

Each district has the same number of people, roughly around 150,000.

But it has significantly changed where they're located.

We used to have all of Richland in the 8th district, half of Kennewick, and about half of Pasco.

Now we have all of Kennewick, half of Richland, and about a quarter of Pasco.

It has changed, like my opponent said, significantly with the North Richland area, which makes me a little bit sad, but a lot of my constituents live in other districts that work in this area.

I feel it was a big change.

It shifted about 35,000 voters out of the 8th district and into a different district.

I'm a little bit sad, like I said, because we lost some things we've really been fighting for in the 8th district, including nuclear power by not having part of the Hanford reservation.

We've lost PNNL, our national lab out of our district.

We've lost WSU Tri-Cities, we've lost CBC.

So there was a lot of things that we really work on with capital budget and other things.

And capital budget is typically run through districts.

And so not to be able to help bring money back home for those was important to us.

- All right, thank you very much, Ms. Connors.

We're standing in one of those places right now that was redistricted out of the 8th.

All right, so before we go, we are aware we can't get to every topic, (chuckles) but we do wanna get some closing statements from both of you, a chance to give each of you your own last word here in this debate.

Ms. Connors, we're gonna set the clock at 90 seconds for a closing statement.

Your time is now.

- Sure, thank you.

Thank you so much.

I have enjoyed being the state representative for the 8th legislative district for the last two years and I'm hoping to be able to serve for two more years.

I am a mother, I have four children, one still in public school districts here in the State of Washington, and in Southridge, specifically, Schools and Tritech Skill Center.

I'm married to a farmer.

We farm acreage north of the Tri-Cities.

And I'm a real estate agent by trade.

I have spent the last two years in the Washington State House being the assistant ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, which has been very important to the Tri-Cities to help bring dollars home.

The Appropriations Committee is the state's operating budget, which is the largest budget in the state.

It's a $72 billion budget.

And then I'm also, like I said earlier, the assistant ranking member on the House Housing Committee where I've done a lot of work and will continue to make affordable housing a priority if I'm elected again this next term.

I also serve on consumer protection and business, which works with insurance companies and auto dealers and licensing law in the State of Washington.

I have worked very hard with our surrounding districts.

We have what we call the Hub in the Tri-Cities where we work together to try to bring good things home.

In the last two years, we're able to bring about $95 million home to our area and we'll continue, hopefully, with that good work together, working as a team, dividing committees, and trying to make sure that the Tri-Cities is very well represented in the state legislature.

- All right, Ms. Connors, thank you so much.

And Mr. Christenson, your 90 seconds for a closing statement.

- Thank you, Matt.

And thank you to the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin Counties and to the Northwest Public Broadcasting.

This is a great chance and I appreciate this opportunity to talk to my voters.

As I said at the beginning, it's very important to have a Democrat represent us in the legislature because it's the Democrats there who call the shots.

And it has long been so.

Unfortunately, it's long been the case that the 8th legislative district has been represented by Republicans.

Now, with me as your representative, I would be able to engage effectively with my fellow Democrats in talking about, formulating, writing, and, of course, passing, approving the bills by the majority.

The Democrats have a nearly 60% majority in the state legislature, in the House of Representatives.

I would be much, much better able to achieve good things for the 8th legislative district as a Democrat than any Republican.

- Mr. Christenson.

Thank you, Ms. Connors.

Thank you so much for being here today.

And that does it for our quick time with candidates in this race for 8th district representative, position 2.

Well, that gives us a chance to move to another district in the region, District 14, another one of a few that were redrawn this year.

District 14 now covers the southernmost portion of Benton County stretching north to parts of Kennewick.

And just a little explanation as we begin this one.

We reached out to all of the 14th district candidates, including both races for 14th representative.

Not everybody could attend.

I'll explain how we'll handle that in a moment.

But, first, I wanna talk about the races that exist for representative.

In position 1, Sunnyside's Chelsea Dimas faces off against former Grandview Mayor Gloria Mendoza.

And in position 2, we've got Wapato CPA Deb Manjarrez and Ana Ruiz Kennedy out of Pasco.

Ms. Manjarrez and Ms. Mendoza could not make it.

So I wanna be clear at the outset of this, Chelsea Dimas and Ana Ruiz Kennedy are here.

They are not running against each other, both are running as Democrats.

So for the purposes of getting to know you a little bit better, we'll consider this more of an open forum than a debate.

So let's move on to question one.

Instead of opening statements, we like to get right to the topics of concern for our League of Women Voters here in Benton and Franklin County.

One minute responses for each of these for now.

We'll get that clock set up.

Now, after canvassing and speaking with potential constituents, question is, what do you now believe is the biggest priority and/or the biggest challenge in the 14th legislative district?

Ms. Dimas, we'll go with you first.

- Yeah, it's really hard to kinda sum it up with one big one, but I would definitely say that affordable housing and cost of living, I think they both go hand in hand and I would say is one of the top priorities for our community and for my campaign as well.

And so I'm really looking to explore different legislation that could help with that.

I know there was a bill that was presented this last session.

It was a rent stabilization bill.

And I think that could help several people in our community because many people are renters.

But I wanna work to make sure that people stay in their homes, whether they rent or own.

So I'm gonna be working with all community, all stakeholders to ensure that affordable housing continues to be a priority for our working people here in the 14th.

Thank you.

- All right, thank you very much and welcome to this forum.

Ms. Ruiz Kennedy, same question to you.

- Thank you for inviting us tonight.

And it's very similar to what Chelsea has heard.

I've been canvassing, what, for close to five months, and not one person has been able to tell me what their position does or that even exist.

But what they do say is that it feels like they, something is not working for them.

So those are one of the challenges that we have.

They also speak about the housing and the cost of living.

And that's something that I'm looking forward to working with my caucus and my colleagues in a bipartisan way because this is something that affects everybody.

So those are the things that I would like to work on this coming session.

Thank you.

- All right, thank you very much and welcome to you as well.

And our second question, obviously, is we get a number of representatives and senators up here talking about bills they sponsored and the pride they have in many of those.

We'll start with you, Ms. Ruiz Kennedy, first here.

If elected, what is one area of emphasis that you intend to introduce or support coming up in this legislative session?

- Well, housing is important.

That's something that there's a lot of support and I think bipartisan support.

I would like to participate in that and bring that to not only, again, our region but the whole state it would benefit from that work.

I was at a disabilities forum, and that's something that I see a lot and we're hearing from parents that that's something that they haven't been able to get those services addressed and in a more robust way.

And I think there's also some bipartisan support to address disability services.

- All right, thank you very much.

Same question to you, Ms. Dimas.

- Well, I think there's a plethora of bills (chuckles) that I just wanna hop on and support.

There's just so many things I wanna do for the people of the 14th.

I think one of the biggest things I've been a part of since before launching my campaign is really workers' rights and labor issues.

I've been able to join folks of UFW and our Catholic healthcare workers on the front lines.

And a couple of bills that have I guess stood out to me specifically, one is the unemployment benefits for strikers.

Unfortunately, that bill did not pass the Senate.

I believe it's HB 1839.

It's definitely a bill.

I would love to be able to push and make sure that we can pass it this upcoming session.

So anything really surrounding labor and ensuring that we're also protecting not just, you know, that we're protecting all workers, which includes folks that are currently dealing with undocumented status.

So thank you.

- All right, Ms. Dimas, thank you very much.

All right, let's move on to question number three.

And we're talking homelessness for this one.

In the concept of low or no-barrier, homeless shelters which don't have requirements for guests who stay there, would you support low or no-barrier homeless shelters in the 14th district?

And why or why not?

Ms. Dimas.

- Yeah, I think when we're talking about affordable housing and cost of living, I think that needs to include our unhoused neighbors.

A lot of the times, many folks have been desensitized to them.

They're part of our community.

And I believe that if we're gonna be helping folks, then we need to help everybody.

So I would definitely support efforts to ensure that our folks that are currently struggling with homelessness have a place to go and a place to get back on their feet and be able to find employment, be able to deal with whatever issues that put them on the streets.

I'm ready to tackle whatever issues necessary and I wanna make sure we're addressing them at the root cause.

And a lot of the times, it has to do with some sort of mental illness or substance abuse.

Sometimes people tend to think that it's just because they wanna be there.

And that's frankly not true.

The cost of living has affected all of us, and for some folks, unfortunately, it's led them to homelessness.

So I will support any efforts to ensure we're supporting them as well.

- And Ms. Ruiz Kennedy, same question.

- Yes, I echo what Chelsea is saying.

I was door-knocking at this household.

He is a retired farm worker and he was just moving in and he didn't have anything there.

He had just been offered housing.

And he was worried because he's been sleeping in his van and in different locations.

He was priced out of renting.

So he was homeless and houseless for almost a year.

So he was worried that he was going, where was he gonna spend his winter?

And I realized that there is many, many people in that situation.

I support opening access and removing those barriers for those our neighbors that are unhoused.

- All right, thank you very much.

All right, let's move on to question number four.

Feels like a lightning round a little bit, doesn't it?

This one's on the topic of artificial intelligence.

A lot of different ways to answer this I'm sure.

But the state addressed this to a degree last legislative session, passing some bills, they made it illegal to create and distribute AI-generated explicit images.

The other created a task force here in the state.

Ms. Ruiz Kennedy, you're up first.

If elected, would you sponsor or support a piece of AI legislation and what would you want that to look like?

- Absolutely.

I think AI has its benefits, but also that is taking some of the creative aspects that we create as humans and allocating to something that wasn't created by a human.

So I think that is something that is very important for the legislature to weigh into this.

And I don't necessarily know what the details are, but I think that's something that we need to tackle at the state and the federal level.

- All right.

Ms. Dimas, same question to you.

In terms of AI legislation, what would a bill that you would support look like?

- Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, AI is not on my top of my list.

I think that the people of the 14th are really focused on affordable housing, cost of living, education, making sure that we have K-12 funding, as well as worker and labor issues.

I definitely am on board.

I think AI can definitely be a tool that many different industries can use.

I myself work in coms, and so sometimes I find myself using ChatGPT if necessary, if I'm having writer's block 'cause I do a lot of writing every day.

So I think it's important that we keep an eye on it and making sure that it's not being used in a way that could be harmful to our communities.

But like I said, it's not a top priority for me at this moment.

I just wanna make sure that our people here in the 14th are doing more than just surviving but thriving.

So thank you.

- Thank you.

And I'm gonna add a fifth question here.

We'll get the clocks back at one minute for responses for these.

As we talk about funding for public education and we hear about some of the issues with that at districts across the state, what would you say in terms of your advocacy for funding for public education?

Ms. Dimas, we'll start with you.

- Yeah, so I definitely think keeping our educational systems and school districts funded is a top priority.

I definitely think that the State of Washington has a regressive tax code.

So I think we need to be exploring other creative sources of revenue.

But I definitely wanna make my stance clear in terms of the capital gains tax.

I will be voting against repealing it.

I believe that it would be detrimental to our education.

We are already dealing with budget cuts across our district and we are struggling to keep our teachers, to keep essential staff, whether it's cooks, janitors, anyone that's serving our kids.

I mean, honestly, they're all essential.

So I wanna make sure that we have funding in place, that our most vulnerable kids have access, just like anybody else, to a great education, to great staff and resources.

- All right, thanks, Ms. Dimas.

Ms. Ruiz Kennedy, same question about what it would look like in terms of your priorities in funding public education.

- Washington state has not been able to meet and fully fund public education as it is.

And we're gonna be facing some challenges.

I think as it is right now, so I also wanna echo what Chelsea was talking about, voting no on the initiative, it would be so detrimental to our budget.

We hear from teachers, from parents, and all the staff, how are we gonna be doing, capital gains tax, it came to me now, (chuckles) how are we gonna be funding?

As it is right now going into the session, we have some challenges that we will be facing.

So I think I would encourage anybody that is listening to this to really examine what these initiatives would do and how would that impact our budget.

- All right, thank you very much.

Well, let's have some time for some closing statements here.

We'll make it 90 seconds for these.

So you can get one last word in for each of yourselves.

And we'll start with Ms. Ruiz Kennedy.

The time is yours, a 90-second closing statement, please.

- Thank you.

Thank you again for inviting us and for putting this together.

What I understand it's you've been doing this for close to 40 years.

So this is a really good tool that you have given the candidates and elected officials to get our message out to the voters.

For me, I've been serving in the community for 15 years.

I am offering my experience and my qualifications to be of service to the people of the 15th, 14th legislative district, I'm sorry.

And so if you would like to be involved, you can go to anaruizkennedy.com.

And thank you.

Don't forget to vote.

- Thank you.

Ms. Dimas, your closing statement.

- Yeah, I just wanna say thank you so much for having me and having us again and really taking advantage of this opportunity to inform our voters.

I think it's very important that voters pay attention to who shows up to every forum.

I know for me it's been a priority to try to show up to everything as possible, even if it means that it feels a little bit like I'm on tour because we're going (chuckles) all over the district.

For me, as I've mentioned, I'm a long-time servant leader.

I'm proud to serve on the Washington State Human Rights Commission.

I'm a proud daughter of immigrant farm workers from Mexico.

And I use a lot of my lived experience and my professional experience really to be a tool to relate with our community.

This community has been needing change for a very long time.

And now more than ever, we have this opportunity to elect people that look and speak the languages of the majority of this district.

I will be fighting for everybody, but I really wanna emphasize that because folks here have been dealing with language barriers, with cultural barriers, with lots of discrimination in different sectors.

And I'm just here to make sure that all people here in District 14 are thriving.

And I'm here for our workers.

I'm here to make sure that families have everything that they need.

And I wanna make sure that you have a strong voice in Olympia.

So I hope I can count on your vote.

Thank you so much - And thank you both.

Appreciate you making this one of your tour stops.

We appreciate (both candidates laugh) having your voices here on this program.

And that does it for our time with the candidates here in the 14th district.

A reminder, they're not running against each other.

Chelsea Dimas will be on the ballot against Gloria Mendoza for position 1.

Ana Ruiz Kennedy will face off against Deb Manjarrez for position 2.

Once again, thanks both for being here.

And that brings us to our final race in this program as we explore the 15th district.

Joining me are Chris Corry, 14th district representative prior to the redrawn boundaries in the region, a topic we'll get to, and challenger Chase Foster.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your time.

We've got six scheduled questions and 90-second responses for them.

Are we ready to go?

- Absolutely.

- All right.

Well, we've mentioned a lack of opening statements here, but the first one from the league is intentionally broad.

And, frankly, it's what prompted you to run for this position?

And Mr. Corry, as somebody who's technically in a new district, you're up first.

- All right, excellent.

Well, first of all, thank you to the league for having us.

Thanks for hosting this.

I ran originally in 2018 because I saw a lot of struggles that people in my age category, right?

We had young children, we were trying to own a home, run careers and make all that work.

And I wanted to make sure that those voices were heard in Olympia.

Too often, with what a part-time legislature is, it can be difficult for people in the middle of your career, you know, with a family, with kids in school, to be able to set time aside every year to go to Olympia to advocate for those things.

So that was one of the reasons I stepped in.

I was also very concerned about the shift of where our state was headed.

My wife and I had lived in California for a number of years and saw how that increasing tax and regulatory burden made it nearly impossible to own a home, to raise a family.

And I didn't want Washington to follow that path.

Those were a couple of the reasons I ran.

I also was a foster and adoptive parent at the time and really concerned about the state of our foster care system, and still am, making sure that the kids that come into state care are taken care of.

It was really a variety of issues, but really just wanted to get involved.

We are a citizen government, and I think it's important that people stand up and step into those roles.

- All right, thank you very much and welcome.

Mr. Foster, same question to you.

What prompted you to run for this election cycle?

- Well, I have wanted to see more moderates in office since I ever voted.

I have been watching both the Republicans and the Democrats draw further and further apart, less willing to work together.

And there are people like me that look at these two parties and don't see themselves represented.

And I know that especially people in my group, the millennials, are coming in and not seeing what they want to see.

We're not seeing our problems get solved, seeing housing get worse and more expensive.

We're seeing problems with school safety and community safety, with police reforms that quite frankly aren't helping our communities.

And we just, we're not doing well enough.

We're not doing what we need to do and Democrats are doing basically whatever they want and Republicans aren't creating moderate enough policies to actually draw them towards the center.

And so I want to be someone that can work between both parties and actually make a difference.

Create policies that Democrats can't attack out of hand, because they're Republican policies, and show Republicans, especially in our districts, that there are policies that Democrats can get behind as well that help us create a more moderate and successful set of solutions for Washington.

- All right, Mr. Foster, thank you very much.

Welcome for you as well.

Our second question as we get specifically into the 15th legislative district and you talk about some of those challenges and working together over here in Eastern Washington.

Is there any particular issue that you think the legislature needs to work on that will be a challenge here in the 15th?

Mr. Foster, we'll let you go first here.

- Just one.

No.

Well, from what I just said, - Just do one, I mean- - I appreciate that.

I would start with community safety.

School shootings have been on the rise in the entire country.

And that is something that I cannot abide by.

The entire thought that something could happen like that to my children, the thought that I did not do something stronger to stop that is appalling to me.

I would blame myself for the rest of my life.

Even if right now the security, everything worked perfectly, they're still happening.

Also, we have police that are unable to do their jobs.

We have restrictions on their ability to make stops, arrests, to pursue people who they know are actively committing crimes, and we're seeing our safety go down.

I also see tremendous problems with housing.

We're seeing the affordability crisis skyrocket, which caused a whole host of following problems from inflation to homelessness.

And these are problems that aren't getting solved right now.

And quite frankly, we have two parties in the legislature that they're so far apart on their answers that there are perfectly good reasonable answers in the middle that everybody could come together for, but aren't.

And no one's proposing them.

And someone needs to come in there and actually do that.

- Thank you, Mr. Foster.

And Mr. Corry, same question to you.

Any particular challenging issue here in the 15th and how you'd solve that?

- Yeah, I think there's a variety.

I couldn't agree more with my opponent Chase.

I think when it comes to public safety, we've had a huge setback in our state really starting in 2020 moving on where we have done a lot to literally handcuff our police from doing their jobs.

Now, fortunately, we're slowly getting those back because, just the public outcry over what we had done.

Obviously, I voted against those things.

So we're starting to see that swing back most notably with police pursuits.

And now we have candidates talking about funding law enforcement, where just two years ago we were talking about how we can defund the police.

Obviously, very opposed to that.

Agree on housing.

We have one of the most expensive states in the country to build a home because we continue to add layers of bureaucracy, fees, costs, and challenges in order to build those.

Permitting alone now costs upwards of $10,000 for the average home because of the increase of things that we keep adding on to make it more difficult to build a house.

Our new rules being put in place by the building code counselor are gonna increase those as well.

I've opposed those increase in costs, fees, restrictions.

I think we need to continue to pull those back to make it more easy.

I actually proposed a bill for multi-family housing in rural areas and was met (chuckles) by opposition by environmental groups out of Western Washington because they don't want rural Washington to develop.

And I think that's just one of the many challenges we're gonna have to continue to face in Olympia.

- All right, thank you very much.

All right, let's move on to question three.

And we touched on this in the introduction, I promised we'd talk about it, but redrawing of the district map has changed a number of things.

A scan of some of previous statements show there are some strong opinions about that.

And we'll start with you again, Mr. Corry.

How has redistricting affected the 15th district and in particular the priorities and the constituents in the district?

- Okay, well, I'm gonna get to the why or the redistricting here in a moment.

I will say that as a legislator currently in the 14th, now serving in the 15th, I've never really looked at my boundaries as who I serve and don't serve.

I serve the entire Yakima Valley.

And now I get the opportunity with the 15th to go into the Tri-Cities.

So whether you are in my side of the line or not, I cared about what was going on in Olympia and still will.

I mean, for one example, if you look at the Yakama Nation, I've had the entire Yakama Nation in the 14th, now I won't, but I'm still gonna be involved in working with them and helping with their issues in Olympia, along with everybody else in the valley.

The redistricting issue is still not settled, it's still in court.

I think it was a travesty.

I don't think it was an appropriate move because we have, essentially, now we took a district, the 15th then that was majority Latino, and made it less Latino, as well as intentionally kicked out a state senator who was Latina, all for political reasons, not for actual representation reasons.

And I think that that is really sad and disappointing, especially when we have a state redistricting commission that should be the envy of the nation in terms of how bipartisan it should work.

And for that to be underhanded this way I think was unfortunate.

But, again, in the end, I'm still gonna serve all the constituents and make sure that the entire Yakama Valley as well as the Tri-Cities are well represented in Olympia.

- All right, thank you.

Mr. Foster, the same question, just about your perspective on how the redistricting has changed the 15th.

- On this, actually, Chris and I completely agree, I think it was terrible.

And it was very obviously politically motivated.

The arguments put in place to do the redistricting was that because it was the Hispanic majority area and because Hispanics voted in lesser percentages than non-Hispanics, that it was technically gerrymandering.

Okay, that's a reasonable argument.

You can see where maybe some of those lines could be moved to make a greater majority Hispanic district.

And then the new district is actually less Hispanic than the previous one.

(laughs) The only argument made in favor of the new one was that the native population and the Hispanic population were more likely to agree on political matters than non-native and non-Hispanic.

I mean, I've met a lot of Hispanics and a lot of natives, and I don't think they're always on the same page.

(chuckles) It's very politicized.

It was the Democratic Party finding a way to sidestep our, quite frankly, very progressive redistricting system in order to get a liberal judge to come down and redraw the districts, in order to try and squeeze out a purple district out of what everybody is very knowledgeable on the fact that Eastern Washington is generally red.

And so while I'm running as a moderate, it doesn't change the fact that that redistricting was clearly biased, and I have a huge problem with it.

- All right, thank you, Mr. Foster.

All right, let's move on to our fourth question from the League of Women Voters of Benton-Franklin County.

We'll keep it pretty straightforward.

Mr. Foster, right back to the top with you here.

As abortion is a big conversation happening nationally and here in the state, should abortion be a state or a federal issue and why?

- Hmm.

Well, I believe it should probably be a federal issue, but if the federal government isn't going to step in, then I, and I believe it's Washington's duty to protect it, I'm not personally a very big fan of abortion.

I have four kids and I couldn't have possibly made that choice, but I don't believe that the government or anybody working for the government is qualified to make that choice for any family.

And so based on that alone, I do not believe that we should be allowed to set bans on how families make their family planning decisions.

And because of that, I can't imagine, I have two daughters, and I can't imagine them ever having to make that decision.

But if they did, I want them to have their choices open to them.

And because of that, if the federal government isn't going to protect it, I expect and would encourage Washington to, whether or not it's I or Chris up there in Olympia.

But I would personally prefer it to be national because there are daughters in Idaho or Texas that I believe deserve the same protections that I want mine to have.

- All right, Mr. Foster, thank you very much.

Mr. Corry, same question to you.

- Well, I think it's appropriate with the states, I think it's the state level decision.

That way, states like Idaho can choose what level they wanna set abortion or lack of abortion at, and Washington can as well.

I have been pro-life, I've run on being pro-life from the moment I got into this six years ago.

Washington was one of the first states to legalize abortion.

It does have abortion protections in place up to, you know, I think probably not as restricted as I would be.

It's definitely not like some other states that go all the way till birth.

I think that the states have a right to set their own restrictions and limits.

And, frankly, states do need to make sure that they're providing services and care for people so that if they choose life they can see help.

My wife and I are both very active with the Life Choices in Yakima.

We wanna help moms and dads who are facing unplanned pregnancies choose life and then have the tools and services for them to be successful going forward.

I would love to see that expand to more statewide policy.

We're falling behind in terms of foster care in our state.

We're losing more foster care parents than we're gaining.

My wife and I, we took up the mantle because we said we're pro-life, we're gonna do something about it.

So we fostered and adopted.

And I hope more families choose that.

And I would love to be a state that is more welcoming of life and more willing to help out and make sure that those moms and dads have the tools and support they need to be successful.

- All right, thank you very much.

Let's move on to our next question.

And this one's about budget priorities, areas where we're spending too much, too little, maybe spending in the wrong places.

Mr. Corry, what would your priorities be for a state budget moving forward?

- Well, it's a great question.

So I actually am currently the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.

So I get to sit and look at our operating budget.

And we have had record revenue growth over the last 12 years.

As a matter of fact, our state budget has more than doubled.

We're spending in a lot of very important areas, education being one of them.

That is probably, our biggest budget item is on K-12 education.

I think that there's some areas we need to move there.

Right now, we have an arbitrary cap on special education funding that is significantly impacting schools in Eastern Washington.

I would remove that cap.

We had proposals that would do that to make sure that special education funding was funded at 100% of kids who need it.

I think public safety is another one.

And for the state level, I think the biggest issue is around our court systems.

We need to make sure that we're funding courts and public defenders.

We need to do a much better job at that, especially now with the new decision from the state supreme court that basically mandates caps on public defenders.

We need to make sure that we have enough public defenders in our courts, as well as enough prosecuting attorneys and support there across the state for crime support.

I think those are two big areas.

We don't need new taxes, we don't need new spending.

Again, I can't think of many whose families whose budgets have doubled in the last 10 years, but the states has had record revenue growth, and we just need to make sure we're spending it appropriately.

- All right, thank you very much.

Mr. Foster, your spending priorities for the State of Washington?

- Well, addressing most of the issues that I've talked about today, one, we need better training and expansion of police departments to actually do all the things that we ask them to do.

Their duties have expanded to include mental health crises.

And that is something that is very different than the old traditional job of arrests and law enforcement.

And so we need to do a better job of supporting them so they can support our communities better.

Our education should rightly remain one of the largest spends we have in the state because that is a constitutional duty of our state to educate and prepare our children for the future.

And as such, that should be funded to the greatest level we can ever afford.

Housing needs to be expanded and most of the most successful programs are simply grant funding towards various housing developments or tax credits in order to build housing that is more affordable on the lower level, including smaller houses and apartments.

And as such, money needs to be put aside for that.

Oh, let's see here, we could go on and on, but I think, I think we're going to stop there because I think that's enough priorities to keep Washington spending money for the next 10 years.

- All right, thank you very much, Mr. Foster.

And we're gonna elaborate on that a little bit, honestly, with our sixth question here.

You don't have to look far to find communities cutting budgets in schools, cutting staffing in schools.

You both mentioned that you wanted to find more funding for education.

So I guess I'll turn that question into how, what do we need to do in order to get more money for our schools?

Mr. Foster.

- Well, part of it is the way that we fund our education.

It's usually by student, by full-time employee.

It's a bucket system.

The state says you get this much money based on these many needs and percentages.

And it gets a big lump sum down to the schools.

And recently, especially we've seen in Yakima, hundreds of positions were cut simply because the populations went down.

We have less kids in school, less people are having kids, which is sort of an interesting problem to have because we simply don't need as many teachers.

But that doesn't change the fact that if we let those services decline, if we let all these teachers go, we're going to lose a resource that our kids desperately need.

And so we're going to have to change the funding structure to address that and maintain these positive relationships with teachers and these excellent sources of knowledge that are going to bring our kids into competitiveness in the future.

There's going to have to be at least somewhat of an overhaul in how we give our money to our communities to spend on education.

- All right, Mr. Foster, thank you very much.

And Mr. Corry, same question to you.

How do we find that money for schools?

- Yeah, well, I do think we need to look at our prototypical school model.

That's the model that Mr. Foster mentioned.

It needs to be updated.

It hasn't been updated in a while.

I also agree, if you have less students, you need to adjust and allocate your resources differently.

I think a lot of parents have pulled their kids out of public schools for a variety of reasons.

I can say that as a parent who pulled my kids out of public schools because I saw what was going on in Olympia with regards to teaching what I think is some wholly inappropriate stuff in our schools.

And I didn't want my kids to be part of it.

And it's funny 'cause I had talked to my teachers and stuff.

And they were like, "We're not gonna teach this stuff here."

And I said, "I get that, and I loved our local schools, but I wanted to send a message to Olympia that these were my kids, not theirs, and that I wasn't gonna be part of a system that basically spent more time focusing on things outside of basic education."

And right now parents are seeing the results of that.

We have some terrible, terrible outcomes in terms of kids being able to do reading, math, and other things at grade level.

And yet here we are spending more and more money for worse results.

Unfortunately, the situation in Yakima is kids are being pulled out, they're being moved elsewhere and not coming back.

And you have to adjust your spending there.

Again, my priorities would be, if we're gonna address spending, put it in areas where we know we need to improve on, whether it's tutoring to catch up from the pandemic, math, science, those things, focus on those high priority areas and less on the other side skills if we're not meeting our basic education needs.

- All right, thank you very much.

All right, well, I mentioned we do have time for some closing statements.

That was six pretty quick questions there.

And we're gonna give 90 seconds for these closing statements.

Mr. Corry, back to the top of the order, so to speak, we'll let you have your closing, sir.

- All right, well, thank you again.

Thank you, Chase, for being here.

And thank you to the League of Women Voters for having us.

It's been a lot of fun being a state legislator.

(chuckles) I've really enjoyed it far more than I actually thought I would.

I really enjoy the work.

I love serving the people at Central Washington and Olympia.

And it's not just during session, it's year-round.

The best thing that I get to do as a legislator is help people and citizens who are having problems with state government cut through the red tape to get things done.

Whether it was, you know, if people struggle with getting their paid family medical leave done, if they're on unemployment and they're having trouble getting their unemployment started with ESD, that's what I like to do.

I love meeting with people, finding out what their problems are and fixing them.

Some of the legislation that I've passed is not anything that was my idea.

It was constituents who came and said, "I've got a problem with X.

This law needs to change."

And I said, "Okay, let's do it."

So that's been kinda my priority.

If elected, I wanna continue to serve in that regard.

I wanna make sure that we are a state that is spending our taxpayer funds wisely and in a financially responsible way.

I wanna continue to advocate for our way of life here in Central Washington.

Unfortunately, we've had a problem in Olympia with legislators on the west side who think they know better than we do on how to manage our lands, manage our people, and run our lives.

I wanna continue to be a voice that pushes back and says that we can manage ourselves over here.

Just because it works well for the Puget Sound area doesn't mean it works well in Eastern Washington.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Mr. Corry.

Mr. Foster, your closing statement.

- Well, thank you very much for having me and thank you for the opportunity to talk with all of you today.

This is the time I'm going to get to talk about being non-partisan and running without a party because this is a tremendous challenge and it means that I am uniquely in the situation where I could actually work with both parties and both parties would be forced to work with me in a way that they can't simply attack me offhand for not being blue or not being red.

And there are a lot of changes that Washington needs to make to make people better represented in the state.

And that includes things like ranked choice voting, solving our gerrymandering problem, (chuckles) finance reform, which actually Washington's on the higher end of that, but it doesn't change the fact that parties are given tremendous leeway in funding compared to people who aren't members of parties.

And because of that, people like me running without a party are significantly disadvantaged, which means that for all the independents and nonpartisan folk across the state, or even those who are in parties that aren't one of the two major parties, we are severely disadvantaged and our voices aren't being heard at the legislative level.

And because of that, I want to be able to come in, work with both parties constructively, stop the fighting that we have constantly seen that hasn't done anything for Washington, and actually build coalitions and create real solutions that Washington's, not just one party of Washington can support, but all of Washington can support and actually build back our communities and work together again.

- All right, thank you very much.

That does it for our time with these gentlemen.

Chris Corry, Chase Foster, candidates in the 15th district race.

We really appreciate your time here today.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

One more thank you to all of our candidates here.

League of Women Voters and NWPB's Vote 2024 is covering more than a dozen races so far in our series on ballots going out in Benton and Franklin County.

Now, a reminder, election day coming up on November 5th, October 18th is the date for ballots to be mailed out.

The deadline to register for mail voting is October 28th, but you can register in person all the way up to election day.

So that wraps up this program covering our legislative races.

If you happen to catch this on its first run, we do have one more show for you covering Franklin County.

And if you missed any of this or our other Vote 2024 debates, we do have those full programs online at Northwest Public Broadcasting on YouTube.

We thank you for joining us.

Thanks for wanting to find out more about those running to serve your community.

Have a great night.

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