"Fine. Call Me A Dictator."
For 10 years, Frank Chopp has done it his way as Speaker of the House in the Washington Legislature. Now his fellow Democrats are asking whether Chopp's way is the right way.
She also hadn’t decided whether to run as a Republican or Democrat until shortly before meeting Chopp. “I wanted him to realize that I was going to be fairly independent, coming from this part of the state,” Moser says. “But Frank assured me that he gives the Democrats quite a bit of latitude and there’s a lot of diversity among the Democratic Party.”
And that’s why Chopp’s Democratic critics say their current majority is too unwieldy: If it’s stacked with Democrats who are as red as they are blue, what’s the point? “As you grow, you sacrifice quality in favor of quantity,” says Olympia representative Brendan Williams, “and you start to lose cohesion on the issues that matter most and that really define us as Democrats. That is the challenge in keeping a large, diverse group of people happy.” Williams says he and other progressives who have chafed under Chopp’s rule aren’t in office “just to muddle along and be better than the Republicans, [to] inflict Democratic cuts on social programs that are more compassionate than Republican cuts. At the end of the day, they’re still cuts.”
Brian Weinstein, the ex-senator from Mercer Island, puts the point more sharply: “I think Frank wants to oversee as many people as possible, and as a result of doing that, he totally dilutes what the party stands for.” Weinstein tangled very publicly with Chopp in the press after passing a Homebuyers’ Bill of Rights in the Senate only to watch the House version of the bill die in committee. He decided to step down last year, after his first term. “There’s a lot of people in the Eastern suburbs who call themselves Democrats, and in some respects they are, but they’re so much
more conservative.”
For some House Democrats the tension grows even as their caucus’s majority increases—and as Chopp’s perceived ability, or desire, to pass progressive legislation shrinks along with the state budget. Yet for all the hollering, Chopp’s command in the House seems secure for the foreseeable future. “I think everybody who is criticizing him imagines themselves in his role, or won’t support somebody else who’s more likely to become speaker,” says Williams. “And so that dissension never really coalesces around an alternative.” Seattle Senator Ed Murray, a former member of the House, says the lack of opposition has even more to do with poor leadership development within Chopp’s caucus. “I mean, Lynn Kessler is the only person I could think of at this point who could step in and be speaker immediately,” says Murray. “I think he’s safe.”
Chopp brushes off the criticism and points to that list of Democratic accomplishments since he became speaker: defending the state’s minimum wage from attempts to repeal it, passing America’s second paid family leave act, requiring that insurance companies cover mental illness, expanding domestic partnership rights for gays and lesbians…the list goes on. “If you give me any member, I can tell you what I’ve done to help them get their stuff done,” he says, and offers an example before I can respond. “Brendan Williams—I’m sure he’s one of the people you talked to. He passed one of the best, most progressive pieces of legislation…the Insurance Fair Conduct Bill [a 2007 act allowing policyholders to sue their insurers if their claims were unreasonably denied]. He passed it, despite all of the corporate interest against it. Who else?”
When I ask Chopp if his strategy for uniting liberals and moderates is driven, not by policy, but by a desire to keep Republicans out of the majority, he screws up his face in disgust. “No, no, no. I just look at the good things that we want to get done, and we figure out a way of organizing our efforts to get those things done. So if people have something that they haven’t gotten done, let me know.”
Chopp says he’s learned a lot in his 10 years as speaker, not least of which is how to deal with the different personalities in his caucus. “When you’re thrust into a new position, well, you’re going to make some mistakes,” he says, “and the key is to try to learn from them and really try to do better and reconnect with people.”
When I ask him for specifics, he shoots back. “What I’ve screwed up?”
No, what are some things you’ve learned?
“I would be a little too forceful with some people, and that was definitely not the right approach,” he muses. “So part of it is just trying to figure out the best way of working with each caucus member, because they’re all different and they’re all unique.”
He’s also working on accepting criticism. Harsh articles and sneering bloggers used to bother him, but now he’s “philosophical” about them. He focuses instead on the things he’s accomplished. “I’m reading a book on Jefferson and Hamilton that one of our caucus members gave me. And I know they didn’t have blogs back then, but oh, man. There were newspapers that were for Jefferson—I guess the eventual Democrats—and then there were newspapers that were totally for Hamilton and the Federalists. And a lot of times, people would be writing these scathing attacks in the newspapers and not identifying themselves. They’d have a code name or whatever. It put [my critics’ attacks] in real perspective: This kind of public opinion has been there literally since the day the country was created and almost in the same kind of style as the blogs: They’re highly opinionated and many times very uninformed, and also, quite often, anonymous.”
And then he laughs.
Published: January 2009
