Congressional Candidates Speak Out at Key Peninsula Forum

Five candidates for Congress described their experiences and plans while answering questions at a Key Peninsula Civic Center forum June 28 before a crowd of about 150.

The candidates present were Janis Clark (R), Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz (D), state Sen. Drew MacEwen (R-35th LD), J. Graham Ralston (I), and state Sen. Emily Randall (D-26th LD).

They are vying for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to be vacated by Derek Kilmer (D) after 11 years representing the 6th Congressional District. The 6th CD includes the Olympic Peninsula, the Kitsap Peninsula, the Key and Gig Harbor Peninsulas, and most of Tacoma.

The event was presented by AARP-Washington (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons), together with The Mustard Seed Project and Key Peninsula News, and was moderated by KP News Executive Editor Lisa Bryan.

Marguerite Ro, the director of AARP-Washington, opened the proceedings by saying her organization had presented several candidate forums across the state “to call on all candidates to pay attention to what matters to voters 50 and older. We are the driving force in every election and will be the majority of the electorate in 2024.”

Those issues include preserving Social Security and shoring up Medicare and Medicaid, she said, along with supporting family caregivers. There are over 800,000 AARP members in Washington state, including 117,000 in the 6th CD.

“Voters regardless of party affiliation said (in an AARP poll) they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports family caregivers. These are the ones who supply essential support to allow folks to remain in their homes and communities as they age.”

Four of the five audience questions each candidate answered had to do with those issues; the fifth addressed climate change.

Here are some highlights:

What financial policies or programs would you implement to support family caregivers?

Franz: My father was diagnosed with dementia at 65. I cared for him for a decade with three boys below my hip. I had to literally experience not only finding childcare but also finding elder care. We were able to (have) him live in our home and my children learned how to care for him. And we were able to bring caregiving in, but it was expensive, and it was hard to find. I support right up front the Long Term Care Workforce Support Act. I also support the Security Caregiver Credit Act to provide Social Security benefits to the people who are serving and caring for our elderly.

MacEwen: Our (Medicare) reimbursement rates at the federal level are woefully underfunded,  and that creates stress on everybody involved. Another big part of this that I’ve learned in my time in state government is relief. People that are in these situations are on 24/7. We’ve got to have a system that can give relief for a day or two. It’s an economic stress on families that doesn’t need to be there and that is the first priority to get done.

What would you do to shore up Social Security for current and future generations?

Clark: It’s a big issue, and I’m not gonna sit here and tell you I’m a unicorn with my little magic wand and we’re gonna fix Social Security. We need to just come together and listen to one another and really be strategic about how we broach this number one priority for the welfare of our country, for their freedom for those that have paid taxes. So I’m interested in joining hands with anyone that wants to solve the problem and reach across the aisle and say we’re smart enough, we’re here to do the people’s business and look at ways to cut waste and fraud and abuse.

MacEwen: You know what we need are hardcore reforms. The income threshold today is way too low on when you get taxed. You’re paying Social Security FICA taxes from dollar one, right? I would suggest that on your first $10,000 to $20,000 you’re not paying that, the employer side still pays but give people a break as they’re entering the workforce. Also, you already got taxed once and you don’t need to be paying taxes yet again on your Social Security benefits. That needs to change. And we’ve got to separate Social Security receipts from the general budget.

Ralston: Why do we even have a problem with not enough funds for Social Security? Let’s start there. And I don't think it means we need to raise more taxes. What we need to do immediately is balance this budget so that we stop the inflation that eats away at Social Security. Incentivize federal employees to call out waste throughout our federal programs instead of always looking at new ways to add new programs. Instead of taxing people more who already feel it to fund Social Security, let’s look at other ways throughout our government to cut the spending and find alternative solutions to add funds to Social Security.

Randall: I think the more support that we can give to the lowest-income Washingtonians, the better. That (tax ceiling) is at $168,000, so if you are making $200,000 a year, that money above $168,000 is not going into the Social Security trust fund in order to socialize that cost. There are so many ways in which our budget and our tax code puts more burden on lower-income families in order to pay for the programs that we need and rely on, and we cannot continue to give tax breaks to the wealthiest among us.

Where do you stand on climate change?

Clark: One thing I’m sure of, God is not creating any more dirt. And when we get down to our natural resources, I am reminded of my work as a state employee with DNR and harvesting timber. The world that we leave behind, all of us are in this ecosystem together, we all have a part to play in it. So as we are looking at wasteful spending, we have to be good stewards not only of the land but of the financial taxpaying dollars. We cannot legislate our way out of it.

Franz: Man-made climate change is real, and I can say that firsthand by my experience obviously managing 6,000,000 acres of land. And this isn’t a question of whether we pay for it or not. We’re already paying for it. We’re paying for it last year with more fires west of the Cascades for the first time in recorded history. East of the Cascades, we’re paying for it in the dying forests that are leading to these fires, which means that we’re not able to use that wood for schools or hospitals and we’re harming our habitat. I have been on the ground in the most rural Republican conservative areas, actually working to knit together for the first time the environment and healing our lands and our waters, where 600,000 acres have been restored, creating new job opportunities with timber, biomass and biochar.

Ralston: Man-made climate change is real. I just don’t agree with how we’re really taxing those least able to afford it to pay for it. It hits us at the gas tank, and when it hits us at the gas tank, it makes all of our food and other prices go up. And who pays for that? People least able to afford it. People sometimes struggling to get by on Social Security. These are not the people that I want to shoulder the burden of trying to tackle climate change. We’re embarking on a new age of technology. Artificial intelligence and large language models are unlocking things that we never thought possible before, and we’re scaling up our abilities of what we can really do to tackle climate change.

What would you do to support funding for our veterans and their families?

Clark: This is the work that I’m doing with my nonprofit, Safe Homes. We have three divisions now under my leadership. Two of those divisions are women veterans because we have unique challenges and issues that our brothers do not face. We’re also caregivers. And life-givers. The third one is military, a wellness initiative network for soldiers who are active duty, reservists and their families who are transitioning to lives outside of the military. We make sure that there’s a soft landing, and we bring the resources to them. We need to do more. We are dying and veterans are waiting while our dollars are going to support other efforts.

MacEwen: If you want to preserve the peace, you gotta be prepared for war; when you’re weak, it invites aggression. We’ve got to ensure that our military personnel have the training, have the resources they need. One of the biggest things I will propose day one is reform to our GI Bill, which is much better post-911 than it was before, but we need to allow veterans to access that for a first-time home purchase. Second, when people come back from the military, they don’t wanna be set on the mantle. The politicians do that all the time. They want an economy that works for them so they can have a job or create a business to provide for their family.

Randall: One of the first policies that I worked on in the Legislature was establishing an LGBTQ veterans coordinator at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and that policy came to me from a conversation when a neighbor told me because they were discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, they were struggling to access the veteran services they earned when they put their life on the line for our country. We went on to establish a similar position for military spouses at the Department of Veterans Affairs because spouses of so many of our active duty military members needed more support. I know we have a lot of work to do around the VA because I’ve heard those stories too, of long wait times, of long travel times.

What policies or programs can be implemented to increase our caregiving workforce?

Franz: We need laws that would help earlier, so the Long-Term Workforce Support Act, the Social Security Caregiver Credit Act, as well as the Credit Caregiving Act. But I want to speak actually just from my personal story because our personal experiences shape our priorities, and they also shape our perspectives. Like I said, my father, we cared for him for about five years in his own home before the police called us and said it was time for him to be cared for. And he was less than 70 at the time and I moved him into a home of 800 square feet with three small boys.

Ralston: In elementary school, in Port Angeles, we would actually go on a field trip to adult living centers, and what a connection that was at a young age, to be able to engage with our community. Also with becoming a caregiver for my younger brother, we quickly saw our home wasn’t ready at first for him to come back to (after he was paralyzed in an accident). One solution that we ended up with is working with local nursing programs. Find people that are going through nursing school, it could be a win-win solution where they’re getting experience and you’re getting care for your loved one in their home.

Randall: I think we need to add efforts at the federal level for wage and career ladders in so many of these caregiving workforce spaces. Often in-home caregivers have been seen sort of as a not important job to invest in and we know that is essential for our long-term future. We also need to be thinking about creative housing opportunities.

To watch the entire forum, go to www.youtube.com/aarpwashington/.