In the game of chess, some players are known for being aggressive, others defensive, others for waging chaos all over the board.
Then there’s some who use a “gambit,” famed because the goal is to win by first doing some losing. You head straight into the arms of the enemy, sacrificing a piece or two on purpose, but in so doing earning a stronger position.
This last is what I think the state’s governor-elect, Bob Ferguson, has been up to.
The incoming governor, to be sworn in Wednesday, is apparently still a bit of a mystery player to his co-workers in politics and the public. Because he keeps putting everyone on their heels.
He startled the statehouse crowd in Olympia this past week by proposing to slash the budget by 6% to help patch a deficit.
The move seemed to confound as well as anger people across the political spectrum — some conservatives because they didn’t buy it, and some progressives because they felt blindsided by an ally.
“This is extremely bad,” said one of the latter on social media. “WA’s new Democratic governor is embracing austerity rather than tax the rich.”
“The level of searing personal betrayal I’m experiencing right now: very high,” said another.
Quipped a third: “One-term governor …”
Whoa. Hasn’t taken office yet and his own side is already baying for his hide.
What Ferguson did was propose about $4 billion of vague cuts, over four years, to general state government. This is in addition to about $2 billion in cuts proposed earlier by outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee.
The nonpartisan budget staff in Olympia has estimated that after adding inflation and new caseloads, the budget is going to be in arrears by $4.3 billion for the next two years, and $6.7 billion the two years after that. Democrats have been estimating $10-$12 billion total in red ink.
So Ferguson’s suggesting that about half of that hole be filled by spending cuts. He hasn’t said yet where to get the rest.
He did add though that the lefties who pine for a first-in-the-nation wealth tax on billionaires are “not living in reality … There is not some $12 billion revenue source that is magically going to appear.”
That’s some shade on the outgoing governor, Inslee, who just proposed exactly that. Talk about out with the old, in with the new.
This strikes me as not out of political character for Ferguson. It’s what he did in the campaign, too, when he surprised everyone by veering right on public safety, essentially lifting a Republican idea to use $100 million in grants to hire more police.
My view at the time was that Ferguson’s police gambit was “canny triangulation politics” in an era of hyperpolarized camps. Though it angered the far left, it would allow Ferguson to neuter his GOP opponent Dave Reichert’s strongest attribute — that the former sheriff would be tough on crime. By being first out of the gate with a crime proposal, Ferguson could muffle the GOP’s top issue.
A local conservative commentator said then that this was “quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever read from Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat (and that’s saying something).”
Welp, there Ferguson was this past week, formally announcing that $100 million grants-for-cops program, after having dispatched Reichert in the election. He said he’s working on it with Republican state Sen. Jeff Holy of Cheney, a former police officer.
I’m not saying I’m not dumb sometimes. But here he is now trying this same triangulation gambit with the budget.
“Democratic Governor-elect Ferguson proposes bold spending cuts, echoing what Republicans have wanted,” was how KIRO radio put it.
Ferguson is saying there’s got to be some general clearing of the underbrush after years of rapid spending growth.
“We need a review of state operations,” he said. “We need that. It’s time.”
Not sure how bold the cuts really are. They’re trims to the projected higher rates of future spending. If they happened, there would still be more money spent next year than this year.
But politically, what cuts like this to general government may end up doing is building support for the kind of targeted tax increase that the public just backed in the last election. That is, one that’s tied to a specific, widely supported cause — like the public schools.
“The final budget must invest a higher percentage of the total budget toward K-12 schools,” Ferguson said.
The state Senate majority leader, Democrat Jamie Pedersen of Seattle, revealed at a press event Thursday that “the incoming governor has an interesting idea” about expanding a business tax on large corporations. So it’s already in the wind that Ferguson isn’t planning for the kind of scorched-earth, cuts-only budget that progressives are hopped up about.
Budget work in Olympia doesn’t get real until after an economic forecast in March. We’re in the symbolic jockeying phase now, so who knows how this will play out. This could be a maneuver by the new governor to try to restrain his party from running hog wild, as it can be wont to do.
I suspect Democrats will all be singing kumbaya together at the end.
But for now it’s got Olympia wondering: Is the new guy lurching us in a new political direction? The state swung far to the left during the pandemic, but it’s an open question now. Far-left, left, center-left — what are we?
It’s dawning on folks that Bob Ferguson, son of Republican parents but known best for being a Democratic attack dog, might be something we haven’t seen for a while in Washington politics: unpredictable.
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.
