Republican gubernatorial candidate visits Moses Lake

MOSES LAKE — Generating family-wage jobs and improving education statewide are Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Bryant’s pillars for moving the state into “our next frontier,” as he explained at Pillar Rock Grill in Moses Lake Saturday evening.

Bryant was the keynote speaker at the Grant County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner, which more than 150 people attended, including many local dignitaries. He was the headliner of the evening, speaking to a packed house at Pillar Rock Grill about the bedrock of his campaign for the governor’s seat: creating family-wage job growth statewide and improving education for all Washington’s children.

Bryant, a native of Morton, Wash., was elected by King County voters to serve as the Seattle port commissioner in 2007, which he did for eight years. In May, he announced his campaign to challenge Jay Inslee for the governor’s seat.

Bryant began his address Saturday night by challenging the notion that Washington is booming with job opportunity. He said in recent years, “even in King County, we have lost over 7,000 jobs that pay between $35,000 and $75,000.”

“Communities like Longview, Hoquiam, Port Angeles, Shelton … Moses Lake, Wenatchee (and) Ferndale are all struggling with slowdowns or shutdowns of factories that are really the bedrock of their community’s middle class jobs,” he said.

He also pointed to pitfalls in Washington’s education system, which he said is “failing a lot of kids.” Bryant said about 25 percent of ninth-graders will not graduate from high school in Washington, pointing to the need to bolster the state’s education system.

“I would argue if we want to really close that gap and make opportunity available to everyone, we have work to do,” he said.

Bryant likened his goals to Abraham Lincoln’s notion of “the right to rise.” Lincoln’s right to rise, he said, was built around two ideas: that government should invest in infrastructure that allows the private sector to generate jobs, and that everybody should have access to high-quality education.

“He called it ‘the right to rise’. I call it ‘our next frontier,’” Bryant said. “It’s about repositioning state government so that we focus on using the state government to help the private sector generate family-wage jobs in communities all across Washington state. And it’s about ensuring that we have a state government that is committed to making sure that every kid, regardless of where they grow up, has equal access to an excellent education.”

In order to accomplish these goals, Bryant said, the state needs a governor with vision and one who will work hard. He said Inslee is neither engaged, nor does he have a vision or a plan, which earned applause from Grant County Republicans in attendance.

Bryant spoke of his past successes both as the Seattle port commissioner and as the founder of Bryant Christie Inc. (BCI), a company that helps farmers and agriculture businesses export crops. He said as port commissioner, his work helped keep thousands of jobs in the state and lower property taxes in each of his eight years because he had a strategic plan.

That strategic plan, he said, is missing in Olympia. He titled the political scene in Olympia “a culture of ‘no’” and offered four steps he could take in his first four years as the governor to create a “culture of ‘yes.’”

Bryant’s first step would be changing leadership in Olympia. He said “we need to take a pressure hose to Olympia” and find new leadership. Second, Bryant said he would announce a four-year, zero-base budget initiative on his first day in office, if elected. This would involve a budget rebuild from zero for every state department over the course of four years and the development of long-term strategic objectives for each.

Third, Bryant said he would put a moratorium on all new regulations until departments can justify those they already have in place. Finally, Bryant said as governor, he would aim to eliminate “redundant and uncertain permitting practices that are keeping investments from coming to Washington state.”

On the education side, Bryant said he wants to create a scenario where all children have access to a quality education, regardless of where they live.

“Today, the quality of education you get is largely dependent on your school district, on your zip code, on whether or not you live in an area that’s wealthy enough to pass levies and provide kids with programs that other kids in school districts simply don’t have access to,” he said. “That is morally wrong and it’s undermining our economy. But we can fix it and we can keep these kids in school.”

Bryant said he wants to use the “huge amount of money the state is spending on education now (to) empower principals and teachers” to use the dollars in ways that meet the needs for their students.

In addition, Bryant said something needs to be done to help more students graduate from high school. He spoke of his goal to “reinvent” the last two years of high school so it is relevant for students and what their post-graduation goals are. He said many students who don’t want to go to college are dropping out because schools are focused on getting students college-ready. A better system, Bryant said, would offer apprenticeship and internship programs for students who are not college-bound so they can graduate prepared to earn a family-wage job.

These two things — focusing on generating jobs and improving education for everybody — will not be easy, Bryant said, but they can be done.

“If we focus on those two things … we can lead Washington into our next frontier,” Bryant said.

For more information on Bryant’s campaign, visit his website at www.billbryantforgovernor.com.