LONG BEACH — Two Southwest Washington legislators claimed victory over the 2024 legislative session in Olympia at a town hall event put on by the local chapter of the John Birch Society in Long Beach last week.

State Sen. Jeff Wilson (R-Longview) and Washington State Republican Party Chair and state Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen) hailed the legislature’s passage of three conservative-backed initiatives during this year’s session, and gave their support for three more initiatives that will appear on the general election ballot this fall.

The event, which lasted about two hours and was held at the Peninsula Church Center in Long Beach, was the second town hall-style meeting with 19th District legislators hosted by the Peninsula Patriots, a chapter of the John Birch Society. The first meeting took place last spring at the Long Beach Grange, with Wilson and state Rep. Joel McEntire (R-Cathlamet) in attendance.

The John Birch Society, which does not endorse candidates, is a political advocacy group that was founded in the 1950s on an anti-communist platform, supports social conservatism and embraces far-right and libertarian ideas. The group’s founder, Robert Welch, accused then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a communist agent, among other conspiracies.

The society opposed the federal civil rights movement in the 1960s, opposes the United Nations and international free trade agreements, supports state nullification — a legal theory that argues states have the right to invalidate any federal laws that they deem to be unconstitutional, which has repeatedly been rejected by state and federal courts — and alleges that a bureaucratic, Marxist “Deep State” aims to destroy America.

Opponents were in attendance prior to the meeting, distributing copies of a Seattle Times column to attendees as they approached the building the event was being held in. The column, written by Danny Westneat, recapped the state Republican Party’s convention last month in Spokane, overseen by Walsh, and highlighted portions of the column.

“The Republican base, it turns out, is now opposed to democracy,” one of the highlighted sections from Westneat’s column read. Another highlighted portion of the column quoted a delegate at the convention who said “We do not want to be a democracy.”

Legislative session

Much of Walsh and Wilson’s discussion about this year’s legislative session, which adjourned in early March, was about the trio of initiatives that passed both chambers with clear majorities.

The initiatives loosen restrictions on when police officers could engage in vehicular pursuits, guarantee parents’ rights to review educational materials and opt their child out of sexual health education, and prohibit the state and local governments from enacting a personal income tax.

Walsh painted the initiatives’ passage as a force that impacted the entirety of the 2024 session, although dozens of bills he voted against did ultimately get signed into law. Walsh, along with McEntire, has accumulated one of the most conservative voting records in the legislature according to annual and lifetime ratings from the American Conservative Union, while Wilson has one of the more relatively moderate voting records among Republicans in the state Senate.

“These three [initiatives] that passed into law really defined the whole legislative session,” said Walsh. “The majority Democrats, who are used to bulldozing through everything and getting the policies they want passed, actually had to play some defense because they didn’t like those initiatives. And the thing is, they’re not good at defense. They haven’t had to play political defense in a long time, so they’re not used to it.”

Pull Quote

‘The majority Democrats, who are used to bulldozing through everything and getting the policies they want passed, actually had to play some defense because they didn’t like those initiatives.’

Rep. Jim Walsh

The three aforementioned initiatives are part of a larger effort to pass six conservative-backed initiatives this year, with signature-gathering efforts for each of the initiatives largely being funded by Brian Heywood, a hedge fund executive and Republican donor from Redmond. The legislature declined to take up the other three initiatives, meaning they will appear on the ballot for voters to decide this November.

If passed, the remaining initiatives would repeal provisions of the Climate Commitment Act that was passed into law in 2021 and prohibit the trading of carbon tax credits, repeal the capital gains excise tax on individuals with capital gains — such as stocks and bonds — over $250,000, and allow employees to opt out of paying taxes and receiving benefits under WA Cares, the state’s program for providing long-term care support.

Walsh, while explaining that the initiatives will appear at the top of the general election ballot, said his hope is for those measures to not be overshadowed by the rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

“So when you hear people say ‘Well, it’s gonna be a bad election because Trump and Biden are gonna be on the top of the ballot’ — nope, these three initiatives are gonna be on the top of the ballot and they are not federal, they are state issues,” said Walsh. “I think it’s going to focus people on state policy instead of getting caught up in Trump vs. Biden, all the national stuff. And we’d like to keep the focus local.”

HOA oversight

One attendee, who resides in Surfside, pressed Walsh and Wilson about supporting legislation to provide more oversight of homeowners associations and recounted a story of an elderly woman in Surfside being fined $4,000 by the HOA and was at risk of losing her home before another member stepped in to provide financial assistance.

“As a homeowner, you’re basically at the mercy of whatever the [HOA] board decides,” the man said.

The legislature passed, and Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law, Senate Bill 5796 this spring, which will apply the Washington Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (WUCIOA) to all common interest communities, such as HOAs, beginning in 2028. Previously, only communities formed after July 1, 2018 were governed under WUCIOA, and the bill also repealed several state laws that communities formed before 2018 had previously been governed under.

The bill, which received bipartisan support in both chambers but not from any 19th District legislator, also allows association boards to remove unlawful discriminatory restrictions and makes a variety of amendments to WUCIOA.

Supporters of the bill said it was time for HOAs and other common interest communities to be governed by a single statute instead of a patchwork of different laws, and argued that WUCIOA strikes a balance between governance and the rights of individuals in an association. Opponents called it a one-size-fits-all bill, claimed it will increase the cost of homeownership for everyone in plat communities, and said it will force associations to hire professional management to ensure they are in compliance with WUCIOA.

Asked by the man why they did not support SB 5796, Walsh said the bill is “basically a Band-Aid on a bullet wound” and does not fix the issue he brought up, and also that he’s wary of infringing on private contractor rights.

“That said, the association you’re talking about has become notorious for abusing its members, and at some point the inmates need to take control of the asylum and simply vote out the board,” Walsh said, to which the man replied that he was indeed running to serve on the HOA’s board.

HOA oversight is an issue that Wilson said is in McEntire’s wheelhouse, noting he authored a bill that was passed into law during the 2023 legislative session that requires all HOAs to follow the same record-keeping requirements as spelled out in WUCIOA and make it easier for homeowners to contact other homeowners and provide for better outreach and a better electoral process. He has also introduced or co-sponsored other bills on the issue, Wilson said.

Immigration reform

The legislators were also asked several questions about immigration, including House Bill 1889, which was passed and signed into law this spring on a bipartisan basis — among 19th District legislators, Wilson voted in favor of the bill in the state Senate while Walsh and McEntire voted against the bill in the state House.

HB 1889 makes people not lawfully in the country eligible for certain professional and commercial licenses, certifications, permits and registrations for a variety of professions, and allows applicants to provide an individual taxpayer identification number — which are often used by immigrants without legal status to file taxes — in lieu of a social security number.

Diane Gruber, the Peninsula Patriots’ secretary and MC of the town hall, said she was worried that the bill will encourage Washington employers to hire people in the country illegally rather than Americans for tax considerations. Walsh said Gruber’s assumptions aren’t wrong, but said his objection to the bill was that it “codifies people who are breaking the law in how they come into our state and our nation.”

“When we pass these laws that allow lawless behavior to be embraced in the law, it undermines all law,” Walsh said, and that the excuse or justification that there aren’t enough people in these professions can be solved through other means.

He supported restarting the bracero program, which the U.S. negotiated with Mexico to recruit all-male Mexican workers without their families to work on short-term contracts on farms and in war industries during World War II, and then on farms from 1942-1964.

“I don’t mind bringing immigrants into the light and making the process legal, but I don’t like the current federal approach under Biden of encouraging lawbreaking,” Walsh said. “I mean, if our immigration law needs to be reformed, let’s reform it.”

One woman in attendance pointed out that Republicans in the U.S. Senate — at Trump’s urging — scuttled a compromise bill in February that sought to cut back on illegal border crossings by, among other things, allowing the border to be shut down under certain circumstances, making the asylum process more stringent and expedited, and giving federal border and immigration agencies greater flexibility to make new hires and address staffing shortages. Walsh said the woman’s claims were a “political opinion.”

Wilson pointed to his wife, an immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, as someone who came into the country legally and that “the process was done under the guise of openness and transparency.”

He pivoted to criticizing Washington’s status as a “sanctuary state” after Senate Bill 5497 was signed into law in 2019. The bill prohibits local law enforcement agencies from asking about immigration status or place of birth unless directly connected to a criminal investigation, as well as prohibiting local jails and state prisons from complying with voluntary “immigration holds” requested by federal authorities.

“I think that we should discuss immigration, we should discuss it fairly, but [Walsh] is right and I won’t debate anybody on that; it must be lawful and it must be above-board,” Wilson said. “The shadow secrecy of this is not fair to anybody, including my wife.”

Other news and notes

Like he did at last year’s event, Pacific County Sheriff Daniel Garcia also made an in-uniform appearance at the town hall. He thanked Walsh and Wilson for attending and told attendees that the legislators “work hard to kind of speak our language over there in Olympia.”

Garcia implored attendees who raised issues with the legislators at the town hall to also bring these issues up to their local elected officials, like himself and county commissioners, as well as legislators who chair the relevant committees in the state legislature and “His Majesty Inslee.”

“Blow up his email box with our issues that are unique to Pacific County,” Garcia said. “We are different than the rest of the state, and I know each county probably thinks the same thing, but legitimately we are.”

The evening was not devoid of conspiracies, with one older man claiming that the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore that was struck by a container ship in March was actually blown up and that anyone who didn’t believe that “was watching mainstream media still.”

“Get off that, and go into something that’s legitimate,” the man said. Asked by a woman what qualifies as “legitimate,” the man replied “You have to find it on the internet.”

The same man later in the evening said he was perturbed that Walsh and Wilson hadn’t brought up the issue of “election integrity” yet and said Kim Wyman, the former Republican Secretary of State who now works on election security for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had created “the most corrupt election system in Washington state.” He also cited thoroughly debunked claims of Washington’s elections being rife with fraud in 2020.

“I don’t trust anything and I don’t trust any vote that I’ve taken for decades. I’m sick of it, and you guys not mentioning it? I’m sick of that, too,” the man said, to which Walsh said he was “catastrophically wrong” and that he talks about “election integrity” all the time.