During the final month of this year’s legislative session, state Rep. Kristine Reeves rose from her seat on the House floor to propose a change to a hotly debated policy. Allowing striking workers access to the state’s unemployment insurance fund for 12 weeks was too long for her to support. So she pitched an amendment to cap it at four.
The Federal Way Democrat drew upon her doorbelling of thousands of residents in the 30th District, and many conversations with both union and nonunion households. She found broad disagreement on the novel policy, in a session that included billions of dollars in cuts including for child care programs that would cost her constituents.
“In the discussions we are having right now … we are pitting working families against each other,” Reeves said on the floor.
Her amendment passed the House on a voice vote. A legislative conference committee ultimately nudged the number of weeks back to six. That law takes effect Jan. 1.
Did she earn praise for tempering policy and standing up for what she felt was right? Far from it. Instead, some members of her own caucus berated her about watering down a party imperative.
The experience was far from unique, many legislators have told the editorial board this year. Reeves, entering her seventh session in January, has watched both Democrats and Republicans in her chamber become more entrenched on policy, more outraged in disagreement, and less willing to partner with other lawmakers who hold disparate viewpoints.
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“It’s no longer about representation,” she said recently. “It’s about party purity.”
Ultimately, that comes at a great cost to the residents of our state. Infighting in the Capitol is at best a distraction in the pursuit of sound policy — and at worst, antithetical to carrying out vital state services like K-12 education.
If this tale sounds familiar, it’s because it is — in the other Washington. In an era of President Donald Trump’s zero-sum politics, statecraft is blood sport. Compromise is capitulation. Owning the other side is the only way to win.
In Olympia, where Democrats today enjoy wide majorities, this brand of my-way-or-the-highway, maximalist thinking is relatively new, longtime legislators have told me. But it’s been building over time.
It starts with the hollowing out of Washington’s political center of gravity. In the 1980s, for example, 20 of the state’s 49 legislative districts included at least one legislator of the opposite party. Today, there are three.
That’s turned legislative caucuses into geographic echo chambers. Pollster Stuart Elway points out that, other than the one Democratic senator and two representatives from the downtown Spokane legislative district, the Democratic caucuses have no other Eastern Washington representation. And other than one district straddling the South King County line, Republicans have no representation in the state’s most populous county.
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“When they’re separated by ideology but also geography, you just don’t have the same kind of fertile ground for compromise,” Elway said.
Siloed lawmakers are at greater risk of confirmation bias — surrounded by like-minded thinkers, they’re unwilling to consider alternative solutions.
A recent exodus of experience included many centrist Democrats and Republicans known for collaborating across political divides. Former Sen. Mark Mullet, for instance, will be sworn in as Issaquah mayor in January. He’s noticed centrists heading other King County cities, a job that, closer to the front lines of serving residents, rewards pragmatism over activism.
“Cities are kind of where the centrist Democrats are in our state today,” he said.
The age of social media has not helped this phenomenon. Instagram and TikTok algorithms feed users the most outrageous and controversial voices; the goal is anger — and to keep you scrolling. That has also served to nationalize political divisions, even locally. The old saying that “All politics is local” has been reversed.
This is to the detriment of the nitty-gritty — highly nuanced policy deliberations lawmakers should engage in to find solutions that make government work. That “cannot be done in five-second sound bites,” Reeves said at a recent forum.
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Thorough deliberation spurred Sen. Sharon Shewmake, D-Bellingham, a Ph.D. economist, to push for a less stringent rent cap for landlords. Instead of a 7% cap, she successfully argued for a cap of 7% plus inflation or 10%, whichever is lower. She said on the Senate floor that 7% was too risky.
Like Reeves, she caught hell for it.
“I’m disappointed at this point of where we are, of the changes that were made here,” Sen. Emily Alvarado, D-West Seattle, the bill’s prime sponsor, said on the senate floor.
Despite this reaction, working to moderate legislation results in its durability, former state Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, told TVW’s Austin Jenkins in a 2024 interview.
“I feel that when we do have the opportunity to work … with your colleagues on the other side of the aisle … and get to yes with them, that the work you’re doing stands a much better chance of standing the test of time.”
That raises the question: Are lawmakers more interested in scoring political points today, or establishing a legacy for tomorrow?
Case in point: In 2017, a bill establishing paid family and medical leave in the state was forged with bipartisan compromise, and ultimately passed by a Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate. In 2019, with Democrats running the table in both Houses,the Legislature approved long-term care insurance with only one Republican vote in the Senate. It’s a controversial program that’s already been the subject of one initiative attempting to repeal it.
To be fair, bipartisanship’s not entirely dead in Olympia. Senate Transportation Chair Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, and ranking member Curtis King, R-Yakima — who dine once a week during session — produced a compromise gas tax-increase and budget that included some Senate Republicans joining Democrats.
Sadly, this year, this state lost two exemplars of state government — one on each side of the aisle. Ralph Munro, a four-term Republican secretary of state, was lionized for putting the best interests of Washingtonians over partisan politics. Frank Chopp, longtime Democratic speaker of the House, used his power not for ideological gain but to help Washingtonians in every corner of the state. He was known to provide grace for Democrats when the caucus agenda ran afoul of their more rural or suburban constituents.
Today’s lawmakers should seek to learn from these two titans, whose legacies will continue to burn brightly — particularly in the stark contrast of today’s politics.
