McKenna vs. Inslee: The first debate

The student body president faces off against the high school quarterback when the Association of Washington Business hosts the first debate of Washington’s race for Governor on Tuesday afternoon in Spokane.

Inslee

Attorney General Rob McKenna started as a successful student politician at the University of Washington, and remains to this day a policy guy with polished analytical speeches.

Ex-U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee was a student athlete at Ingraham High School, still talks like one, and has won elections he was supposed to lose by connecting with voters late in the game.

The AWB debate is at 3:30 on Tuesday and will be televised statewide on TVW.  It will be preceded, at 2 p.m., by a faceoff between two King County Councilmen, Democrat Bob Ferguson and Republican Reagan Dunn, who are vying to succeed McKenna.

The McKenna-Inslee debate has certain certainties.  Democrats will rush out with an e-mail release proclaiming Inslee the winner, and trying to link McKenna with various right-wing ogres.  Republicans will say that McKenna’s stellar performance demonstrates why Inslee has ducked debates.

McKenna

Potty-mouthed pundit Goldy at The Stranger will award Inslee a knockout even if the Democrat loses his voice and has to speak in hand signals.

Seriously,  a lot is at stake.  The state struggles to emerge from the Great Recession, its social services cut to the bone and its schools starved for resources.  Here are a few points to watch:

–Education:  Democrat Inslee has talked education with anecdotes about schools he has visited.  He has campaigned for almost a year, but has offered up no plan for higher education.  Boosting education, from all-day kindergarten to college tuition relief, is the heart of McKenna’s message.

Will Inslee put cards on the table, and will he edge closer to a reform agenda?  Will McKenna get real about how to pay for what he eloquently describes needs to get done.

–Jobs:  McKenna speaks Republican-business sound bites about alleged regulatory shackles, even as Forbes magazine’s annual survey pegs Washington as one of America’s best places to do business.  Inslee speaks of building a “green” economy of biotech and clean energy jobs.

Can McKenna make a convincing case that business needs relief?  Will Inslee flesh out his jobs agenda and tell us why we need a new level of people working out of the governor’s office to oversee economic development.

–Social issues:  The Democrats have been arguing that Washington women will be kept barefoot and pregnant — only slight exaggeration — if McKenna wins.  McKenna explains that, as a Catholic, he will vote against same-sex marriage while acknowledging it is coming.

Can Inslee make any sort of case, beyond hyperbole, that a McKenna administration would be harmful to women?  Is McKenna convincing when he acknowledges the state’s social trends and says he will not stand in their way?

–Law enforcement:  Washington is closing prisons, letting people out of jail, and sending forth parolees without supervision.  So deep are cuts to the Dept. of Corrections that plans are afoot to move mentally ill patients to group homes.

What is each candidate specifically going to do about this if elected?  While we’re on the subject, how do Inslee and McKenna stand on closing the gun show loophole?  Other Western states have.

–Transportation:  McKenna has been a skeptic about light rail, while Inslee is a true believer.  The state’s highway bottlenecks need to be relieved with a combination of both.

Will McKenna’s skepticism lead to obstructionism?  Will Inslee’s cheer leading preclude needed skepticism when cost estimates soar and the aims of Seattle’s transportation authoritarians far exceed the practical and doable?

–Drugs:   The “War on Drugs” isn’t working.  Both McKenna and Inslee oppose Initiative 502, the tax-and-legalize marijuana measure on the November ballot.  Increasingly, however, organized crime — gangs from Canada, cartels from Mexico — is controlling the business along the I-5 corridor.

Will Washington’s next Governor favor a switch from enforcement-based drug policy to an emphasis on treatment and education?  Is McKenna mired in talk about task forces and meth labs . . . and has Inslee thought much at all about the subject?

–Environment:  Washington is a livable state, which is why lots of people want to live here.  The Republican Party has veered toward anti-environmental extremism with pledges to repeal the Growth Management Act.  Inslee was a leading “green” in Congress.

Will McKenna support the GMA against pressure from his party, and keep money going to the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition?  Will Inslee put such emphasis on “green” jobs that he neglects the state’s existing manufacturing base?

–Health care:  Can Rob McKenna please explain why he joined a lawsuit to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) when he opposes only individual mandates?  Can Jay Inslee go beyond sound bites and explain how adopting King County reforms statewide will yield massive savings that he promises to spend elsewhere?

Whew!  That’s a lot to get to.  McKenna has argued he wants a dozen or maybe more debates between now and October.  The Inslee camp has, depending on your point of view, been unfocused or elusive.

Hopefully, the guys will prove to be a hit on Tuesday — to the point we want to hear more from them.