Congressman Jay Inslee, the Democrat candidate for Governor, is a trained lawyer and thus a gifted wordsmith ... so he knows how to twist words into a pretzel when he wants to. He did so yesterday during his debate with Attorney General Rob McKenna.

He was asked whether he favors or opposes our initiative making it tougher to raise taxes. Inslee's response: "I fundamentally believe in democracy." Here's a news flash for the Congressman: initiatives are democracy. Guaranteed by our state Constitution, the initiative process gives every citizen the opportunity to vote on public policy -- one person, one vote, exactly as Inslee claims he supports ("I believe all of my fellow citizens are entitled to one vote"). Inslee supports that principle except when he disagrees with the decision the voters have repeatedly made.

Such is the case with the voters' longstanding decision to make it tougher to raise taxes with initiatives like I-1053 which the people and democracy approved with 64% of the vote in 2010. "Let democracy rule," said Inslee yesterday. I-1053 passed overwhelmingly everywhere except Seattle -- so Inslee is siding with Seattle over everyone else. We've had 28 years of Democrat governors representing Seattle -- do we really want 4 more?

If Inslee believed in letting democracy rule, he would accept the clear and consistent decision of the people. But he doesn't. Inslee doesn't support democracy when the people want it to be tougher to raise taxes -- he's mirroring Governor Gregoire's 8 year opposition to I-1053.

Why is this important? Because since running for governor, Inslee has given carefully crafted, Gregoire'ish statements about increasing taxes. Inslee keeps saying "I'm not talking about raising taxes" which is exactly the phrase that Gregoire used as a candidate. But as we all remember, after winning election/re-election, she consistently ignored her pre-election promises and imposed billions and billions in higher taxes ($6.7 billion in 2010 alone). If Inslee was planning on keeping his promises to not raise taxes, he wouldn't care if it was easy or tough.

And we cannot ignore the fact that while in Congress, Inslee never met a tax he didn't wanna hike. So it's simply unbelievable that Inslee has suddenly become a Grover Norquist clone.

What's happening is this: Inslee is following candidate Gregoire's playbook and hoping the voters will forget what the last Democrat Governor did to us on taxes. But the Congressman's opposition to tougher-to-raise-taxes I-1053 and his "no vote" on this year's Initiative 1185 is proof positive that Inslee is simply seeking to fulfill Gregoire's 3rd term. Eight years of bait-and-switch by Governor Gregoire has been tough on taxpayers; we can't afford four more years of getting snookered on tax hikes by Congressman Inslee.

This year's Initiative 1185 is the absolute best insurance for all taxpayers regardless of who wins the governorship or which party controls the Legislature for the next 2 years.

Please help us get Initiative 1185 over the finish line.

Here's our website.