Priorities

Whether it’s airline junk fees, skyrocketing health care and drug costs, predatory lending targeting vulnerable populations, illegal price fixing, scammers taking advantage of our seniors through robocalls, or even those annoying bots and grifters driving up concert ticket prices – consumers get a raw deal, and it breaks the bank for thousands of families in our state. During my time in the JAG Corps, I fought for military families who had fallen victim to predatory lending practices, and I’ve seen first-hand how devastating these types of practices can be. As Attorney General, I will stay focused on consumer protection and enforcement.

Every single year our economy loses $50 billion to wage theft, tax fraud, and the underground economy, a sum larger than all other forms of larceny, robbery, and theft combined. I will build on the work of Attorney General Ferguson by establishing a dedicated unit focused on enforcing our nation-leading worker protections and addressing wage theft.

Across the country, worker power has been under vicious assault by radical far-right interests. As General Counsel to Governor Inslee, I led our response to attacks by extreme right-wing, anti-union organizations targeting worker protections for state employees, and the right to organize and bargain for their future. As Attorney General, I will continue to defend the rights of workers to organize and bargain.

Washington leads the nation in enforcing state antitrust laws to prevent unfair competition and protect consumers and workers from anti-competitive behavior by companies, in sectors from healthcare to groceries to fast food. I will continue to build on this work, helping to ensure that companies play by the rules and that small businesses, consumers, and workers face a level playing field.

Access to a good education is not just a moral imperative it is essential to ensuring a prepared workforce for the future. Unfortunately, whether it’s declining educational outcomes, a five-alarm fire in student mental health, or the inequities students with disabilities face, there is more we must do to support teachers, educators, students, and families. I am a product of Washington’s public education system, and as Attorney General I will defend funding for public education and continue to be a fierce advocate for teachers, students, and high-quality public education for all.

With the ever-looming specter of Donald Trump, our next Attorney General must be ready to stand up and protect democracy from Day One. I was General Counsel to Governor Inslee during the earliest days of Trump’s presidency, and I worked closely with Attorney General Ferguson’s office to ensure Washington state fought back against early attacks, including preventing Trump’s hateful Muslim Ban.

The right to vote in fair and open elections is the bedrock of our democracy. The Office of the Attorney General must work to protect voters’ rights and ensure fair elections and collaborate with our Secretary of State’s office and local and federal partners. We must also file and support litigation to combat voter suppression and voter intimidation to protect our voters and democracy.

I am deeply concerned with the rise of violent, radical ideology and domestic terrorism in our state and nationwide. As Attorney General, I will implement all the recommendations in the 2022 Domestic Terrorism Study, including the creation of a commission to create “a comprehensive public health and community-based framework” to combat violent extremism. While U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, my office brought a renewed focus to the threat of extremism. We prosecuted members of two white supremacist extremist groups in Washington that committed a violent hate crime in Lynwood. We successfully prevented threats of violence against Puget Sound civil rights leaders by Attomwaffen, a Nazi “accelerationist” group seeking to dismantle our government and democracy.

When Donald Trump was elected President he capitalized on and incited hatred of the LGBTIA+ community, especially transgender people. Democratic Attorneys General, including Washington’s own, were the last line of defense. They fought back against rollbacks of healthcare protections, attacks on transgender youth, and especially offensive to me as a veteran, his unconstitutional ban on serving in the U.S. military. As Attorney General, I will be honored to take up this fight against bigotry and hatred in all of its forms.

Stringent and thorough enforcement of our environmental protection laws is our first line of defense, and a deterrent against future abuses. Washington state has among the strongest Environmental Protection Divisions of any attorney general’s office in the country. I will build on this work to prosecute environmental crime, protect our state’s clean air, water and natural resources, ensure the highest standards for energy facilities sited throughout our region, and advocate on climate and environmental issues through amicus briefs in federal cases.

I was proud to work at Governor Inslee’s side as he drove state climate policy forward, and now with some of the best laws in the land, Washington must focus on implementing and enforcing those laws. Every aspect of our government must turn its attention to the climate crisis and, as Attorney General, I will be an active partner in supporting and ensuring that all state agencies embed environmental protection work in their DNA, vigorously defend our best-in-the-nation laws and use every tool at my disposal to protect future generations from the devastating impacts of climate change.

Cities and counties across our state are at the forefront of implementing nation-leading environmental safeguards, including Shoreline Master Plans, the Growth Management Act, the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), and of course clean air and clean water requirements. This regulatory framework has provided the foundation for environmental progress across our region. As Attorney General, I will provide support for municipalities and regional entities working to implement environmental protections and provide models for how to effectively implement our laws.

Washington is home to 29 federally recognized tribes and three more with treaty rights in our region. I will work to ensure that my office engages and seeks meaningful feedback from tribal governments on all issues that affect them. Washington tribes’ sovereign rights are well established and must be respected and strengthened.

Every year hundreds of indigenous women go missing in our state. Without systems to collect data or ensure cases are urgently prioritized, we have no way of knowing the full size and scale of this crisis. I will build on the work to establish a missing and murdered indigenous women cold case team, set-up an AGO tip line for reporting incidents, and implement all 10 recommendations from the MMIW taskforce.

For many tribal members and indigenous people, cultural practices, art, subsistence practices, and other traditional ways of life are both sacred and essential to their livelihoods. As U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, I successfully held individuals criminally accountable for scamming customers by misrepresenting art as native-made. I will continue this important work as Attorney General, and fight to ensure we protect the traditions of native communities from erasure and appropriation.

Abortion rights are fundamental human rights. The next Attorney General must defend reproductive health care access, protect nation-leading laws from frivolous right-wing attacks, and collaborate across the country on federal litigation to stop unconstitutional restrictions on our rights. My office will prioritize access to abortion medication to ensure women can have a safe, reliable, and quick abortion on their terms. We will protect health care providers serving their patients from prosecution, civil liability, and attacks on their licenses. Washington must remain a safe haven for women’s rights.

Washington has made great strides in expanding health care to those who need it most. But still the system is plagued by insurance companies improperly denying coverage, staffing levels that are unsafe for workers and patients, and skyrocketing costs. My office will partner across state agencies to protect consumer rights, fight for healthcare workers, expand insurance coverage, and combat price gouging by pharmaceutical companies.

I will expand the Military Engagement and Directed Advocacy by Lawyers Program (MEDAL) in our Office of Military and Veteran Legal Assistance to allow it to effectively conduct outreach throughout our state and to be less reliant on pro-bono counsel. This program must be funded at the scale of the crisis so we can consistently crack down on charity scams claiming to help military heroes and hold businesses accountable for deceptive practices targeting service people.

Washington has among the strongest protections for active military and veterans of any state in the country, including protections against unreasonable debt and loan terms, support for navigating disability and health services, help finding employment or training, educational assistance, and free legal advice. There’s more that we can do as a state to ensure veterans and their families know about all the services available to them, and have easy access to the help they need. I will implement these nation-leading protections and make sure these initiatives meet the needs of Washington’s veterans.