Q&A candidates forum featured Bateman, Iyall, Marshall, Snaza. Here’s what they had to say
Four candidates running for state legislative seats this November gathered for a question-and-answer session on Wednesday, fielding serious and light-hearted queries during a Thurston County Chamber of Commerce lunch forum.
The four people were Legislative District 22 state Senate candidates and Democrats Jessica Bateman and Bob Iyall, as well as Legislative District 2 candidates and Republicans Matt Marshall and John Snaza.
All four have political experience: Bateman is a state representative, Iyall is a Port of Olympia port commissioner, Marshall is a former Eatonville school board director and Snaza, a former Thurston County Sheriff.
Both groups are running for open seats being vacated by longtime legislative fixtures Sam Hunt and J.T. Wilcox. Hunt and Wilcox have previously announced they are retiring.
The forum was moderated by former Olympia Mayor Doug Mah, who is known for keeping candidates on their toes. Here are some of the questions he asked. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Outside of homelessness and housing affordability, what do you believe is the single most pressing challenge facing the Washington State Legislature in 2025 and why?
Iyall: One of the biggest things that I’m most concerned about is transportation. And the reason I said no to I-2117 is because that’s going to take $15 billion out of the state’s transportation program for the next 16 years, and very important projects like the I-5 project at the Nisqually River. They’re going to have to figure out how we’re going to continue to fund that, because it’s essential that project, and other projects, like the bridge at the Columbia River, be funded. They have to be on schedule, kept on schedule.
Bateman: Revenue, ongoing maintenance-level funding is not sufficient, so we’re going to walk in the door with a need for revenue options. Washington, prior to passing the capital gains tax, was the most regressive state in the country for how it taxed our residents. The second thing is behavioral health. We are hearing from schools, from our school directors, from principals, that we need more access to counselors, behavioral health specialists. We’ve made a lot of reforms on how we treat those types of issues in schools, but we need the resources to help those kids and those young people.
And thirdly, we need to address education funding. The McCleary decision was a good first step, but as we saw this last year with the numerous schools around the state that face potential closings because of their inability to pass local levies to fund their schools, that is not fair. It’s not equitable, and we need a sustainable solution.
Snaza: I’m going to go with the Blake decision. I really believe that what we’re seeing because of the legalization of drugs and of drug use, we are seeing a mental health crisis, a homelessness crisis, and we’re also seeing a crisis in crime. Our communities are not as safe as they once were. And I really believe that in reversing the Blake decision and taking on the challenge of making drugs illegal, will definitely benefit not only Legislative District 2, but our communities and then we can move forward and also focus on our education system, because drugs are definitely affecting our youth at this time.
Marshall: I would say public safety. Right now, crime is rampant in the state of Washington. It has increased. Murders are up. Car thefts are up. The legislature did good work to allow police pursuits again so that some enforcement can happen. But there’s more work to be done, and until we do that, we have businesses that are being affected. We have goods and merchandise walking out the doors. We have the drugs permeating the schools.
Now, just about everybody here probably knows somebody who has been affected by the drug crisis. Just this last month, I lost my one of my best friends from childhood, who thought he was buying prescription pills and it was fentanyl. And we need to get all of this off the streets. We need to allow police to do their jobs. We need to get the trust back into our law enforcement and let them know that they are respected.
The candidates also got to ask questions of each other. Some questions were more serious than others.
Iyall to Bateman: You failed to pass the majority of the proposed bills regarding the housing crisis and couldn’t build bipartisan support to move legislation forward. How can voters depend on you for solutions in the Senate when you fail to move the needle in the House?
Bateman: Actually, 2023 was called the year of housing because we passed more bills in one year than we had in the previous decade on pro-housing supply side bills. My bill, the missing-middle housing bill, was featured in the national state legislatures conference. In addition to that, the three largest chambers of commerce in Washington state wrote an op-ed supporting it because of its connection to economic development, and I was given a King County Chamber of Commerce award for leadership for my work on that bill. Specifically, because of the bipartisan nature of that work, we can’t measure the success of any of the bills we’ve passed in the last two years, because we can’t just tell city councils that they have to turn on these ordinances overnight. We have to give them a runway of about two years.
Bateman to Iyall: You’ve identified housing as one of your top priorities. Do you support amendments to the Growth Management Act? And if so, what specific amendments do you support?
Iyall: Housing is one of my top priorities. And I do believe that the Growth Management Act needs to be reviewed and updated. When it was enacted, it had good intent. It’s got good parts in it, with environmental and historical preservation, those types of things. It’s a good thing, but we need to focus more on how communities can engage in that growth management act. How they can support it by following provisions that’s going to create the opportunity to build more housing, affordable housing within the core.
Snaza to Marshall: If elected, what are your plans for reaching across the aisle in the next legislative session?
Marshall: I’m actually in my final semester right now of law school at Seattle University, and one of the things that I’ve focused on was public policy, and I’ve realized that a lot of my hard-line stances that I’ve taken in the past, when you’re talking and don’t really understand how everything works behind the scenes, weren’t correct. I’m at Seattle University as a conservative Republican, but I have learned to talk with people who think completely different than I do. I’ve developed these relationships, and I’ve met a lot of legislators who are Democrats and who are are very, very liberal in comparison to my views, and we have found that we agree on a lot of issues.
And so I’ve done a lot of growing through law school, and I’ve learned to foster these relationships, and I’ll be able to do that once I’m in the House.
Marshall to Snaza: If you could go back to high school, what would you do differently?
Snaza: Matt, I don’t think that’s a softball question. So just for the record, I was one of those teenagers who had to go to three different high schools, and it wasn’t because my parents moved. I would be a way better person and student. And the best thing that happened to me is that I recognized that I needed some help. I went into the Navy and got to work in South America and then over in the Persian Gulf. That really straightened me out.
Mah also posed some rapid-fire brain teasers.
Complete the following sentence: My favorite place in Thurston County is...
Iyall: The Nisqually River.
Bateman: Koko’s Restaurant.
Snaza: My home.
Marshall: The VFW in Yelm.
When talking to people about moving to the area, they should move here because...
Bateman: The wonderful environment.
Snaza: It’s a great place to live.
Marshall: Summers.
Iyall: Rain!
When you’re not working, you are...
Snaza: Working on my farm.
Marshall: Fishing.
Iyall: Playing golf.
Bateman: Working in my garden.
Your favorite political movie or TV series is...
Marshall: House of Cards.
Iyall: I’m sorry, what? I don’t know.
Bateman: West Wing.
Snaza: West Wing.
This story was originally published September 12, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
