February 11, 2021
How relationships are empowering Washington Policy Center to improve more lives across a diverse state
By Daniel Mead Smith, president of the Washington Policy Center
For outsiders, Washington state can be synonymous with Seattle and a resurgence of socialism. But Seattle is only one component of an intellectually diverse state.
Washington state is no monolithic block, politically, professionally, or geographically. Economically, we have our high-tech centers, an important aerospace manufacturing base with Boeing, a significant military presence, and a vast agricultural industry. Politically, we are divided by the “Cascade Curtain”—the Cascade Mountains separating the conservative East from the “Seattle West.” Further divisions exist between the Seattle Metropolitan area and Southwest Washington—or the increasingly conservative Olympic Peninsula.
Our strategic planning processes have sought to connect with the whole state as a way to advance our key policy objectives and tap the power of broadening our networks. This led to the creation of our Eastern Washington office and our Initiative on Agriculture. Taking on Eastern Washington’s key issues demonstrated that we were not a “Seattle organization” trying to influence policy, but an organization devoted to advancing policies that will benefit the entire state.
We also target the whole state demographically. For example, we created a Spanish-language policy page and video series to reach out to Washington’s growing Hispanic population. We also have a relationship with the Ethnic Chambers of Commerce Coalition that includes one of their board members serving on our board of directors.
Our full-time Eastern Washington office and Advisory Board has allowed us to develop relationships with key community representatives and boost our credibility as a local organization no matter where we are in the state. These relationships have been so successful that our Annual Dinner event, once held exclusively in the Seattle area, became two events, with a separate Eastern Washington gala attended by more than 1,000 people.
In addition, concentrating efforts in a region that is more receptive to our ideas has allowed us to notch key victories. Working with community partners, we have advanced critical policy recommendations like collective bargaining transparency and banning a local income tax in the state’s second largest city.
Our strategic planning also calls for engaging young leaders rather than waiting for them to come toward us as they age. We created a Young Professionals (YP) program to engage adults under 40 at events throughout the state. Through our events and mentorship program, we connect younger generations of leaders with more senior leaders so that they can gain from the others’ experience and perspective. YPs also have five college clubs which bring free-market ideas to students around the state.
We also take a deliberate look at how policies might unite us. There is collective power when we team up with others, creating network effects. This is why we seek to forge alliances and create new relationships that will help us advance our policy objectives.
For example, our Center for the Environments’ work to understand the best practices in wolf management and salmon recovery has led to interviews with some of our state’s Native American leaders. These conversations led to creating videos, in conjunction with tribal leadership, that highlight successful tribal management approaches to key environmental issues. Our research on salmon recovery and our calls for prioritizing approaches using science over politics has even attracted the support of the governor’s former lead advisor on salmon issues.
Along the same lines, we reached out to Columbia Legal Services—which self-defines its objective as an organization that advocates for laws that advance social, economic, and racial equity for people living in poverty—to help advance occupational licensing reform. They joined our effort after learning of our objective to eliminate unnecessary licensing requirements that protect the status-quo from competition and harm the people most in need of work, including immigrants and individuals who have been released from incarceration.
Each area of policy presents a new opportunity for alliances and relationship-building and has improved our understanding of how issues impact different corners of our state. It challenges us to think of who is impacted by policies and how their lives are changed by those policies. Alliances magnify our voices for better policy and in so doing, can direct a broader spectrum of political leadership toward better solutions.
Good policy ideas need to be heard. Building alliances should organically follow. But it’s easy to overlook the minor issues and get caught up in echo chambers of those who are sure to support our ideas. Free-market reforms mean more opportunity and better policy outcomes resulting in improved lives. We can’t expect to change minds if we only speak to those who agree with us already.
