- My name is Angela Brown and my business is Brown Angel Skin & Hair, a plant-based clean beauty product line that features vintage black actresses on the labels.

My business is a micro business and I was concerned about taking that risk to get this new concept out.

The Comcast Rise grant is giving me an opportunity to take that risk and scale up my business and take it to the next level.

I feel that my business helps increase representation for black women on the shelf.

- [Announcer] With midterm elections almost behind us, the results suggest that Americans are ready for a change.

- I think people are really disillusioned with the federal government and how hard it is to create change at the federal level.

It's much easier, relatively speaking, to create change at the local level.

- [Announcer] And how can our country begin to close the political divide?

- If you focus on serving everyone in the community and not just people who already think like you, you're going to get insight that you didn't have before.

- [Announcer] This month on Civic Cocktail, we examine the lessons learned from the recent election.

- Hello and welcome to Civic Cocktail.

With our region and our nation counting votes from the Midterms and so many issues pulling us left, right, and upside down, it's time for some real talk about politics and power.

How is the political landscape changing?

When so much about our political process feels so messy, divisive, and even volatile, what does it take to win a race?

Bring about a new policy, or just lead?

Here to help us unpack these questions from the perspective of the elected official is my first guest, Girmay Zahilay.

He has served as King County Council member for District II, which stretches from the university district in Seattle, all the way to Skyway since 2020.

Girmay, thanks so much for joining us.

- My pleasure, thanks for having me here.

- Totally.

Well, to kick us off, you're sort of a social media sivant.

You've posted explainers there about things like how the county budget process works, the map of county governments, even answering viewer questions if they have it.

- Yep.

- Why do you do that?

- I got into this job so I can help people who are struggling the most and help people who have the least influence over government.

And if I want to do that, I need to be able to bring them in and have them know what King County even is.

I work at a level of government that a lot of people don't really know about, a level of government that sometimes feels a little bit removed, county government.

And so my goal is to meet people where they are.

If people are on social media, I want to use social media to open up the doors to county government, let them know what it even is, what levers do they have to pull in order to create change.

If people are in apartment complexes far south from the King County courthouse, I want to go over to those apartment complexes and hold town halls, just meeting people where they are and letting them know what government does so that they can use it as a tool to improve their communities.

- And in the case of these explainers, one would think that either there'd be some other way that they would know like how King County government works, why don't they know?

Why is that something that's that's removed?

To use your phrasing.

- There are no resources for this.

You know, if you wanna know what Congress does, you can google it and find out what Congress does, with King County or really any local government, there are way fewer resources than the federal government, for example.

So whatever we can do to just as an inside person, now I have a level of knowledge and understanding that's impossible to get unless you're on the inside, I want to share that knowledge.

- So give us an example of how that helps your work, that type of information sharing.

- I want to be a partner to community, I wanna be the legislative partner to community efforts because no one can tell you more about a community, the issues it faces and the solutions that those community members want than the people who are actually from that community, who live in these neighborhoods.

And so if I'm able to empower people and give them the tools to dictate their own futures, I think that's the most effective thing I can do.

Otherwise it would be me holding all this information in, gate keeping, wielding my power and making decisions for people.

That's not the type of council member I want be, I wanna be the person who says, "Hey, I'm on the inside now.,I have all this information, I'll be your mole.

Here's all the information, now let's use this position that I'm in to uplift the brilliance that already exists out in the community."

- Mm, so it's something about sharing information in order to share power.

- Exactly, yeah.

- So what does the public misunderstand about the political levers of power and what it takes to get things done?

Now you've got a couple years in this position.

- I think that, especially in our modern times, there is a disillusionment with politics in general, but I think people are really disillusioned with the federal government and how hard it is to create change at the federal level.

It's much easier, relatively speaking, to create change at the local level.

I think people's organizing efforts, people's voting, people marching, people having meetings with their council members and with their school board members, you're able to have a much bigger impact at the local level.

I don't think the system is as broken at the local level as it is at the federal level.

So, what do people misunderstand?

I think some people take their disillusionment with federal politics and apply that to local level and it has them disengage in a way that I don't think is necessarily the right move, because I do think change is possible at the local level.

- Well, that's good news, something is easier about politics right here.

- Hey easier is a relative term, I'm not saying it's easy.

- Relatively easy.

- Relatively it's doable.

- Yeah, interesting.

And how can people take that to heart?

How can they see that it is easier?

What is a first step that they can take to gain this kind of influence as you, as you've seen it?

- I'll answer that question with a success story.

So before I got into office, there was a neighborhood in my district called Skyway.

It's unincorporated King County, it's 70% people of color, it's the highest proportion of black people in the state of Washington, it has a lower median income than the nearby cities.

And because it's unincorporated, it means they don't have a local government, they don't have a city council, they don't have a mayor.

They have their regional government, King County, acting as their local government.

And for a whole host of reasons that we don't have to get into, that is an inequitable setup, it makes them not have the services they need to thrive.

And before I got there, there was a policy at the county level to not invest in this neighborhood just as a way of making it join another city, so it's no longer incorporated.

- And when you say, unpack that a bit, when you say it's a was a policy, what do you mean?

- So we're gonna get technical here, but the county had a policy where they said, "If we start investing in this unincorporated area and we start taking on debt and obligating ourselves to long term commitments to this unincorporated neighborhood, then we're gonna be stuck footing the bill for the long term if this little unincorporated pocket then goes on to join a city like Renton, if they join that city, then they're no longer in our local service area, but we're still obligated to continue these investments.

So instead of doing that, let's just take a step back, not invest in this neighborhood, and maybe that way it'll incentivize the neighborhood to join another city so it won't be our problem anymore.

But you're doing that to a neighborhood that's 70% people of color, most black people in the state, an active decision, to me, that's systemic racism.

You know, you have your only local government depriving you of investments like housing, of public transit, of human services, and that is a big problem.

So when I got into office, my whole thing is there are all these efforts out in the Skyway community from neighbors in that neighborhood who've been asking for these investments, who have been putting forward ideas for community centers, ideas for affordable housing, "Saying Come invest in us."

And the county just hadn't done that.

And so I partnered with them and we were able to work together to write a bunch of Op-Eds about why we need to invest in Skyway, we were doing marches through Skyway, we were just working together in a really strategic way.

And for the first time in the 2020 budget, Skyway got a whole bunch of investments because of our commitment from our King County executive and my colleagues on the council made that commitment too.

And so that is just an example where people on the ground, at the local level worked together with their elected officials in a way to push the needle to benefit people's lives in a real way.

And that is something that maybe is not as easily possible at the federal level.

At the federal level you have all these obstacles, whether it's gerrymandering or the electoral college or the filibuster, all these systemic things that make it much harder to see the fruits of your labor, at the local level I think it's much more possible.

- So let's zoom into that example.

You talked about the advocacy that it took.

What do you think really made the difference?

It sounds like, you know, there was this resistance on the level of county policy, a reluctance maybe to go there and you helped get people to go there.

Zoom in a little more on that.

- Yeah, I think the advocacy helped a lot.

You know, in 2020 we also benefited from the largest movement in American history for racial justice.

You know, tens of thousands of people were marching through my district for Black Lives Matter, millions of people were marching across the country.

And so what we try to do is tie that broader macro struggle to the micro level politics of Skyway.

Again, since this is the neighborhood that has the highest proportion of black people in the state, for me, I would write articles that said, "Hey, if Black Lives Matter, like we say they do, then Skyway has to matter."

And so we tied that struggle to the local struggle, we strategically advocated to the right places on the council, we wrote articles, we had endorsements from key influential organizations around the region, and in that way, when it came time to create the budget, the political will is there to say, "Hey, we better invest in Skyway.

This is the right time to invest in this neighborhood."

- And how much of that was you, the elected official, and how much of it was your constituents?

- I think it takes both, I think it takes both.

You need the constituents to come up with the idea to advocate, to do social media campaigns, to call in and give public comment.

And then you need elected officials who are willing to translate that grassroots energy into actual legislation.

So, and when I say elected officials, I don't mean just me, the King County executive was helpful in that way.

My colleagues on the council who unanimously approved things like when I put out an amendment saying we need $5 million of affordable housing investment in this neighborhood and they unanimously agree to that, that, it's just a whole lot of partnerships on a lot of different levels.

- So to take another example, you've done some work on mental health, affordable housing, that's extended beyond Skyway.

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, so.

- And what made it work.

- Absolutely.

We have a huge crisis on our hands when it comes to behavioral health and it's intersectional with so many other crises.

You know, if we're talking about mental health issues and substance use disorders, that's clearly intersectional with the homelessness crisis, you know, people who live out on the street, their mental health and substance use disorders are gonna be exacerbated because they don't have a stable home to go to every night.

And so I started wondering, why are there so many people out on the streets facing these issues?

You know, I hear from so many constituents saying, "Hey, I see people in the bus shelters using fentanyl.

We see people outside of my small business who are having a psychotic episode."

All these issues and it's very visible.

And so I started asking questions, "Why is this happening so much more these days?"

And so I started calling around and what the responses I got was, "Well, Girmay, it's happening because our hospitals are over capacity, our emergency rooms are over capacity, our shelters are over capacity, the jails are over capacity."

All of these systems that we have in place to respond to any number of issues are over capacity because of the pandemic.

And that's leading to people visibly suffering on the streets.

And so I asked, "What do we need in order to support people who are suffering out on the streets?"

And the response I got was, "We need crisis care centers."

We need somewhere for people to go when they are experiencing a mental health crisis or a substance use disorder crisis.

And right now there are zero urgent care options for people in behavioral health distress.

- So how did you decide what actions to take to address this given what you know about what works and what doesn't?

- So as a council member, you're a generalist, I don't have to be an expert in one topic, but I am a touch point for my constituents.

So when people are going through crisis themselves, they can reach out to their council member.

Or when people are seeing somebody in crisis, they reach out to me as well.

And so my job is to take that information and ask the right questions.

So I started asking people in our public health department, I started asking people at Harbor View, I started asking people in our Department of Community and Human Services and their response was, "We would be able to help people if we had somewhere for people to go."

They said there are three components that we need to respond to this.

We need somebody that you can call if you're seeing somebody in behavioral health crisis or you're having it yourself, you need to be able to pick up the phone and have an option that's not 911, 'cause the answer is not somebody with a gun to show up into those situations.

Then once you have somebody to somewhere to call, you need somebody to show up.

Once you have somebody to show up, you have to have somewhere to take people, somebody to call, somebody to show up, somewhere to go.

And that's somewhere to go, something we don't have, if you break a bone in King County right now, you have urgent care options, you can walk in somewhere and you can get treatment.

If you're going through a behavioral health crisis, there are zero urgent care options for you.

You cannot just walk in somewhere unless you're talking about an emergency room, which is not the right response to that.

And so that's the proposal before us, is to create five crisis care centers around the region where people can get 24/7 access to the help they need when they're going through a behavioral health crisis.

- So switching gears, we've talked about some of your successes, some of the places you're, you're pushing.

Where have you failed and why?

- Ooh, that's a great question.

I would say that when you're at a level of government like county government, you just don't have the jurisdiction you need to solve the scale of the problems that we're seeing right now.

For example, probably the biggest issue in our region is the housing crisis.

We need to build more homes and the two biggest causes of our housing crisis, number one, we have super exclusionary and restrictive zoning laws.

Number two, we have a very upside down tax code that doesn't allow us to generate the level of progressive revenue we need to invest the billions and billions of dollars needed to meet the scale of the demand for homes.

But at the county level, we often don't have the land use and zoning authority to change the restrictive zoning that I talked about.

And we don't have any progressive taxing options, we have property tax and sales tax as our options.

- So have you tried and sort of failed and run into this?

Or is this more of a barrier that kind of keeps you from... - It's a barrier because people rightfully ask us, you know, "Why haven't we built the number of homes that we need to build in King County?"

And I have to say, "Well we need to change a whole bunch of laws at the state level."

And so that is a barrier.

I can't lean on that as an excuse though, at some point people want you to say, "Yeah, maybe you don't have the tools you need, but what are you doing to get those tools?"

- And what do you say?

- I say I'm going down to Olympia and yelling as loud as I can to get those things changed.

But it's gonna take time and it's gonna take a lot of messaging changes too because there have been recent polls done that show that actually like 70% of people in Washington don't want an income tax, don't want a progressive income tax because I think people interpret it as, "You're just gonna tax me more in a year when inflation is already eating up my buying power for the things that I need to survive.

You're talking about taxing me more?"

So the conversation needs to not be income tax, it needs to be tax reform.

We need to change how we do taxes period so that middle income and lower income people pay less taxes and the very wealthy pay more in taxes.

But I don't think we're messaging it properly like that.

- Right, so you've talked about advocacy, you know, writing Op-Eds, shifting narratives, reframing, when is the right time to play hardball?

You said going down to Olympia and yelling, right?

I don't know if that's literal, but when is the time to just agitate?

- I think it's always the time to agitate, especially in the crisis times that we're living in now.

You know, we can't just keep doing things the same way we've been doing it.

It's gonna take the scale of advocacy that we saw in 2020 to push the needle on some of these things.

I wanna see more widespread movements around tax reform, more widespread room movements around changing our exclusionary zoning policies, and I'm starting to work on those things right now.

- So given that everything's a trade off, we talked earlier about that nuance can get lost in politics.

- Right, for sure.

- How do you balance rallying for something you believe in and and wanna do for your constituents with making compromises with folks who might see things differently?

- Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot recently.

What does compromise mean in the era of social media when our political discourse is so divisive and toxic and nasty?

And what I've been thinking about is how I think the perfect example is Dr. King.

When it comes to Dr. King, this is somebody who was super bold in his policy proposals, never watering down his vision for justice, and yet he had a message of unity and togetherness that I don't think a lot of people do enough of today.

And I think the reason why people don't do enough of it today is because the people who tend to advocate for cleaning up the toxicity and division in our political discourse, they often frame that conversation as, "Let's get back to civility."

You know, they talk about civility.

And really when people talk about civility, most of those people are talking about, let's push our politics more toward the center, right?

Let's moderate our politics.

- Let's be nice, - Let's be nice.

And the newer generations, Gen Z and all the other people who are being devastated by climate change and the housing crisis and all the, they're not trying to hear us talk about civility, they're not ta trying to hear us talk about moderating our politics because they want bold action.

And so there is, I think that the best example is Dr. King because he never talked about moderating your politics.

He said, be bold, be transformational, don't water down your vision for justice, because that's what the mainstream wants.

But at the same time, don't do personal attacks, don't unnecessarily divide people, don't drag people on the internet, those are the kinds of things that I think he would say, I think he would tell us, log off the internet, talk to people in person, go and talk to people who are different from you, see each other's hearts, understand each other and see why we're requesting bold change.

And I think that's the only way that we're gonna be able to find common ground, whatever that means, I don't think it's really about common ground, I think it's seeing each other's humanity.

- Earlier we were talking about the pandemic.

You started your term in 2020 and have had some of the more turbulent years in modern politics and in our society in general.

In person events, showing up to them, you were telling me that you were a little skeptical in the beginning of their impact, but changed your mind.

- Yeah, I think it goes back to what I just said a few minutes ago, which is we need to be able to see each other in person.

I think it's so easy to dehumanize each other when it's on Twitter, when it's on Facebook, when the person that you're talking to is just a digital image rather than a human being in front of you.

And so the pandemic made it really hard for that because everything switched to virtual and it became a lot easier to feel separated from our brothers and sisters and our neighbors.

And so I took every chance I could to see people in person in a safe way that was socially distanced, that abided by public health requirements.

And one example would be the handing out masks.

You know, we got a whole bunch of masks during the peak of the pandemic from the King County executive and our task was to give them out.

And some people chose to, in bulk just give 10,000 masks to one non-profit to distribute.

But I didn't want to do that because I wanted to use it as an opportunity to see, hear, and meet my constituents.

Especially because I started in 2020, I started during the virtual world.

And so we set up camp outside of places like grocery stores and libraries and public health centers and just handed out masks in a really safe way.

And in that way we got to meet our neighbors, hear what they're going through, hear what they really need.

And you get the added benefit in those scenarios of meeting people who would otherwise not know who their council member is and not being able to come all the way downtown to the King County courthouse to make public comment.

It's usually the people who already know how to access local government, who know who their government official is, who do those traditional ways of engaging their elected officials.

But if you go to where people already are, like a grocery store or a library or an apartment complex, you can really hear and see the people who probably need the most support.

- Mm.

And it goes back to what you were saying about social media.

You go where people are, some people are on social media, a lot of people are not.

- A lot of people are not, exactly.

- A lot of people are not.

- Had to learn that one the hard way.

- They're out in the neighborhoods, out in the streets.

So you represent, as you've said, some of the most diverse areas of our region.

Different languages, different cultures.

What, what lessons do you bring to that challenge?

What have you learned?

- Trusted partners, trusted partners.

And not necessarily trusted for me, but trusted for the communities that I wanna work with.

You know, if I would just engage with my constituents the way that I'm personally comfortable with, I would do all my community engagement on Instagram.

- Yeah, easy.

- Easy.

- sit behind the desk and we're good.

- And I did have a small period where I was doing stuff like that, where I was, "Oh, like I'm the cool young council member, I'm gonna stay on Instagram."

And then I slowly found out that, oh, a lot of people don't use Instagram and they're like, "What the hell have you been doing for the time that we've elected you?"

And so relying more on, again, meeting people where they are, relying on small ethnic newspapers and going to community centers that people frequent and partnering up with community organizations that already have deep ties to a neighborhood and they have relationships with seniors and their disabled community members there.

And partnering up with them to get the word out and get resources out, I've found to be really effective.

- Yeah.

How do you know if you've reached out far enough?

It seems like such a challenge.

With so many, so many different people.

- Yeah, I think it's just a process.

I don't think I've ever done something where I was like we 100% got everybody that we wanna reach out to.

But you can do better every time, you can challenge yourself every time, you can ask the right questions.

You can go places where you don't think that people will otherwise see you and reach you.

- You were saying in the beginning people have become disenchanted with politics.

- [Girmay] Yeah.

- Especially at the federal level, but really across the board.

What advice would you give to anyone looking to run for office?

- I would say number one, running for office is not the only way to create change.

I think people should really reflect on the things that they love to do, where they feel alive doing it and use that gift to create positive change in your community.

If you are an artist, you can absolutely use art to change your community.

If you're a teacher, you can definitely, and they do every day, create positive change.

If you're interested in medicine, there's ways to do it.

If you're interested in sports, there's ways to do it.

But if you are interested in politics and organizing and legislating and talking to lots of people and being a generalist that gets to go across a lot of different industries, you know, I wake up every day and I get to work on housing one hour, criminal justice the next, climate action the next, then maybe running for office is something for you.

And I would not hold yourself back from doing it because you have preconceived notions about what it means to be a politician.

It's just, do you have a relationship with communities who are struggling and who could benefit from better policies?

If so, do it, represent your community and run for office.

- And if you're scared of the divisiveness, scared of the toxicity, scared of the barriers, but think that you might actually be able to pull through, I mean, what would you tell that person who's watching going, "I think this is for me, but man, I don't know."

- Yeah, first of all, I would say if you're scared, I'll say you're right.

I'm not gonna lie.

- Familiar, huh?

- Yeah, yeah.

It's definitely scary, especially when you first start and you don't have the kind of self discipline that's needed to not actively seek out harmful things.

And by that I mean, when I first started running for office, I would actively go to the comments section of any article that's written about me and say, "What are people saying about me?"

And you know, that was me seeking out trouble and now I'm more disciplined about it and I say, "Oh, somebody's written about me."

Mute, block, unfriend.

Now I don't have to deal with that or see any of that.

And so you just learn to do some of that, just emotional hygiene to take care of yourself.

- Yeah.

Well Girmay, thank you so much, just for sharing the insights and your experience and what you've learned.

- My pleasure.

- We're gonna take a quick break and then we will be back soon for the second part of our program.

Stay with us.

(upbeat music) Welcome back to Civic Cocktail.

My next guests tonight are gonna help us understand the politics of power from the perspective of political campaigns and, oh yes, our two major political parties.

How do the challenges of running for office and winning on policy look different and the same through the red and blue lens?

Here to help us answer this question is Republican consultant Alex Hayes and Democratic consultant, Crystal Fincher.

Alex and Crystal, thank you for being here tonight.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- So you're both political consultants, but let's not pretend that we know what you actually do.

Give us the elevator speech on what the heck your job really is, what does it look like?

- We're strategists, we help define the path to victory for candidates.

So everything from determining what voters to speak to, the types of messages that are true to your candidate that will connect with the public, to even doing things like the commercials and the mailers and all that that you see on TV.

There's a lot of moving parts and campaigns and we really navigate and coordinate that and help the candidate make their way through.

And then also we do that from an independent expenditure point of view.

So sometimes we're on the other side and helping to fill in the gaps with some of the media stuff and the communications that you see.

- So maybe explain for the audience, an independent expenditure is, state law allows you to spend as much money as you want, you just can't work with the candidate on it.

And so it creates these two populations, people that work with candidates, which is mostly what I do, and people that work with independent expenditures, which is mostly what Crystal does.

I would call my job to be part boutique ad agency, you are making television ads, you're designing mailings, you're coming up with words, you have to have an additional knowledge of state public policy, the state budget, the laws we're passing.

And then there's a lot of kind of being a therapist too, because running for office-- - A therapist, yes.

- It is a terrible job.

- What job is this?

- Running for office is scary.

People are mean to you, there's a lot of fear and doubt.

So oftentimes someone will just call you and say, "Look, today was bad, or this person did this terrible thing, or how do we deal with this challenge?

And so a lot of it is looking out for the humanity of your candidate.

Too many people need to remember people that run for public office are real human beings.

- So strategy, marketing, therapy, that's okay, that's a good job with a lot of pieces.

So after last night's election returns, let's start with you Crystal, what is the Democratic party thinking about itself?

- Right now they're thinking that those results were pretty positive.

This is a year, it's a midterm election, oftentimes the party in power does not have a good time in these races where they're in control and now they have a midterm election and they're up, most of the time the party in control loses seats, and to quite an extreme degree sometimes.

And we are seeing less of that this cycle than we've seen in four decades.

We saw encouraging results across the country, we saw very encouraging results in Washington state.

So I think Democrats are feeling positive that their messages connected with voters and that what they're doing is resonating, is helpful with the voters in this state.

- Alex, the Republican party, nationally and regionally.

- Well, nationally it was an okay night from the Republican party.

It's really, it's disappointing in part because there was an expectation that it was gonna be a profoundly good night.

But taking control of the House representatives is a major event.

And having what is anticipated to be 224 seats or so, that's a working majority.

So they will be able to govern in the house, they will be able to make public policy.

The Senate could still go Republican, that's significantly in doubt.

I think it'll probably come down to a runoff in Georgia, which will be kind of horrible I think.

I mean I meant that much attention on one state, that much money, it'll be probably the worst of politics that we see in the country.

- And that's coming up in December, you know, more money pouring in on both sides.

- Exactly, brace yourself for that.

In the state I think Crystal's analysis is probably pretty accurate in that we did hope that state Republicans would advance more.

Instead we saw some surprising results, for instance, right now the Democrat is leading in the third congressional district, that was not anticipated.

- And that's against Joe Kent, the Republican.

- Correct, and the Democrat is Perez.

And in part because Perez didn't really campaign.

Perez was essentially a static object.

And Kent essentially his messaging I think probably alienated people.

- So Crystal, I saw you make a face.

- Well I think, I think Marie Cruz and Kent Perez did campaign and she did resonate with voters.

She owns an auto shop with her husband and just really talked about her experience as a business owner, as a mom, as someone dealing with a lot of the same challenges that people are dealing with there.

Alex is right, that is a Republican district, that's the district that was formally held by Jamie Herra Butler, who lost in the primary to Joe Kent, who is on the very extreme end of Republicans, most Republicans say that.

And so she was able to connect with voters across the spectrum, there were certainly voters who voted Republican on the rest of the ticket and Democrat in this race because they were uncomfortable with what they saw for their option in the Republican party.

So a lot of good stuff there, now we still have a lot to count, a lot of ballots to count we don't know-- - It's still possible for Kent to win.

- Yeah, we don't know how that race is gonna wind up.

And there are some other, there are a few other races in the state in the legislature that we aren't sure how they're gonna wind up.

So we'll see on Friday, perhaps Monday, Tuesday, what those results are, may take that long to find out.

- What other race are you, you know, would one need to look at to talk about Washington's story of Democrat and Republican.

- There was a lot of news late in the election that Tiffany Smiley was neck and neck.

A lot of rating agencies moved it to a toss up.

Well, on election night we saw that it wasn't a toss up.

And so there is a gap between that late energy that came from Smiley who is a pretty gracious and reasonable centrist candidate.

So it makes sense that she would have that type of success.

But that Murray's strong vote total is a surprise as well as the Kim Schroer's strong vote total in the eighth.

- Was it a surprise to you Crystal as well?

- I wasn't surprised that she was up by more than some of the polling showed.

It didn't feel like it was actually that close, but I did, I did expect it to be a little bit closer than it was in that night, given just kind of the headwinds of this time of year.

I think an interesting district to look at is the 47th legislative district, which I have done work in.

But it is a swing district in Washington, it has been purple, they've elected both Democrats and Republicans and it was really in question what was gonna happen in this race.

They had a Republican African American, Republican running for a Senate seat, it was an open seat, who they were hoping was gonna be modern enough to connect with voters and a state senator previously who was running again for the seat as a Democrat.

And we weren't sure how it was gonna turn out, but it looks like just some of the issues that Republicans stand for weighed down the party, and not just choice, talking about public safety, that message did not connect.

And we also saw that in the King County prosecutor's race.

Issues of healthcare and just some of those basic cost of living issues seemed to weigh Republicans down, and that message didn't really connect.

And voters seemed to say, "Hey, we actually trust Democrats more to solve these issues and move them forward."

And now there's gonna be an expectation that action is taken.

- So we're gonna move on, but you made a face, so I wanna know.

- We don't see any evidence that voters rejected the Republican position on those topics.

So there's no polling that suggests that, there's no footprint that would reveal that.

But we can say is that other factors perhaps overcame those.

Voters routinely said inflation, public safety were top of mind, but they also said abortion was roughly number two, right?

So it could be that the Democrats did a better job motivating their people to vote than the Republicans did.

But I don't know that people rejected the Republican view that we need more public safety.

- So we said we'd do real talk about politics and power.

Alex, you're a Republican in Washington state in 2022.

- Yeah.

- How's that going?

- Well you have to remember about me, my family moved here in 1842.

We came in the first wagon train.

So I am committed to the welfare of our state and I believe that means being a moderate Republican.

Now you're getting a somewhat different spectrum in this conversation because I'm a moderate Republican and Crystal's a more moderate Democrat.

So there are people to my right and to Crystal's left, just to put this in a very real moment for us.

But when we look at the history of Washington state, we see routinely the people who've done the best job governing, have invariably been moderate Republicans.

Dan Evans is our best governor in history, my hero, moderate Republican, Slade Gorton, a truly monumental intellectual figure who did fantastic things for the state and the nation.

Kim Wyman, such a good, reliable public servant that the Biden administration hired her.

The single most competent and ethical leaders in our state have been moderate Republicans.

And Jay Inslee is a train wreck, he is the least competent governor in the country.

And contrasts that to Dan Evans, big gap there.

- So do you sense that Washington could become Republican again given where the party is right now?

I'm seeing some optimism, but.

- So you're seeing a loyalty and a commitment, what I call stateriotism.

- Stateriotism?

- It's our duty to continue to defend the welfare of the state.

And I believe that ultimately means the value structure that I have.

It does better for public education, it does better for public safety, it's a much more competent system for balancing budgets, administering the state.

So we have a great track record of moderate Republicans making good public policy in Washington state.

Now you can't walk away from that.

I mean if you know you've got a way to make people's lives better, you stay committed to the cause.

And that's how I feel about it.

The Republican party in Washington state will grow and have better days ahead of it.

We anticipated that last night would be a better day, turned out not to be the case.

But the challenge will be that right now the Democrats are almost reaping kind of a perverse benefit from the mismanagement of the state.

So many people are leaving the state because of Jay Inslee's bad governance.

And so as a result the state's becoming more partisan as a result.

So it's this kind of a really terrible reward for being a bad governor, is you get more Democrats.

- So plenty to talk about.

And I know I wanna get Crystal in here, but I wanna follow up, what are some issues that conservatives in our state care about that tend to get drowned out?

- So I recommend that we think of Washington State kind of as a mercantilist economic model, where you have Britain and India, where you have Seattle and rural Washington.

Seattle routinely makes decisions, they failed to fund rural schools adequately, and system that's just, it's just cruel, it's inhumane.

The failure of state government to adequately fund rural schools.

And its decisions made by Seattle just out of spite, the suppression of economic activity in rural Washington, Governor Inslee has destroyed job site after job site in rural Washington by applying for the first time ever these unique environmental demands that he has.

And so those are often private sector union jobs too.

So you're seeing a transition of labor away from the democratic party, private sector labor because of Jay Inslee's hostility to work sites.

So this tension between the wealth and the power of Seattle and rural Washington is significant and Seattle routinely votes to make rural Washington poorer.

- So Crystal, Washington is still considered a safe state for Democrats broadly.

So does the party or candidates need to bother making compromises with Republicans?

- I think what it really is is does the party do what is helpful to their communities?

What we just heard from Alex was a passionate articulation of the Republican position.

But I would say that it's not quite connected with reality.

Our state's population has grown, voters clearly did not agree that Inslee was not performing up to snuff.

And it is really easy to name off Republican governors, legislators 'cause there just have been so few of them, voters just reject them and reject what they have said that they stood for.

Now what that doesn't mean is that Democrats just get to rest on their laurels because they continue to say that the Republican positions and stances are unacceptable.

Democrats still have to deliver for their communities, and I think that's what the focus has to remain on.

The party label kind of tells you about some positions and what a general policy orientation is, but there's so much within that policy.

Okay, we do need to address climate change, the how is a range of policy proposals that we have to get in and that's where compromise is brought.

We do have to make our community safer and continue to invest there.

The how is a variety of policy positions, we're seeing that with all of these issues.

And so now it's time to deliver, now it's time to work through the how.

And there's compromise and there's conversation and there's working through all that.

But I think the top line is that voters do expect action on climate and have continued to reinforce that, voters do expect action on common sense gun legislation, have continued to support that, vote for that and advance that.

Voters do expect us to be investing in holistic, comprehensive public safety solutions that go beyond policing to investing in behavioral health solutions and responses that address the immediate need that may not be able to be handled most effectively by a police officer or by a jail 'cause they just don't have the tools to address some of those holistic issues that we're dealing with.

Voters are demanding that and it's time to address that.

And the details in working through that, are what we're gonna continue to see.

- So clear disagreement, you know, clear friction, but also a mandate to solve some big problems.

So do the Republicans need to make more compromise Alex?

- Republicans classically have worked well with Democrats because they're in the minority and they have to, there's this sort of power in the minority that hardly ever gets discussed, and that you'll have like a highly educated legislator on a particular topic, Andrew Barcas, a friend of mine, he'll step in and he'll say, "You know, this bill just doesn't make sense."

Because he has a knowledge about housing and transportation.

And so that ability to kind of quietly meet with a Democrat and fix a bill is, never gets really captured but it is a significant part of being in the minority.

One of the challenges we have is that we really aren't seeing a connection between evidence and decision making.

So our state has rolled back gun rights significantly, the University of Washington did a study, there's no nexus between diminishing gun rights and increasing public safety, it just hasn't been materialized.

We were promised this for years, voters have diminished people's gun rights, but we have not seen the increase in public safety, a huge disconnect there.

The average Republican controlled school district needs from Washington does a better job educating students of color than Seattle does, this is a massive disconnect.

And so Republicans where they do govern are doing a better job for constituencies that a lot of Democrats would probably claim Republicans don't care about, but we're literally doing a significantly better job, especially on education.

- So next up, this is a two-parter, and this is important to a lot of people.

So first, do you think our democracy or democratic republic is in danger?

And if so, how do Democrats and Republicans view that question differently?

I'll start with you Crystal.

- Yes I do.

And I think fundamentally it has to do with the consistency of accountability.

It has to do with not excusing illegal acts.

We have a lot of talk about rhetoric and conversation and we hear a lot of troubling rhetoric.

Where we get into dangerous territory is where that rhetoric leads to action.

And then excuses encourages and reinforces that action.

When we see a violent insurrection on January 6th and then we all hear that, oh, it was just no different than a tourism, you know, than than tourists looking at the capital.

It was just people protesting and expressing their first amendment rights.

These are political prisoners and patriots.

They were violent insurrectionists, they hurt people, people died as a result.

And that was an offense against the foundations of our country and our constitution.

That has to be held accountable, if people are part of that, they need to be held accountable, we cannot tolerate people continuing to reinforce violent acts.

If there are shootings, any acts of violence, there needs to be accountability for that and not excusing of that, across the board on all sides, right?

And so when we see issues like voter disfranchisement, when we see issues like the attack on trans people, the attack on Jewish people, the level of antisemitism that we're seeing just willy-nilly in public and people feeling very comfortable saying things like that is troubling and it's scary.

The white nationalism and racism that we're seeing is troubling and scary and these things lead to violence.

This is not hypothetical.

We have seen this over and over again, we have seen this very recently.

And so we have to walk that back.

We have to make sure our institutions are resilient and are protected against people who wanna undermine them.

This is beyond a Republican and Democrat issue, this is about issues with our country, and there are lots of Republicans who agree with that, that's not the entire party.

But I think one troubling thing that we are seeing is that there are many Republicans in leadership who are doing this, who are elected officials.

We're not just seeing this from the fringe of a party, we're seeing this from leaders in the party, from people who were elected and reelected.

Now, encouraging, yesterday we did see a number of politicians who have been part of advancing the big lie lose in their races, which is encouraging.

But we do have a number of electeds and another place that are doing that.

So I think we just have to be really careful that hey, there's a place for discussing issues and talking about policy.

But when we're looking at undermining elections, denying elections, denying the peaceful transfer of power and the things that underpin this democracy, that's where we get into trouble and that's where we have to firmly say no, we have to firmly stand up against racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, where we see it and confront it where we see it, call it where it is to call it out and say it's unacceptable.

- So let me, let me turn to Alex on this and you know, if you could, there's a lot there to respond to, but if you could just answer the the first question, do you think our democracy or democratic republic is in danger?

And if so, how?

How do republicans and Democrats see it differently?

- Here is, I think maybe the most useful insight, it is in danger because each see it the same.

There is a phenomena, the Radio Rwanda phenomena where-- - Say that again.

- The Radio Rwanda, where the genocide in Rwanda wasn't because people wanted to murder their neighbor, it was because they thought their neighbor was gonna come murder them.

And so this false impression that the other party is more evil than it is and plans more horrible things for you, a lot of what Crystal said is factually inaccurate, but it is part of the democratic narrative now.

Now I denounce January 6th immediately, but the trouble thing is, it's impossible to talk about January 6th with accuracy.

You either have a population that wants to deny it was serious and you have another population that exaggerates how serious is for political benefit.

The most difficult thing to do in America is tell the truth about January 6th, but it is the most essential thing to do, is to tell the truth about January 6th.

- What to you is the truth about January 6th?

- Exceedingly bad thing.

And President Trump did want something really bad to happen, but almost every other component of civilization in our society did the right thing.

And when we continue to go back and ignore that fact, that almost everyone did what they were supposed to, we exaggerate the dangers of January 6th.

We also have to remember that the people who participated in January 6th saw the Antifa Riots.

And in some respects, they thought, well if those guys got away with it, then we can.

And so in Crystal's analysis about political violence, she left off something that is considerably more violent than January 6th, but January 6th took place at a key moment in space, so I want to clarify that I'm being very accurate there.

But when we ignore, when we have double standards for these sorts of things, it creates this doubt, it creates this fear, and we need to tell the truth about these things, it's very important.

There's one act of profound dishonesty from the US Democrats.

They spent 170 million advancing people whom Crystal tells us are essentially fascists.

If they are that dangerous, then why did the Democratic Party spend more money advancing the fascists than the fascists spent advancing the fascists?

It was an act of significant dishonesty.

And that's our problem, is that we have this belief that it's okay to do terrible things to advance one's faction, and the Democrats are thoroughly committed to doing these terrible things to advance their faction.

170 million to advance election deniers, utterly contemptible.

- So before we move on on this, do you think our democracy or our democratic republic is in danger?

- I think we are stronger than we believe, but the number one challenge is that we need more honesty and we need a more reliable, neutral press.

The death of local media is hugely painful to our ability to discern what is true.

The fact that so many elite institutions during COVID failed, I mean, I am not a person who was in any way conspiratorial during the COVID crisis, but I can tell you the CDC lost a lot of of credibility, there are things that we know they said weren't true, that's a huge disappointment.

When people became worried or frightened about COVID, they were demonized as a result versus treated with compassion.

And we should have spent more time helping people feel better about vaccines, masks, mandates.

Instead we demonized, there was a lot of othering in the language of fascism.

- So this segues us to the next topic.

The levels of polarization, toxic polarization around the country are off the charts.

As political consultants, how do you help your campaigns win without damaging people's ability to see and understand one another across disagreement?

- I think we have to tell the truth about what's happening.

I think we have to be clear.

You asked us a question, it was a yes or no question and I started with the yes or no, right?

And that's the simplest thing to do.

You just asked him if our democracy, if he thought it was in danger, he didn't say no, he said a lot, but it wasn't a yes or no.

I think we have to be clear about what we're seeing and what we're doing.

And I think we have to be clear about what voters are saying and doing.

And I think that we're at a point where, you know, we just heard explanations about how wonderful Republicans are doing and how well they're meeting needs and voters are not seeing it that way, so what is it that we're missing?

And I think the biggest thing is figuring out that gap.

And that that's predominantly a Republican thing on after election day yesterday, right?

But that's not only a Republican thing, that happens with Democrats too.

So it really is stepping outside of the label, stepping outside of the party and understanding that the first job is to help people.

And if you focus on helping people first and foremost, listening to people, staying connected with people, understanding what they're going through, then that is how you begin to get beyond the labels.

One thing that's really interesting, and we actually had a conversation about this yesterday, in red states who elect Republicans up and down the ticket, sometimes there are ballot initiatives, there were some yesterday that people would call progressive, but you take the label off of it, you put it up and those Republican voters who only vote for Republican candidates vote for things like increasing the minimum wage, like expanding Medicaid coverage, like universal free college, right?

Like things that have been labeled progressive, the same thing can happen on the flip side in Blue States.

- Well it does happen here routinely.

- It has with Ayman Initiatives.

And so it really is about, you know, a label can tell you about a general alignment, but that doesn't really tell you the specifics of how you can help people and what they need, you have to listen, you have to stay connected.

And I think if you do that, if you focus on serving everyone in the community and not just people who already think like you, if you understand that you don't know everything and that no one knows their community like the people inside of it and talk to everyone there, you're going to get insight that you didn't have before.

You're probably going to hear most of the ingredients of what is needed in a solution and the ability to work together to get there.

A lot of people know that you need that you're open to hearing them and you're open to and listening to them and you value them in their lives.

Leaders have to demonstrate that that's true.

- Well, thank you both so much.

This was, this was an illuminating conversation and I really appreciate your time and joining us tonight.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And thanks to all of you watching at home, Civic Cocktail will return on December 7th for the annual year in Review edition.

We'll talk about the biggest headliners and impactful issues from the year and make some predictions about what's coming next.

You can find out more at crosscut.com/events.

Thanks everyone, Alex, Crystal, thanks again.

And good night.

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