MYNORTHWEST NEWS

KTTH Voter’s Guide

Oct 24, 2016, 1:26 PM | Updated: Nov 1, 2016, 2:49 pm

Find out how the KTTH talk show hosts are voting in key races for the 2016 Election.

Check out KIRO Radio’s 2016 Voter’s Guide

Who will you vote for President?

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Michael Medved- Evan McMullin. There are only two persuasive reasons to cast a vote for president: to help choose our next leader, or to send a message to all our leaders. Unfortunately, in the State of Washington we can’t really play a part in choosing our next president: the state’s electoral votes will go to Hillary Clinton regardless of what outnumbered conservatives may choose. Helping Donald Trump lose with 44% of the vote rather than, say, 40%, hardly sends a message that anyone would find significant. Therefore, those who share my sense of dread about both of the two major candidates (and who are ready to toss Libertarian Gary Johnson onto that same dreadful pile), should join me in writing in the name of Evan McMullin. He’s a solid conservative, with a record of service to our country – in counter-terrorism operations and as a Republican staff member in Congress. He’s on the ballot in 11 states, he might even carry Utah, and if he gets significant numbers of votes in other states, he would deliver a powerful wake-up call to the GOP to nominate a more worthy candidate next time. Since Trump, no matter how well he does elsewhere, poses no threat to carry the Evergreen State, even #NeverTrumpers among Washingtonians should feel free to send a positive McMullin message, rather than casting a defensive Hillary vote to stop the Orange Menace.

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Joe Getty- I’ll be voting for Gary Johnson and the Libertarian ticket. He won’t win but I’d like to see libertarian ideals gain momentum and, perhaps, scare the Republican Party into rediscovering their stated principles: free enterprise, limited government, and adherence to the US Constitution.

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Jack Armstrong- I do not vote for president. It’s a decision I made years ago as I believe it helps me be more objective covering the election. However, if I did vote, it would be for the libertarian party (not so much the current candidate). I am a limited government/personal freedom guy and I believe strengthening the Libertarian party will pull one of the major parties (likely the Republicans) further in that direction.

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Todd Herman- Evan McMullin. Neither of the two major party candidates are acceptable and neither of them should be given a mandate from the American people. Hillary Clinton clearly violated the Espionage Act on multiple occasions when she decided to share classified information with her lawyers, tech team and other associates when they had no security clearance to see it; she also broke it when she removed classified materials from their proper place of storage, many of them after she was served a subpoena. Hillary did all of this to try to hide the massive pay-to-play scam she ran out of the State Department, where — in her spare time — she managed to start a war in Libya which got four Americans killed and created a vacuum filled by ISIS. She is unfit to serve and, in the real world, she would have been tried and convicted for her national security felonies. Donald Trump is a lifelong buyer of government favors, including using government to steal people’s houses, here and in other countries. His business career is a long record of burning through other people’s money, scooping out great fortunes for himself, and leaving others to hold the bankruptcy bag when he decided to walk away from debts he could have paid. Trump has no connection to conservative ideas or principles, which he began mouthing when he eyed a run. He has no discernible ethical center, no observable governing philosophy, no apparent intellectual curiosity and no clear moral grounding. Evan McMullin will not win; in this situation, my philosophy is to deny either of these politicians a mandate in hopes that finally — finally! — Congress may stand up and begin taking back their proper role in our system.

Who will you vote for Governor?

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Michael Medved- Bill Bryant, with enthusiasm. Bill is knowledgeable, smart, pragmatic, reasonable, pro-business, pro-environment and a natural coalition builder and consensus shaper. We’re lucky to have him as our candidate to help lead us to a brighter, better future for the state GOP. Those who believe that government in Olympia is operating smoothly and effectively will naturally back the hapless, breathtakingly incompetent Jay Inslee. All others should back Bill – our one chance to throw Inslee Out-slee.

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Todd Herman- Bill Bryant. One Party Rule has failed Washington State and Jay Inslee is a failed Governor. The Washington State Department of Transportation does not have any mission to make traffic better for people who must drive to work, school or for work. That is not a mistake, it is a decision of a one party system to make driving hard because central planners still dream of forcing us all onto transit. Washington State is near the top of the scale in spending on schools — not on students — but on Big Unions; the One Party Rule in this State, including the judiciary, has waged a war against innovation in schools; that is not an error or happenstance, nor is it about serving kids or preserving budgets, it is about using brute force to maintain the money Big Labor gets from the existing inefficient system, which Big Labor passes back to Democrats. Jay Inslee had a chance to change this, he punted and Republicans increased school funding and helped with college costs. The prisons are a mess, felons are let out early –resulting in two murders — Western State Hospital has had multiple escapes of dangerous people and had 25,000 missing master keys! These issues are a result of One Party Rule where there is no accountability. Bill Bryant is not flashy, he is not firey, he is a master executive and actual leader who has as his priorities the needed, vital work of government: schools that perform, traffic that flows, prisons that work and government that is accountable. Bryant will return fiscal discipline by making each government department create zero-based budgets, rather than being able to rely on more money every year. Bill Bryant will demand that government departments tie their funding to actually completing their missions. Lastly, Bryant will do what Jay Inslee cannot: he will lead.

Who will you vote for Senator?

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Michael Medved- Chris Vance. Chris is another fine candidate who is close enough in the polls to offer a surprisingly strong challenge to Patty Murray, a doctrinaire liberal who’s been warming her seat since the Jurassic era. If overconfident Dems in our state stay home (and they well might), Vance, with little financial backing but boundless energy, could shock the universe by making this a horse-race.

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Todd Herman- Chris Vance. Chris Vance has one and really only one key difference from Patty Murray: Chris Vance knows that the fiscal house of the United States is in shambles. He is laser focused on cutting the debt and the deficit using a certified and actual bipartisan approach created and abandoned by Democrats and Republicans who chickened out and pretended our $17 trillion debt and $170 trillion in unfunded liabilities like pensions, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and ObamaCare are not a problem. While Chris Vance is not as conservative as I would prefer, he is a man well suited to represent the fiscal conservatism, socially liberal Western Part of Washington State which controls statewide elections. Conservatives can rest assured that Vance does not appear to be a social issue crusader, but rather a man focused on the issue of our day: our destructive spending and debt that will, if not addressed, consume our country. Patty Murray? Well, Patty Murray has one solution to all problems; increase government.

How will you vote on Prop. 1, concerning the expansion of light rail?

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Michael Medved- Rejected. This bone-headed boondoggle must be rejected. Prop 1 is a laughably idiotic proposal that would cost the typical family hundreds and thousands of dollars each year to pay for cutting edge 19th Century technology that’s all-but-useless for the 21st Century. The lavishly funded plans will disrupt our current awful traffic for several decades, while doing nothing to reduce congestion or pollution for future generations, which will laugh at the idea of outmoded, inefficient choo-choos designed and built (no doubt many, many years behind schedule) by their great-grandparents. Better to just burn the money in a public place in festive bonfires to celebrate our liberation from train-mania.

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Todd Herman- Do not approve. As The Seattle Times says, vote no on ST3 and demand a better plan. $54 billion is nearly twice the budget for the entire state of Washington. Sound Transit would have us spend that money on a fixed piece of rail that, in some 40 years may add all of 28,000 new riders to transit … in 40 years. In those 40 years a lot will change: driverless cars and smart grid roads will make our highway system and roads well managed, intelligently directed pathways to move people and packages. Urban centers may change; is anyone else old enough to remember when Redmond was a “cow town?” If we lock ourselves into this $54 billion what will not change — despite the fact that Sound Transit actually promises to build nothing with the money — is the ability of this un-elected group of lifelong bureaucrats to tax your home or apartment. A vote against this measure is hardly a vote against mass transit; ST3 will never move more than 3% of people; studies by Sound Transit Revealed show that light rail in our area is slower, less comfortable and more expensive on a rider per trip basis than bus rapid transit and, unlike fixed rail, bus rapid transit can respond to all the incredible changes we will see in how people travel over the next 40 years. Lastly, a vote against ST3 is a vote against corruption. Sound Transit Board Member Dow Constantine and the head of Sound Transit, Peter Rogoff, broke the law when they illegally shared Sound Transit’s customer email records with Mass Transit Now, a shadowy political group doing the work of Big Unions and Big Real Estate; Sound Transit went to court for the right to lie in voter pamphlets by not admitting the $54 billion tax for these lines of fixed rail is open ended and that Sound Transit makes no promise to build anything with it.

How will you vote on I-1491, allowing police or family to prevent those displaying mental illness access to guns?

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Michael Medved- No. It’s a worthy goal to try to keep firearms away from dangerous, disturbed individuals but this poorly designed and unworkable measure is only a distraction from a far more pressing need: instead of keeping guns away from violent crazy people, let’s keep violent crazy people away from the rest of us. We need improvements in our commitment proceedings and more investment in making sure that those with the most serious mental illnesses are off are streets and inside secure institutions, getting the help they need and giving the public the protection we deserve.

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Todd Herman- No. What will keep guns away from people likely to use them to harm another: telling the potentially violent person they cannot have them or removing the potentially violent person from society if, and until, that threat is abated? Tragically, we already know the answer. The murderer in the Burlington Mall incident had been ordered by a judge to not have firearms; he got one and he murdered people with it. Absent removing all guns from American hands — which one can desire, but must recognize will not happen save a shooting war — we already have clear tools on which to expand. If a judge is convinced that the evidence exists that a person is so likely to harm another that it is proper to suspend their right to arms, then that judge must also have the capability to remove the person from society following a trial and due process. Lastly, this measure is both ripe for abuse — a jealous, potentially dangerous ex-husband can petition a court to remove his ex-wife’s method of self-defense — it is also a dangerous attack on the foundation of American liberties. The measure allows a judge, having never met a target, decide a person is dangerous and order that person’s rights suspended, all without a trial all without informing the target. That task — informing a target that a judge has stripped them of their rights having never met them — will fall on the shoulders of police officers who will be tasked with going to take guns away from a target a judge says is so potentially violent he or she must have their constitutionally guaranteed rights suspended without a trial. Do you want to be that cop? Focus on what we can to stop violence without destroying the sacred principle of innocent until proven guilty by a jury of one’s peers; make it easier for judges to commit potentially dangerous people until that danger can be addressed, vote no on this measure.

How will you vote on I-1433, allowing increases in the state minimum wage?

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Michael Medved- No. If government wants to give a raise to its own employees, that’s their decision. If politicians want to determine what private employers must pay, making our state less and less competitive, then they ought to find a way to pay for it, rather than squeezing the money from hard-pressed businesses. In a highly varied, geographically diverse state, this one-size-fits-all mandate expresses the worst excesses of command-and-control liberalism.

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Todd Herman- No. The rest of Washington State is not Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue and Everett. Outside of our tech / biotech / airplane corridor, Washington State’s unemployment is 8th highest in the nation. Making a person’s labor for beginner jobs more expensive will result in fewer people being hired for beginning jobs. That has already happened in the Puget Sound, where socialist Kshama Sawant has been left to attack the honesty of the University of Washington economics team who simply amassed data that shows the new minimum wage rule in Seattle has resulted in decreased hours and decreased work. But, that is in Seattle: imagine a $15.00 minimum wage in Colfax, where a five bedroom, five bathroom, 2,800 square foot home on four acres of land overlooking a five minute walk to downtown is about $300,000. Or, consult the Spokesman-Review’s Editorial Board: “Under Initiative 1433, the minimum wage in Metaline Falls, in depressed Pend Oreille County, will be higher than Portland’s by 2020. Proponents wish to take the state’s relatively high minimum wage and boost it even more, from Sammamish to St. John to Sunnyside. In addition, the initiative would require every employer to provide sick leave (at least one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked) … The moral argument that the minimum wage should be a “living wage” sounds terrific in theory … Plus, as everyone knows, a living wage is determined by where you live. I-1433 doesn’t bother with these details, so we urge voters to reject it.” Well said, Spokesman-Review.

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