Bill Bryant challenges Gov. Inslee to debate on homelessness

Bill Bryant issued a challenge to Gov. Jay Inslee on KIRO Radio’s “Jason Rantz Show.”

Bryant, Washington’s Republican gubernatorial challenger, called for a debate on homelessness and mental health, two areas he says the state has failed to address and which have gotten significantly worse under the Inslee administration.

Related: Can Bill Bryant sway voters with stance on social issues?

During their Aug. 17 debate, Bryant asked Inslee what his biggest failure has been in office. After initially joking that his biggest failure was “Taking that check you contributed to me when I ran for Congress in 1994, maybe I should have given that back,” Inslee said he most regretted the rise in homelessness during his tenure. Inslee said that King County has seen a 30 percent increase in homelessness in King County.

Bryant, meanwhile, told Rantz that there has been a 42 percent increase in King County homelessness despite Inslee doubling the amount of money spent on homeless programs.

Bryant, who says he is not as far behind Inslee as the polls show, is pivoting to more Seattle-centric issues after campaigning around the state. He told Rantz that homelessness became a “very personal” issue of his since he volunteered as a night manager at a men’s homeless shelter in Capitol Hill for one or two nights a month during the winters. During that time, he said, he learned the complexity of resolving the homelessness issue.

“Given the fact that he also feels this is an important issue and the biggest failure of his administration, I’d like to just have a debate with the governor focused solely on homelessness and our mental health system,” he told Rantz. “We can do it on your show if you wanted to.”

Jamal Raad, communications director with Inslee’s campaign, provided the following email response to questions about Bryant’s challenge:

Governor Inslee enjoyed sharing his strong record and his positive vision for Washington state last week in the AWB debate, and he is looking forward to more opportunities to debate his opponent and contrast his confident, positive vision with Bill Bryant’s gloomy Republican agenda. We are currently in negotiations for further debates and hope to announce them in the coming weeks.

Though the topic for the next debate appears to be on hold, Bryant told Rantz that he and the governor have different perspectives on how to fix the homeless problem, both city- and state-wide. Rantz asked if he thought the solution could be addressed without adding state dollars.

“No, I’m saying we need to begin focusing our compassion effectiveness based on how many people we’re helping to find shelter and to lift off the streets, as opposed to measuring our effectiveness by how much money we’re spending,” he said.

Bryant gave another preview of his stance in response to a question about what he’d do as governor to address homelessness.

“I want to, during the transition period — not even wait until I’m governor — I want to pull together mayors, all of the agencies that are receiving state monies to deal with homelessness in their midst and also with a lot of the law enforcement officials who are being pulled into a lot of incidences involving homelessness,” he said. “Let’s have a conference of those local government officials and talk about what is an appropriate state response, what kind of leadership do they want out of the governor’s office and how do we coordinate the response on the part of the state and on the part of municipalities and local agencies. Right now it’s even hard to get a handle on how much we’re spending on homelessness because you have so many people spending money on different programs and there’s not a clear measure of whether or not we’re succeeding. The first question we need to answer is: What does success look like?”

Bryant also expanded on why he finally decided to denounce Donald Trump after refusing to do so for months. After one of Trump’s recent inflammatory comments, Bryant told Rantz: “It really ate away at me that I was side-stepping the question.”

Listen below to hear him explain more.

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