Democrat Jay Inslee has dropped his presidential bid, instead shifting gears to run for a third term as Washington State’s governor, according to the Seattle Times, but the “climate change” candidate may face daunting public disdain.
His single-issue “vanity” campaign, which never really had a chance as the establishment media focused on higher-profile candidates from the East Coast and California, cost Evergreen State taxpayers millions of dollars, and they are an unhappy lot. Just reading their reactions in the reader comment sections of the Times and Seattle P-I.com signals how unpopular Inslee has become with the constituents he hopes will keep him on the public payroll for another four years.
KCPQ and the Associated Press are reporting that Inslee will try to hold onto his current job. The only other governor who has ever served three terms was moderate Republican Dan Evans.
Inslee’s anti-gun sentiments could become a key issue if he runs for a third term, since two Republican candidates now campaigning to take the governor’s office back from 30-plus years of Democrat control are running on pro-rights platforms. Republic Police Chief Loren Culp and State Sen. Phil Fortunato have declared their candidacies. Culp is nationally known for his refusal to enforce provisions of anti-gun Initiative 1639.
Inslee supported two anti-gun-rights initiatives in recent years, both largely bankrolled by Seattle-area elitists. Last year’s I-1639, which raised the age for purchasing a semi-auto rifle to 21 and created a definition of a “semiautomatic assault rifle” that applies to every self-loading rifle that has ever been manufactured, is now being challenged in federal court by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association on constitutional grounds. The earlier measure, I-594, mandated so-called “universal background checks.”
Inslee’s campaign was never able to gain traction, and his presidential bid did seem ignored by big media, much the same as another Evergreen State Democrat more than 40 years ago. The late Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, an old-style “hawkish” Democrat who actually won the New York and Massachusetts primaries was overshadowed by Gov. Jimmy Carter.
Jackson was a populist who had strong support from the Jewish community, and he understood the importance of American military strength; two positions that might make him unelectable in today’s Democratic party, where Inslee’s far-left politics seem more in line with where the party had drifted in recent years.
But this does raise a legitimate question. Did the establishment media seem to ignore Inslee because he’s from the Pacific Northwest?
According to the Seattle Times, Inslee told MSNBC, “There are other avenues for me to be very effective at pushing the climate-change message.”
But many Washington voters have wearied of Inslee’s obsession with climate change, feeling that he is trying to make them bear the weight of a movement that should be global in nature.
Waiting in the wings to succeed Inslee are—or perhaps, were—anti-gun Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who has made something of a career out of suing the Trump administration, and Democrat King County Executive Dow Constantine. Washington gun owners dislike both men over their support for restrictive gun control.
As Inslee bowed out, some of his competitors—perhaps angling to attract his supporters to their own campaigns—praised the Washington governor’s efforts to make climate change a national issue.
