Jim McEntire interviews Brian Pruiett for the Port Townsend Free Press. Pruiett is a candidate to represent the 24th Legislative District in the Washington State House of Representatives, a position held by long-time incumbent Steve Tharinger. McEntire is well-known around the Peninsula, having served as a Clallam County Commissioner and a Port of Port Angeles Commissioner. McEntire’s questions are followed by Pruiett’s answers.

What lessons learned can we gather from our most recent crises? 

SARS-CoV2 is a serious virus.   We are all grateful that the transmission rate can be managed.  However SARS-CoV2 and it’s threat of COVID19 disease symptomology caused  two far more serious actions on our Peninsula.  The catastrophic chain reaction of  consequences in  the governor’s edict to allow larger businesses to remain open while demanding the closure of all our small businesses now is set firmly as a legendary failure in decision-making, based more on hypocrisy than justifiable pandemic management.

SARS-CoV2 , a reverse-transcriptase, polymerase chain reaction, is a killer.  When the disease arrived here in January and outbreaks detected in early February, the governor could have enacted the state Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan approved in 2013.

The Pandemic response appendix in that plan is 90 pages long.  Page 16 shows the state responsibility for stockpiling testing supplies, such as swabs, and equipment, such as ventilators and PPE and other medical needs. Do you recall the governor’s rants about how the Feds weren’t giving him all these supplies?  It was practically a daily occurrence.

The focus of our legislature has been to drastically take more and more money out of our state’s businesses every year  by taxation.   In December of 2019, mass media was already talking about increasing taxes by another $12,000,000,000.  Our two state representatives dutifully approved the taxes and 400 new laws including the act which sexualizes young children, dismantles the family structure needed to provide stability for children, and mandates gender confusion as a false new normal in mandatory school curriculum.

Our two legislators also passed laws which violate our state constitution related to the Second Amendment.

As the seventh year in the timeline passed since the requirement to stockpile pandemic supplies remained unfunded by our Democrat-controlled legislature, conservative members submitted numerous amendments to halt overcommitment of spending.  No support  was given to requests for structuring a deeper cash reserve by our two  House representatives.  No urgency was allocated to begin stockpiling Pandemic supplies either until it was far too late, continuing the pattern of the past 7 years.

Our two house legislators instead voted in much more new spending.  Their news letter to Peninsula public members in May states ‘Three months ago we hadn’t heard of the coronavirus.’ In the investigations I covered as an Inspector General, that is called willful ignorance unless damages or death occur, in which case attorneys then make a determination of suitability for prosecution.

We are in a global economy.  Who doesn’t understand that?   We compete for resources worldwide.

Now we face an eight billion dollar crisis but…. the next shoe to drop is  our legislator-backed governor’s proposal to repeat  the shutdown of our small businesses.   Again we’re facing the biased and hypocritical closure of our Peninsula small businesses.  The east side major corporations and corporate-owned big box stores stay open and get all the consumer spending.  I intend to stop this inequality with legislation.

We have crises, plural:  societal, economic, and pandemic. The governor’s  mismanagement and wrongful legislator actions are coming to an end.  The public has had enough.  Every community I visit has an overwhelming focus on replacing the incumbents.

The key words we should be taking away are environment and location.   The science shows our Peninsula climate and lifestyle have extremely low viral transmission rates, attested to by the packed private campgrounds and streams of mainland visitors who flocked here beginning the first weekend in March.  Tens of thousands of big-box store visits have so far yielded a total absence of transmission.

The social crisis of mob takeover of Seattle, looting by a gang of a hundred members in Bellevue, burning of cars and businesses with accumulations of human waste mixed with used drug gear on their main streets, are all unwelcome on our Peninsula.

Good-hearted people here are ready for change.   I have the human resource background, the military education for successful management, as well as a solid environmental career in my resume.   I know I am uniquely suited to restore our peninsula, revitalize our businesses and families, and am focused on resolving the looming education crisis which is almost upon us.  Repairing our education system will take more than a few months.

Already former House Majority Leader Frank Chop is pushing the concept of $2,000,000,000 in taxes but that simply means more unpayable debt.   Rebudgeting is the only escape route.  Capital Construction spending must be slashed immediately, otherwise many more state employees will go unpaid or lose jobs entirely.   I will achieve this during the next session.  Our small businesses deserve a tax holiday to match as many days as they have been forced to be closed.   Their recovery is essential.

Blanket statewide orders meant to address a problem occurring in King County are mandated while our Democrat controlled legislature refuses to meet.  Even in times of emergency, our legislators need to be active in providing much needed checks and balances so that we do not devolve into single person rule.   A special session to repeal the new $12,000,000,000 in taxes is required.

What in your personal experience makes you ready to play your appropriate role as a legislator in crisis? 

My 34 years of military service coupled with my experience in the career Federal Service makes me very aware of the importance of leadership and teamwork.  Leadership without teamwork is an autocracy that is destined to fail.  Teamwork without leadership is a mob.  I am ready to harness those tools in my background for the well-being of the voters of the 24th​ ​ Legislative District.  My extensive career in the Federal Government has covered Human Resources, Equal Employment, as well as complex environmental issues.  I am well versed in the complexities which a legislator in the 21st​ ​ century must deal with.  My experience dealing with international law, federal and state laws, is well documented.

Where do you stand on the Second Amendment? 

In respect to the totally unrestrained mob violence across several counties, the criminally violent element in major cities scoffing at gun laws, and the 13 murders in Clallam County in the past two years, I propose a Safe Castle law and would consider a Stand your Ground law appropriate to our society. Restoration of our state laws to be brought into full alignment with our constitution.  America is under assault by radical anarchist forces.  Well organized, well trained, and well-funded, these destructive cadres have made it clear that no neighborhood is safe.  Our police are overwhelmed and frankly over-constrained.  Often it is only armed neighbors standing together between bomb-throwing mobs and total mayhem.   We are often outnumbered.  Lawful access to firearms to defend our homes, our families and ourselves is clearly a right.

What are your legislative priorities? 

The budget is my most immediate concern.  There should be a special session going on now to address the upcoming, very real shortfall.   Raising taxes will precipitate an even worse fiscal crisis.   To protect future budgets, we should be rolling back taxes today.  We no longer have a choice between austerity and flush budgets.  Austerity has been thrust upon us by our current two legislators.  It is the legacy they gave us..

I believe we also need to address the legislature’s role in emergency powers declaration in the light of recent events.  Throughout our district people tell me their voice hasn’t been heard in Olympia.  I will work to change the law so that within two weeks of an emergency powers declaration, the governor must call for a special session of the legislature.  The legislature must consider itself “in session” throughout the duration of the emergency declaration.   The majority of our Peninsula people are demanding Inslee never be re-elected and promote their candidates in strident voices.

What other issues would you like to address? 

We need to take a look at our priorities in light of environmental protection of the Salish Sea.  The State Department of Ecology is pretty good at clamping down on commercial polluters but metropolitan governments are now the biggest source of toxicants killing our marine life and endangering salmon along with others.   Environmental enforcement needs to focus on major metropolitan pollution restrictions.

Where do you stand on the Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) clinic proposed for Sequim. 

I deeply resent how our two legislators sourced and implemented this project.  A friendly, peaceful community of diverse peoples and interests is now increasingly divided at the pending increase in criminal trafficking and crime they understand to be associated with giving outpatients drugs such as methadone to carry home with them.  We all want to reduce the slavery of addiction, but county law enforcement busts are frequently finding the treatments handed out are being trafficked.   More addicts are winding up in our jails with addictions such as heroin.  I don’t know where communities will find the funds to deal with increased law enforcement, confinement, and judicial requirements.   But if the legislature is going to give us A MAT clinic, it needs to give us the resources to deal with its aftermath.

Where do you stand on the recently enacted Sexual Education bill? 

This sex ed bill SB 5385 reflects the worst outcomes of single party rule.  Passed in the middle of the night after rejecting literally hundreds of thoughtful amendments, the bill is a sociopolitical triumph, that demolishes the authority of local school boards, and by implication, parents over their schools’ sexual education curriculum.  Effective locally approved sex ed programs will forcibly be replaced with a government mandated, ideologically driven program of propaganda that sexualizes our children down to the kindergarten level.   I was proud to help gather signatures in support of Referendum 90 which seeks to overturn SB 5385.  Due to many hard-working volunteers, R-90 will be on the ballot in November. Regardless of the outcome of the vote on R-90, if elected, I will join the numerous co-sponsors opposed to this act, to overturn it.

Do you have any final thoughts? 

Taxes.  My opponent is very good at raising them and creating innovative new ones.  I am focused on reducing them.  I will never vote for an income tax in any shape or form.   I absolutely oppose Carbon taxes.

Education. I am Pro-Choice for schools, giving parents more options for educating their kids, not less.   I want a full fledged trade certification option for high schools students in lieu of the current standard college bound curriculum.   Our youth should be able to decide to walk out of high school right into a good-paying apprentice position, fully qualified at that level without requiring another two years to do so.  College is a wonderful choice for those who really want it and can pay for it, but I hear we are still having 20 percent of our kids failing to graduate statewide.

Life.  All life is precious and all lives matter to our God and Maker.  I am proudly Pro-Life at both ends of life’s progression.  I will act to protect life in the womb and in advancing years by resisting all calls for health care rationing.