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>> Tom Layson: Another legislative session ends with priorities now quickly shifting to November as the entire state House and about half of the Senate come up for election.

Tonight, House Minority Leader JT Wilcox joins us to talk about the just-completed legislative session and his perspective on the Washington State Republican Party going forward.

That's next on Northwest Now.

[ Music ] Republicans are outnumbered in the House, 57 to 41, and hold no statewide cabinet offices now that former Secretary of State Kim Wyman left to work in the Biden administration.

The GOP is firmly planted as the minority party in Washington State that some analysts say it's likely to stay that way at least until Donald Trump is fully renounced and a slate of credible candidates for statewide offices can be cobbled together.

So it's in that environment that House Minority Leader JT Wilcox leads the opposition.

Wilcox is a widely regarded moderate in state politics, represents the 2nd Legislative District, and is a member of the Wilcox Family Farms empire based in South Pierce County near Harts Lake between Yelm and Eatonville.

JT Wilcox, thanks so much for coming to Northwest Now.

My first question is a bit of a softball but I want to give you a good crack at this.

What is the basic critique of Northwest progressivism?

What's the problem with how state run -- state politics and the state House and state budgets have been run in a one party dominating system?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Well, I've never been asked that before so thanks for the question.

I may hit a few different things here because you know I do often talk about the fact that single party government is bad regardless of which party is in charge for very, very long terms.

And of course in our state, it's been Democratic Party and you know I don't know that they've been progressive the whole time so it might be two different problems but, you know first of all -- you know what I think we're seeing now more so even than four or five years ago is the idea that problem-solving isn't the role of the legislature.

It's implementing an ideology and that, to me, is a problem.

I think everybody has their ideology.

It's important to have a framework for your ideas but the more you expand your ideology in to, the less room you have for common sense and for understanding across broad groups of people.

So I would say what we saw over the last couple of years, especially in the arena of public safety, was just this speculative ideology that meant that, you know, the party in power couldn't listen to Republicans, couldn't listen to people that are experienced in law enforcement and couldn't even consult their own common sense.

And the result, I think, has been a tragic disaster for many people.

And then -- you know, since you mentioned the fact that we've had this for a long, long time, single party government, I'll just say that I think the defect in the direction that we've gone in Washington is that single party government, in the end, corrupts everybody.

It's obvious that if you're part of the single party government, it can be corrupting, not -- I think the system gets corrupted.

I don't mean to impugn a lot of individuals but it really means that there is never very sufficient oversight.

It means that your own side really never does a thorough job of keeping people accountable and that's a bad, bad thing in the long run because it makes people lazy.

When you're on the side that's out of power, I think it corrupts a little bit too because you lose track of the fact that what you say might have to be implemented some day.

And I think that makes you less responsible.

The best system is one where everybody involved thinks, I could either be in the majority or I could be in the minority some day and I better conduct myself with understanding of both sides.

>> Tom Layson: So power unchecked and sitting on the sidelines being a grenade thrower isn't a solution.

>> Mr. Wilcox: You couldn't be more right.

>> Tom Layson: All right.

>> Mr. Wilcox: And it sounds like common sense, doesn't it?

>> Tom Layson: It sure does, doesn't it?

Has the progressive ideology been too expensive?

Increase spending by $5 billion in mid-biennium.

That's a record with the state budget now of $64 billion.

Think that's sustainable?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Oh, absolutely not.

And as I've said many times, the people that will be hurt by, you know, this unrestrained spending are the people that they're trying to help.

What happens -- and I've been through one of these cycles now in 12 years in the legislature.

What happens when you, you know, sort of set all of this [inaudible], you create new programs, you create new dependencies.

The first time you have a budget hiccup, you have to dial all that back.

So first of all, all of the setup money is expended and second of all, people that just began to get comfortable with the benefits of a program end up being, you know, left behind.

And I am 100% sure that that's going to happen.

And I think the other thing that was really disappointing this last time is we'd never seen this kind of budget, revenue increase.

And you would've liked to think that, you know, reasonable people could have agreed.

This isn't going to happen again.

Let's, you know, forego at least some part of it but every penny was spent and that just proves to me that there is no amount of money that is sufficient.

>> Tom Layson: Let's talk a little bit about tax relief.

There was a proposal to exempt the first $250,000 of home value.

That died.

With that said, and I've said this for a while, do you have a sneaking suspicion or do you think it opens the door for the possibility of a Prop 13-type style property reform movement coming to Washington State, property tax reform?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Oh, I think that's absolutely likely to happen.

Our initiative system is not the easiest to navigate.

And initiatives are hard to do now because the cost of getting sufficient signatures has gotten really high but, you know, when every single family is being affected by this, you know, overly aggressive desire for funding, I think that would be very, very popular.

And it's not operating on the state budget with a scalpel.

It's operating with the big club and that isn't what the legislature should want.

The legislature should be able to do this themselves and go through a process where there's a lot of scrutiny.

But if the legislature isn't willing to do that, of course people are going to take that into their own hands.

>> Tom Layson: The big bogeyman out there for Republicans running for office for years has been the threat of an income tax.

The Democrats are going to get an income tax.

Do you believe that in the context of your comment that there's never enough money?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Yeah.

>> Tom Layson: Do you think that that's real?

And do you think it's possible?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Yes to both.

There's been a lot of public record requests that have resulted in legislators e-mails being exposed where they're very open in saying well, you know we're going to run the best tax that we can for a court case and, you know, a reasonable person would say okay.

Once you have gotten through the court test, then we're going to expand this.

And I don't see how anyone can observe the history of taxation in Washington and not agree that if the tax is once found to be legal, it will get expanded.

>> Tom Layson: And voters have spoken on this and the court has spoken on this repeatedly so -- but you don't see that effort waning, abating in any way?

It's -- >> Mr. Wilcox: No, and the crazy thing is, you know when it came to revenue, I would say progressives, Democrats, people that were left of center in general thought about first, what do I want to do with the resources?

What need do I want to satisfy?

But what has felt more true to me over the last few years is the ideology has centered around -- I just want more money.

We just want to -- there's some people that shouldn't be able to accumulate these resources so we want the money and then we'll figure out what to do with it.

>> Tom Layson: So an aggressive redistribution, more aggressive redistribution.

>> Mr. Wilcox: That, I think is very plain.

>> Tom Layson: You mentioned a little bit about the public safety peace before, and I wanted to talk about that in this session too.

There are many calls to walk back some of the reforms that had been made in the past session.

A few of those things did pass but several of them didn't.

What is your analysis of the crime situation as it stands now?

Whose feet does that land on?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Well, clearly we're in the middle of a crime wave, and it's not just in Washington.

It's nationwide.

I think we've got some huge societal problems.

But one thing that made it particularly bad here in Washington was something that was pitched as public safety reform that made it a lot more difficult for police to do their jobs.

And what I've been saying now for about 15 months is that our real goal should be to preserve the tools that are necessary to keep people safe and at the same time do everything possible to make it less likely for those to be misused.

And I think what really happened was we're unhappy with the results.

Our ideology says that we need to pursue non-police, non-punitive methodologies and so we're just going to take these tools away from the police and so that's what happened a year ago.

And I've really never seen anything turn around so quickly in politics before.

It became apparent, almost immediately, that-that was a mistake.

And unfortunately, in the course of that becoming apparent, a number of people lost their lives.

And you're right.

Some of that was turned around during this session.

One really major part failed on the last day to pass the Senate even though the Senate Republicans made many parliamentary efforts to bring it to the floor and that was a bill that would have restored the ability of police to give chase in vehicles.

And everybody understands that-that could be dangerous.

But if the police, in most cases, can't give chase, then everybody with bad intentions just behaves with impunity.

And this is what has happened, a cascade of events.

First of all, I think in society terms, the worst people have decided that the best people are going to be ineffective and so you don't have to worry about being caught and you don't have to worry about consequences.

Next, I think a total overreaction to Covid, many of the jails and prisons were nearly emptied, and it became almost impossible to incarcerate people and so of course they had a sense of impunity.

And who pays the price?

Not the bad actors, the innocent victims.

>> Tom Layson: Are there certain ideologies that see the criminals as the victims?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Well, I think you hear that a lot.

Since I'm not really someone who participates in that ideology, you should probably talk to one of them about the details but that seems very plain.

>> Tom Layson: And what's interesting is we had a, you know, Democratic proposal in the legislature this year to reduce crimes, reduce consequences for crimes like drive-by shootings and we just arrested four kids on I-5 for that.

So is there a connection there, or is that just coincidence?

>> Mr. Wilcox: No, I think there is absolutely a connection.

How can you not live through the -- how can you live through the last few years and not believe that those things are connected?

And there's one other part of this that is critical that we recognize.

And I mentioned innocent victims.

Among the victims are so many law enforcement professionals.

Three died within seven or 10 days here in Central Puget Sound, two of them on duty, one of them in some crazy sounding incident in Las Vegas.

And there's this caricature of law enforcement as bad.

And if you've gone to as many funerals as I have in my 12 years, you realize that so many people in law enforcement are young.

So many of them served our country.

So many of them, you know, are just so clearly the most contributing members of our society and they're the ones that are the victim of this.

>> Tom Layson: And people don't understand the numbers either.

They don't understand the number of contacts and calls against the number of incidents that do go south.

I mean, you can't deny that there has been some bad actions, some bad actors out there but as a percentage, when you take a look at those numbers, I think that's where it's really illuminating.

>> Mr. Wilcox: Yeah.

You know I don't get very, I don't know, emotional in politics.

I try not to do that but I had an incident last year where I just felt like I had to speak out.

We were passing one of the major police public safety reforms.

I do this because I don't think they were positive reforms at all.

And there was a lot of energy around reading the names of people that had been victims in police encounters.

And for the ones where the police misbehaved, I think it's right to recognize the victims.

>> Tom Layson: Sure.

>> Mr. Wilcox: Although, you know those names have been said hundreds of thousands or millions of time now but we knew that this was going to be more dangerous for police.

And although I was not prepared for this and I didn't have all the names, I went through all the funerals that I had -- as many as I could in three minutes that I've gone to in my 12 years in the legislature because those are the people that get forgotten so often.

And if we're going to have motivated people to take care of all of us, we have to recognize their sacrifice and their, you know, their essential, you know, sense that they want to be a force of good for humanity.

>> Tom Layson: Yeah.

You look at some things like the economy, what's going on with inflation, what's going on with crime and, you know, the table certainly looks set for 2022 both nationally and at the state level for a bit of a Republican comeback possibly.

With that said, you've got Trumpism and that ideology on the right that isn't helping the Republican's cause either.

And I'll just use one example here.

The Republicans last gubernatorial candidate, mind you, Loren Culp promoting violence as a solution to politics, prompting "Seattle Times" columnist Danny Westneat to write this.

"I suspect the only way to prevent violent words from party actors like this from eventually spilling over into actual violence is for Republicans themselves to finally take a damn stand against this virus in their own party.

Where is the state party on this or GOP elected officials or leadership or county party organizations?

You all okay that one of your trump-backed candidates is out there publicly calling for lynching and for executing court officials?"

Answer Danny, are you?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Yeah.

Well, I've got a be a little careful here because we were setting this up using legislative resources so I can't talk about elections but I can certainly talk about this.

And I don't follow Chief Culp so I did hear about that until Danny Westneat's column which somebody sent to me.

And no, I'm not okay with that kind of behavior.

However, I don't follow Chief Culp, as I said, or every Republican out there.

And people know that I have, you know, very deliberately not gotten involved in politics that are outside my sphere of action, which is the legislature in Washington.

But I have zero hesitancy in saying no, it's not responsible to talk about lynching.

It's not responsible to talk about vigilante action.

Those are negatives.

And I actually heard John Carlson talk to Jeff Pohjola about this over the weekend maybe.

And one of the things that John said really has resonance for me, and I appreciate him saying that when you run for office you should try to uplift your office, not try to drag it down.

And that's one of the things that I think I try to talk to our candidates about.

You can get attention by being outrageous.

It's probably not a real successful way to get elected.

And if you want to serve in a body like the Washington State House of Representatives, you should want it to be the best possible place that it can be, and you don't get there by tearing it down.

>> Tom Layson: And I think a lot of people give you credit for the quiet role you played in dealing with Manweiler and Shay [assumed spelling] and some of those issues.

And I think you're well-known as a centrist in the Washington State legislature as a coalition builder.

With that said though, because people are always getting primaried, what's it going to take to get the Republican Party competitive again?

And is that possible?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Well, I think this is a year when it's very possible.

When you look at many of the national trends, and I'm involved in quite a bit of Washington State polling, you see a situation that we haven't seen since 1994.

When you compare even the Obama waves that helped us pick up a bunch of seats, the national approval numbers for our Democratic president and Democrats in general are far lower now than they were then.

And I would also say I have never seen a situation inside of Washington where there was a record on the part of any political party of voting for things that are so clearly unwise and unpopular in the State of Washington among conservatives, centrists, and even plenty of moderate Democrats.

>> Tom Layson: I think I'd like to talk to you a little bit -- have you talk a little bit about the nature of the discourse that we're currently experiencing and whether there's room for moderates anymore?

Is there room for centrists?

Is there room for people who are a little progressive, they're Democrats but they know what to do?

There's people who are on the right or a little -- you know maybe around here in the Northwest, socially more progressive but fiscally conservative.

That used to be who was in politics.

That used to be the deal in the legislature.

We see this happening, going out to the ends in primaries and across the country and the State of Washington as well, I think.

What's your take on that?

And what is it going to take to get us more to the middle?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Well, I believe that history in politics are cyclical more than they're linear and so the trend of the last few years is not necessarily the trend of the future.

And I've been involved in House Republican elections for 12 years now.

And one thing that always makes me feel good is I think when times feel really tough, that's when it's -- a lot of conservatives step up to run.

And when I say conservatives, you know I guess I'm painting with a pretty broad brush.

That can be, you know, from the far right to people that are very centrist.

And I'm seeing more people that have a stake in the economy stepping up because they feel a responsibility to do that.

And, you know, I quit watching national TV when I was elected 12 years ago because I thought I just can't have all that turmoil in my head.

I want to concentrate on things that are here.

And one of the things that I've tried to do in my time, and others can judge whether I've been good at it, is I never want to be predictable, and I never want to look like the kind of politician that is trying to get on TV.

I want to be myself.

And I always tell candidates that unless you're just a creep, being yourself is the most successful way to be a good politician.

First, it makes you honest.

And second of all, the thing that money can't buy is, you know, being genuine.

>> Tom Layson: And maybe not to be an ideologue which you mentioned at the top of this interview.

>> Mr. Wilcox: You know that -- you should have some ideas that ground you and some values that ground you but if you apply that lens to every problem, you're not going to think about them and you're probably not going to solve them.

>> Tom Layson: Talk a little bit of -- a couple of personal things.

You have the big salmon bake down at the farm every year.

For folks who aren't tied into Washington State politics, what do you do, and what is that like every year?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Well, I wanted to do something that's unique, and I live on the Nisqually River.

We have a couple miles I think of various kinds of waterfront on the farm.

And we've got a generational friendship with the Nisqually Tribe and so what would fit better than buying salmon from the Nisqually's, cooking it up, and serving it with friends.

And we're fortunate to have some facilities that let us fit a lot of people in it.

They're not fancy.

The basic one is a chicken house that was built in the 1950s, but it's been a successful thing.

And we try to make it the old-fashion, fun kind of politics where it's mostly getting to know your neighbors.

A lot of other politicians stop in.

I've had elected Democrats that bought their own tickets.

I've had one in particular that had his sister buy his ticket so he wouldn't be on my -- >> Tom Layson: On the record.

>> Mr. Wilcox: Exactly.

But, you know, we don't want it to be smash-mouth.

We want it to be the kind of thing where neighbors aren't embarrassed.

>> Tom Layson: Yeah.

Good.

Since you talked about the Nisqually, I want to bring up the idea a little bit about conservatism and conservation, how they can go together and also talk a little bit about the bridge over I-5.

Is that going to happen, modifying that to allow the tidal action to be a little more effective there?

>> Mr. Wilcox: Well, I think there's a couple of things going on with that bridge.

First of all, it is threatened, and it's hard to imagine a more important link for Washington than that one way that you can get a lot of cars and trucks over the Nisqually River.

The only other way is a, you know, two-lane bridge; one lane in each direction in McKenna, and it destroys McKenna's ability to move around or [inaudible] when you have traffic problems on I-5 there.

So if that blows out, the economy of Washington is in serious, serious trouble so that's a reason.

Another reason is if we can lift that up, we have a much more effective delta and that's critical for salmon recovery in South Puget Sound.

You know the Nisqually is a unique river.

It's a fairly long river.

It's one of the larger rivers that feeds into Puget Sound, and it's the one that is among the least developed major rivers in Western Washington because of the circumstances with the tribe, Billy Frank, a small handful of farmers, and a lot of timber owners.

It was never destroyed.

It was damaged a few times, but it's in much better shape than a lot of other habitat around the state.

So this is a great example of a place where we can have some success.

And I'll just tell you a quick story since you asked about conservation.

I'm part of a family that has been in the same place for about 112 or 13 years now, which is, you know, just a blink of an eye compared to my friends, the Nisqually Indians, but it's long for a family that came here into Washington.

And my dad had a moment with Billy Frank about 15 years ago -- well, it was more than that, probably 25 where we thought that we were going to lose the farm because of a national park.

And Billy stood up and said, "Doggone it.

We've got to quit all this arguing.

There's no way we're going to save the Nisqually without the farmers, without the foresters.

They're going to be here and I'm going to stand up for them too."

And they shook hands and it changed everything for us.

>> Tom Layson: Great story.

JT Wilcox, thanks for coming to Northwest Now.

>> Mr. Wilcox: Thank you.

It was a pleasure.

>> Tom Layson: Business as usual will not work for the Republicans in November nor in 2024.

The bottom line, can moderates take control of the party to a sufficient degree to at least get credible candidates through a primary?

For now, it seems the answer is no.

But just maybe lawmakers like JT Wilcox on both sides of the aisle will eventually prevail.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

To watch this program again or to share it with others, Northwest Now can be found on the web at kbtc.org and be sure to follow us on twitter @NorthwestNow.

Thanks for taking a closer look on this edition of Northwest Now.

Until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

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