Jim Walsh (Washington politician)

In 2016, Jim Walsh became just the third Republican in 80 years to win a seat in the 19th Legislative District.[5] Walsh believes that his election in the district, and broad support for other Republican candidates across the district, including for Governor and for President, signifies that the district is trending towards Republicans. Having once been a bastion of economic vibrancy, comprised largely of blue-collar workers and families, the district has undercome hard times, sustaining a 9.8% unemployment rate and a median family income of just $42,800; both measures by which the district marks the second worst in the State.[6][7] Walsh attributes the upswell of Republican support to conditions such as this and a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo.[8] Up until this point, the district had historically voted for Democrats with Cowlitz, Pacific, and Grays Harbor Counties not having voted for a Republican for President since 1980, 1952, and 1928 respectively. Since 2016, the district’s economic wellbeing had improved, until the dawn of the Covid-19 shutdown.

Walsh has fought for economic improvements across his district in a plethora of ways including investing more resources and funds in rural communities for job development, giving tax credits to small businesses to bolster their growth, and fighting what he argues are overbearing regulations from the State’s Department of Ecology that hurt hunters, fishers, and rural citizens in his district. Walsh advocated for the Washington Rural Jobs Act.[9] Walsh is also well known for maintaining good ties with local officials around his district from Aberdeen to Kelso to foster coordination on how the district can recover from some of its economic woes.

Representative Walsh has been a strong proponent for increasing government transparency and accountability.

One particular instance of this is Walsh’s strong opposition to the use of ‘Ghost bills’, or ‘title-only bills’, whereby public input processes such as committee hearings, are bypassed in favor of expediently and subtly passing otherwise politically controversial bills. These bills are drafted in such a manner that they are devoid of text and contain only a title. They stay this way until right before it is time for them to be passed, at which time amendments are introduced to input text into the bill.[10] Walsh has decried this tactic, even introducing HB 2190 to prohibit their use.[11] He has also stated that the practice is “sneaky” and “wrong”. Despite this opposition, ghost bills have been used in recent years by the Democrat majority in the State legislature, occurring 26 times during the 2019 legislative session, most often to pass new taxes.[12] Jim Walsh was the only legislator in the 19th legislative to vote down each of these bills.

Another example of Walsh’s fervor in regard to government reform is his opposition to the overturning of $30 car tabs. In 2019, the voters of Washington State opted to fix the price of car tabs at $30 by approving I-976 by a margin of 53%-47%.[13] In the 19th legislative district, this disparity increased and the measure passed by a 2-1 margin. However, the measure was later overturned by State courts for allegedly violating the single subject rule initiatives are required to adhere to when they are drafted, among other Washington State Constitutional provisions.[14] Representative Walsh was amongst those calling for the measure to be upheld and the people’s vote respected, arguing the sentiment of the initiative was as clear as the voters’ wills that passed it. He maintains that the people of Washington State want to reign in the Transportation budget of the State to force the government to be more efficient.[15] As the ranking member on the House Transportation Committee Walsh was particularly vocal on this issue, even asserting that the State legislature itself needed to take action to correct the decision of the courts.[16] Although the Democrat majority of the legislature refused to take up any such legislation, the initiative itself is currently on hold and undergoing further litigation.

One of the top issues championed by Representative Walsh is tax relief. For the 2020 legislative session, Representative Walsh introduced HB 2222 to decrease property taxes in light of unexpected excess revenues.[17] In the same session, he also offered amendments that proposed tax cuts for working families.[18] Despite this, neither the bill nor the amendments passed, and the legislature did not adopt any tax relief. In addition, Walsh also voted down eleven tax hikes the previous year, in 2019, that the State legislature passed anyway including gas, business and operation, property, payroll, sales, and internet sales taxes.[19] Subsequently, the 19th legislative district also voted down each tax hike posed to them as advisory votes in the November general election that year, aside from one levied on vape pens. Walsh is also well known for donning a yellow safety vest on the House floor to object to spikes in the State’s gas tax; a reference to the recent protests in France over skyrocketing gas taxes.[20]

Education is one of Walsh’s signature platform issues. In the 2020 legislative session, Walsh sponsored a bill to give teachers more discretion and autonomy over how they deal with disruptive students, an issue which many teachers around the state have said constraints and disenfranchises them. Walsh drafted and introduced the bill when he was prompted by teachers around his district to take action. If enacted, the bill would take into account individualized learning plans and ensure disruptions in the learning environments of schools would be swiftly and safely dealt with by isolating the troubled student rather than evacuating the entire classroom, as has been the traditional response.[21]

In regard to education, Walsh has also advocated for equalizing funding disparities across school districts resulting from varying property values and subsequent tax revenues around the State. To address this issue, Walsh sponsored legislation in the 2020 legislative session to facilitate additional levy support to school districts with less property tax revenue. School districts that would likely benefit from this include Aberdeen, Cosmopolis, Elma, Hoquiam, McCleary, Montesano, Oakville, Satsop, Taholah, Willapa Valley, and Wishkah Valley, all of which are either in or near the 19th Legislative District.[22]

Representative Walsh has had five kids attend school in the Aberdeen area. He has been active both in their academic and extracurricular activities, having helped coach boys’ and girls’ basketball.[23]

Walsh has maintained stances on cultural issues in line with his district’s culturally conservative lean.

Chief among these issues, and on which Walsh takes perhaps his strongest stance, is gun rights. Walsh has been a vocal opponent of gun restrictions. In the wake of the passage of I-1639, Walsh led and spoke out at gun rights rallies against the measure, arguing it was blatantly Unconstitutional and unjust.[24] Several of the more provocative provisions in the law increased the age at which one could buy firearms from 18 to 21, allowed for liability of stolen firearms to fall squarely on the owner, and severely restricted the ease with which one could purchase a firearm. The initiative, which was 30 pages long, appeared with just a one sentence description on the ballot in November of 2018.[25] Walsh believes that the initiative infringed on the Second Amendment of the Federal Constitution, a similar provision in the State Constitution, and the single topic requirement for initiatives in the State Constitution. Walsh has also asserted it is nonsensical for people between the ages of 18 and 21 to be allowed to handle guns in the military but not domestically.

Other gun measures Representative Walsh has opposed include magazine limits and bans on open carry.[26][27] In the 2020 legislative session, both gun control policies were on the table in various forms. However, Walsh and other Republicans managed to inhibit them from being enacted by introducing dozens and dozens of amendments, extending debate on the matter beyond the bills’ deadlines to be passed.[28] Another similar measure also introduced in the 2020 session, which Walsh also opposed and managed to halt the passage of, was a tax on ammunition.[29] Walsh, among other Republicans, maintains that gun restrictions merely inhibit law-abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment Rights, leaving them defenseless against better armed non-law-abiding criminals. Walsh believes a far better deterrent of crime and shootings is arming a greater number of responsible law-abiding citizens that care about their communities and neighbors. He claims that such societal conditions would dissuade would-be shooters, as they would know they would be stopped within seconds of embarking on a potential rampage.[30]

In the 19th Legislative District, one of the most rural districts in Western Washington, guns are uniquely a part of the culture and way of life. Many families use them to hunt and provide food for themselves, others use them for sport, and yet others and more of the same possess them for basic protection. Attitudes on gun rights in the district reflect this with every county in the district voting down I-1639 by hefty margins while the measure won over 60 percent of the vote across the rest of the State.[31] Despite this, Walsh and the policies he has advocated for have undercome heavy scrutiny by Governor Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

Agricultural work is an especially integral component of the 19th Legislative District. Roughly 50% more of the 19th Legislative District is employed in agricultural work than the rest of the State at-large.[32] Walsh has advocated for farming communities around his district in a number of ways, most notably by opposing bills that Washington Farmers from around the State opposed. In January of 2020, Walsh was the only member of the State Legislature who attended a Farmers’ Rally staged to oppose additional taxes from being levied on agricultural employees. Other issues farmers in his district hope to see addressed in the near future include addressing rising production costs and plateauing incomes in the industry.[33]

Walsh has also advocated for the trucking industry, speaking at rallies put on to protest the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which if enacted would add up to 63 cents per gallon of gas.[34] The act was later passed in the State House almost exclusively along partisan lines with Representative Walsh voting “Nay”.[35]

Yet another prominent issue on which Walsh has taken a stand is religious freedom. Walsh attended a Religious Freedom Rally in February of 2020 where he spoke in favor of what he deemed to be essential rights; namely the freedom to practice one’s own religion, have a clear conscience on how their taxes are being spent, and protect the rights of families.[36] One particular instance of Walsh’s proactivity on this issue is his opposition to SB 5395. The bill delegated the discretion to mandate a sexual education curriculum to Superintendent Chris Reykdal.

Most recently, Walsh has gained publicity by opposing mandatory stay-at-home orders imposed by the Governor of the State due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Initially, Walsh gave Governor Inslee some grace on the topic although appealed for a greater level of discretion to be delegated to each individual county across the State. In subsequent weeks, the lockdown was repeatedly extended by the Governor and restrictions were tightened causing many to decry the order. As time progressed without any movement on the lockdown, Representative Walsh rose to be one of the Governor’s staunchest critics. Among the restrictions Walsh pushed the Governor to loosen were the right to fish, hunt, boat, golf, operate a private construction site, attend religious gatherings, and protest. He was also particularly critical of expediting the release dates of felons convicted of violent crimes around the State, mandating the wearing of masks, and jailing business owners that decided to reopen their businesses.[37] Across all of these fronts, Walsh was largely successful in convincing the Governor to reconsider his policies as many of the restrictions were loosened in the following weeks ahead of schedule. One topic on this front that is currently heating up is an unemployment benefits scandal in which many across the State are forgoing their promised unemployment benefits for weeks, without any income from their work, due to the Governor’s administration being scammed out of hundreds of millions of dollars in unemployment benefits by a Nigerian con ring.[38] Walsh has been particularly critical of this, although the Inslee administration is currently working to address the problem.

Walsh has also advocated for the reopening of schools arguing that their closure hurts rural students most who do not have internet access and cannot learn any other way than in-person.[39] To date, children are thought relatively unlikely to transmit Covid-19 both amongst their peers and amongst adults.[40] Although, the Governor is still debating whether or not to open schools in the Fall, let alone before the end of the regular school year for 2020.

One area of contention within the 19th Legislative District has been whether or not to legalize sports betting. Walsh opted to gradually phase it in by allowing it at tribal casinos across the State, although he was under heavy pressure not to do so by Special interests largely based out of State, namely Maverick Gaming. Walsh refused to kowtow to these groups and voted in favor of the proposal anyway. The legislation passed the Washington State House by a margin of 83 to 14. However, in response Maverick Gaming founded a political action committee, Washingtonians Win in the 19th, to oppose Walsh. As of June 2020, the group has dumped tens of thousands of dollars into the PAC to purchase billboards across the District, many of which defame Representative Walsh and claim he has “taken away the right of people to vote”, a patently false claim as the legislation had nothing to do with voting rights.[41] Maverick Gaming has recently had to back away from several acquisitions they had previously committed to as many of their investors had concerns over those acquisitions’ liquidity. Walsh has argued that their attacks on him are a petty ploy to revive their struggling business model and they merely want to choke tribal casinos out of their industry for their own profit. [42]