Senate supermajority may hinge on Benton race

Much is riding on Senate race between Republican incumbent Don Benton and Democratic challenger David Carrier in the 17th District.

Democrats hold a 32-17 lead in the state Senate. A net increase of one Senate seat in November would give their caucus a two-thirds supermajority and the ability to refer constitutional amendments to voters or to suspend the state spending limit. The 17th is one of a handful of competitive Senate seats.

In August’s top two primary, Benton, a 51-year-old legislative veteran, drew 54.3 percent of the vote to 45.6 percent for Carrier, a political newcomer.

Benton, who was elected to the House in 1994 and to the first of three Senate terms in 1996, is a fundraising machine. His $237,000 war chest is second only to that of Democratic Ways and Means Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, who is in charge of writing the state budget.

How does he account for his fundraising prowess?

“I’m an effective legislator,” Benton said. “I get results for people. I work very well across the aisle. I have hundreds or thousands of small contributions. I’m the only Republican in the state who was endorsed by the Washington State Labor Council.”

Carrier, a 52-year-old economist with a doctoral degree from the University of Notre Dame, has taken no money from special interest groups and says he’s not intimidated by Benton’s fundraising advantage.

“I don’t know why campaigns are so expensive,” Carrier said. He said he’s knocked on 4,000 doorbells, mailed 20,000 postcards and attended several campaign forums at which Benton has been a no-show.

“People say, ‘I’ve never seen the guy, I don’t know what he does,’” Carrier said.

After Carrier’s respectable performance in the primary, the state Democratic Party agreed to fund a professional campaign manager for his Senate bid.

Benton says he’s doorbelled 10,000 homes in the 17th and attended football games at Evergreen and Heritage high schools. “People come up to me almost nonstop and thank me for things like the Chelsea Harrison Act, and for fighting to keep property taxes low.”

This year Benton finally won passage of the Chelsea Harrison Act, named after a 14-year-old Clark County murder victim. The bill closes a loophole in the state’s three-strikes law that allowed the girl’s killer to be free at the time of her death.

The two candidates differ sharply on many issues.

Benton is an advocate for a third bridge over the Columbia River and a vocal opponent of including light rail in a replacement Interstate 5 bridge, calling it “a million-dollar boondoggle.”

“As far as I can tell, an overwhelming majority don’t want light rail,” he said. “The cost would be enormous, the benefit very little. What people want is congestion relief.”

Benton also questions whether it makes sense to continue studying a new bridge, given uncertainties about how it will be funded. “Only a fool spends the money when there is no money to build it,” he said.

Carrier strongly favors replacing the I-5 bridge and says he could support either light rail or bus rapid transit.

A fiscal conservative, Benton said he favors dealing with a projected $3.2 billion state budget deficit by funding public safety and education first. “After than, everything should be brought forward on a zero-based budget and justified,” he said.

Carrier, who has worked as an anti-poverty activist, said one of his top concerns if elected will be to address the health care crisis. It’s a matter of keeping the state competitive in a global economy, he said.

“If we don’t have some way of providing universal health insurance, how long can we keep Microsoft and Boeing here?” he said.

Benton voted against four health care bills this year, Carrier said, including a bill to help small employers provide health insurance.

Benton also opposed measures to protect consumers from mortgage scams and predatory lenders, Carrier said. He favors creative legislation to rescue homeowners facing foreclosure, like authorizing the state to convey residential property to a community land trust, which could then sell the house and lease the land back to the homeowner.

“You would own the building but not the land,” he said. “They did that in the Great Depression. But the federal government isn’t flexible enough to come up with solutions like this.”