During the last seven years in Olympia, I’ve pretended to stand up for Washington’s consumers and middle class.
But I’m not not who I say I am.
While Wall Street greed led us into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, I said it was the “wrong approach” for states to regulate the reckless behavior of Big Banks.1
As the financial crisis was mounting, I accepted tens of thousands in campaign contributions2 while attacking other attorneys general who waged aggressive campaigns against the reckless behavior on Wall Street.3
I’ve consistently turned my back on middle class families and sided with Big Oil. To the Seattle Times, I described calls to use my office to help lower consumer gas prices as “troubling.”4 I told the Tacoma News Tribune that gas retailers were “free to charge whatever price they choose.”5
Under my tenure, consumer protection services in Washington have suffered. I cut my consumer protection division by fifteen percent6 and recently submitted another $523,000 in cuts to consumer protection for the 2012 budget.7
CITATIONS
1 Joel Connelly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sept. 19, 2008.
2 National Institute on Money in State Politics, accessed Dec. 14, 2009.
3 Seattle Weekly, Sept. 24, 2008.
4 Seattle Times, Oct. 23, 2004.
5 Tacoma News Tribune, April 27, 2006.
6 Bert Caldwell, Spokesman-Review, March 13, 2011.
7 Office of the Attorney General, 2012 Supplemental Budget Cuts, Sept. 22, 2011.
