With Jay Inslee’s announcement that he’ll run for governor, another anticipated development took place. State Rep. Roger Goodman has amended his filing paperwork to officially run for Congress in the 1st CD – for the seat that Inslee will be vacating. Up until now, Goodman had filed to run in the 8th CD (he lives in the 1st CD, close to the boundary between the two districts).
As everyone here probably knows by now, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Goodman’s record both before and after he became an elected official. He’s been a pioneer in drug law reform – first at the King County Bar Association and later in the legislature – and has both solidly progressive sensibilities and a genuine talent for finding solutions to difficult problems that go beyond partisanship. I’m certain that whoever he ends up running against will try to use his background in drug law reform against him, and I expect that strategy to fail as spectacularly as it has for the two candidates who tried that strategy in the 45th LD races.
Roger Goodman is a most able–and progressive–replacement for Jay Inslee in the First Congressional District I call home. I will be most pleased to vote for him. And, BTW, his positions on drug law reforms required courage to promote. That’s a good thing.
Goodman sounds okay.
As for Inslee, he was less than forceful in his support of Washington’s medical marijuana law during his announcement. Sounded a lot like Gov “partial veto” Gregoire. That’s all we need.
Says he’s “not there yet” when it comes to decriminalization too. Should I take this to mean Inslee would publically oppose any pot initiative that may be on the ballot in 2012?
That’s how the Democratic candidates helped sink Prop 19 down in California.