Stokesbary: ‘House Democrats have a tendency to suppress any dissent and alternative views’
During Tuesday’s Republican media availability, House Republican Leader Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn, sounded the alarm on the majority party’s ongoing efforts to stifle dissent and consolidate power in Olympia. He criticized recent rule changes that make it easier for Democrats to shut down debate on key legislation, arguing that such moves undermine the role of the minority party and suppress alternative viewpoints. He pointed to a broader pattern, noting how Democrats have repeatedly sought to rewrite the rules when faced with initiatives they oppose—whether by eliminating tax impact advisory votes, adding fiscal impact statements to ballots, or now attempting to make it even harder for citizen initiatives to qualify in the first place. Stokesbary made it clear House Republicans will not back down from representing their constituents, even as Democrats attempt to limit debate. “If Democrats really want to invoke the rule and cut off debate, they’re gonna have to own it,” he said.
Full transcript:
It is frustrating that Democrats in the Legislature seem like they will not be content until they have all the power to control everything and stifle any dissent. You know, for as much as they criticize Trump and accuse him of having authoritarian tendencies—boy, some of the stuff they’re doing sure looks like stifling dissent to me.
Whether it’s their rule change at the start of session to make it easier to end debate on important bills before the Legislature—you know, in our communications offline, the speaker essentially said that she views the Republicans’ job as helping her do her job. She wanted to change the rule because Republicans were making it too hard for the majority to pass their bills, and she wanted to make it easier for the majority to pass its bills. And, you know, thought that stifling dissent would help her do that.
Same thing with this bill [Senate Bill 5382]. We’ve seen it with other initiative-related bills over time. When our state was founded in the late 1800s, our founders thought it very important to give voters and the public access to direct democracy. The threshold is high—like Senator Braun said—not just any guy or gal on a lark can get an initiative on the ballot. It takes a lot of work, often a lot of funding, to gather enough signatures to get it on the ballot.
Over the last 10 or so years, I think there have been, overall on average, a reasonable number of [initiatives]. But anytime there has been an initiative that the Democrats don’t like, they’ve run to the statehouse to change the rules.
They have gotten rid of tax impact advisory statements. They go to court to overturn initiatives they don’t like. They added a fiscal impact statement to the ballot, and now they want to make it even harder for an initiative to qualify in the first place.
If I were just an average person out there who had a variety of opinions about current events, I’d be very concerned that House Democrats have a tendency to suppress any dissent and alternative views to their party orthodoxy. It’s very troubling.
We were all elected by 150,000 constituents to come to Olympia and represent them on the House floor. And we’re not gonna be quiet. The threat of the majority party shutting down debate is not going to be enough to actually make Republicans spend less time advocating for our districts.
If Democrats really want to invoke the rule and cut off debate, they’re going to have to own it. But they’re definitely not going to accomplish getting Republicans to complain less about their terrible ideas by threatening Republicans.
