My fellow Rotary newsletter reporter Pete de Launey introduced our main speaker, Kate Riley of The Seattle Times. Kate grew up in the Seattle area and then worked in Eastern Washington at The Tri City Herald before joining the Times in 2002 and becoming their editorial page editor in 2012.

Her theme focused on “it’s a shame that we are not listening to each other and trying to find common ground.” She does not think it is healthy for our state and overall public policy to not have electeds Republicans in Seattle, nor Democrats in Eastern Washington, nor the increasing one party control of the legislature, etc.

She provided examples from their hundreds of interviews with political candidates each year: local races tend to be between the Left and further Left in the Seattle area and we have seen far Left progressives advancing to the General Election running against moderate Democrat leaders in two suburban legislative districts. The Times’ is also seeing fewer and fewer candidates that run for office with “a community service background” and instead are seeing candidates that are pushed by “big business” and labor unions without that experience of serving on community boards and organizations. She also commented that these candidates and some elected officials “only talk to their friends with the same views” and are not as interested as serving the entire district/population. The Times’ looks for people who “can say no to their friends and candidates that want to serve all of the people.”

Some of her other reflections included:

· The lack of oversight of state government such as what we are seeing with the recent problems associated with juvenile crime/youth prison system due to the one party control in Olympia

· Another example, “Where are the performance audits of the state ferry system?”

· We do not have a system with reliable checks and balances which leads to citizen-led ballot initiatives like what we are seeing this year

· Her concern is that citizens will not educate themselves on these issues and will rely on what they receive in their mailbox and see on TV

· “We only have ourselves to blame that got us to this point”

· The solution: “pay attention to who is running to represent you;” we need voter engagement