NWPB’s listeners ask, Washington state House candidates respond

The 2024 election is underway, and the candidates’ campaigns in central Washington are moving forward.

As part of NWPB’s elections coverage, we surveyed our audience and asked listeners to submit questions they would like our news team to ask candidates.

Here are their responses. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Candidates Chelsea Dimas, a Democrat, and Gloria Mendoza, a Republican, are running for Washington state Representative in the 14th Legislative District, Position 1.

Dimas and Mendoza were contacted for this interview. Dimas accepted the interview request. Mendoza declined through a spokesperson, as she was focused on campaign activities with the community.  

What do you propose to protect democracy further?

Chelsea Dimas: One of my priorities is definitely focused around democracy and the way I see democracy. One big portion of that is our right to vote. I know a couple of days ago, there were two ballot boxes that were burnt in southeast Washington, and I think it was the Vancouver area. To me that is incredibly concerning, because I believe that our state does an amazing job already protecting our right to vote, but to know that there are people out there that are potentially trying to suppress voters and their rights, it does kind of scare me.

It started making me wonder, like, what more can we do to ensure that people who already possibly don’t turn out as much will still want to turn out without the fear of something potentially happening to their ballot. I definitely want to explore ways where we can ensure that our ballot boxes are protected and fireproof, because this has never been a concern before, but it is a concern now.

I also want to work on more efforts to ensure that we’re getting people prepared to vote. I think voter education begins far before the election, not even just the year of but years in advance. I think we need to start getting people ready for it. Here in our district, District 14 and in central Washington, we’ve dealt with very low turnouts.

We really need to work together with our elections office, with different community organizations and trusted partners to ensure that we’re really educating people on what their ballots look like, what are the big election deadlines, who’s on their ballot, and why civic engagement is important.

Those are the kinds of things I would be looking at but also making sure that we are holding our leaders accountable when we’re talking about democracy.

We’re also talking about leaders that are elected or who are in these positions of power that are going to be here to accept results whatever the turnout or the election results may be, as well as people that are going to be with the community and here to meet their needs and not their own interests.

How will you manage policies for visiting workers? 

Dimas: I think that there’s definitely a lot of things that we can do, but I do want to make my stance clear.

I’m pro-immigration. I’m pro-people. So, a lot of the policies that I’m going to be supporting are going to be policies that are centered around people, regardless of what their immigration status may be, whether they’re here legally or with their documentation, or if they’re here visiting as H-2A workers.

I’m a strong believer that if you are contributing to the economy, to our society, then you deserve to have your fair share of benefits and protections. I serve on our state’s Human Rights Commission, so I’m very big about human rights. I’m going to be supporting folks regardless of where they come from, their documentation status, whether they speak our language, whether they’re refugees, whether they’re impacted by the legal system, all of these if you are a human being and you live in Washington, I am going to be fighting for you because you belong to the society.

In terms of specific policies to help with H-2A workers, I want to make sure that we’re supporting our workers, especially because they are a vulnerable population. They’’re visiting from another country, here to work. It’s easy for employers to potentially overwork them, exploit them, possibly withhold payment or just disregard them.

I want to make sure that the protections we have in place are going to be supporting all workers regardless of if they’re visiting or not. I want to make sure we’re holding those folks who are employing H-2A workers accountable. I want to make sure that we’re also not vilifying employers because I know that, yes, there are many farms and big corporations that do take advantage of workers. There are also organizations and companies that are following the rules. 

Listeners asked about immigration and having enough workers to support our farmers. What are your thoughts about the relation between both issues? 

Dimas: One of the biggest values that I’m running for is workers’ rights and labor rights.

I want to make sure that we’re working with stakeholders and that includes farmers and companies that employ workers, whether they’re visiting or they’re living here in central Washington. I want to make sure that they have benefits, and they’re protected, and they’re not being overlooked.

We know statistically that workers in agricultural and the agricultural industry are definitely underpaid and overworked. I want to make sure that just because this work is hard work, they’re still getting paid a livable wage. I believe that if we have farmers and ag industries employing people to do their jobs, then they (employers) need to be able to pay them (employees) fairly and ensure that they’re in safe working conditions.

When it comes to like H-2A workers, I think that if employers bringing them in, then they’re going to have to make sure that they have everything in place to employ them and pay them.

I’m also thinking about immigration. There’s a lot of people that are outspoken about how there’s immigrants and they’re taking our jobs and doing all of these things, and it’s a very harmful narrative. I believe these people have access to these jobs, like you and me. If we wanted to do agricultural work, we could, but we choose not to, so a lot of the time, farmers, dairies and so on look to employ outside workers, and a lot of the time it’s because they know that they can get by with paying them lower wages. It’s a cheap labor force for them.

“It’s a really complex issue, I believe that at the end of the day, I’m pro-human rights and pro-immigrants, so I want to make sure that whether you’re a legal resident or not, that we are going to be working together so this is a safe place for you, and ensuring farmers have the support they have as long as they’re following the law and treating people with respect and dignity and not violating their rights.

Do you support health care for women, including abortion access?

Dimas: I’m a strong believer of reproductive freedom and reproductive rights. I have been a huge supporter of these. Several years ago, I held the first Women’s March for reproductive freedom here in the Lower Yakima Valley. I’ve been a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood. I was endorsed by Planned Parenthood’s advocates, as well as pro-choice Washington, and I’m proud to be someone that believes in these freedoms, because especially in areas like central Washington, we already have a lot of limitations in terms of hospitals and clinics. 

A lot of the time our community has to be referred out of our district to do any kind of specialized care. We have in Sunnyside, in the lower valley, we have one Planned Parenthood, and then we have one in the Tri-Cities and one in Yakima. Some people sometimes have to drive 30 to 45 minutes to get that care.

I don’t believe that my religion gets to discriminate or decide people’s rights, neither does the government. So, I believe in supporting reproductive freedom, gender affirming care and affordable healthcare, so I’m going to be a fierce supporter of all of these things.

What are your plans to protect Pacific Northwest natural resources while balancing business and population pressures? 

Dimas: Living in central Washington has definitely given me a unique perspective, because we’ve had to deal with fires pretty much the entirety of my life living here.

We’re always fearing how hot it’s going to be in the summer because of the fires, because of droughts, which affect our farming community and the agricultural jobs we have available. I’m also thinking about polluted air, which is coming from the fires, as well as the pollution that some of these big agricultural plants are causing. I’m also thinking about the way waste is being disposed of. We’ve had issues. I’ve been talking about this a lot.

There’s the town of Mabton, Washington, that has been dealing with contaminated wells for a very long time. They don’t have access to clean drinking water, and our aging water infrastructure in central Washington has been an issue for a very long time. I think that it has a lot to do with the lack of investments, but it also has a lot to do with the lack of accountability from big ag and other corporations that continue to choose profit over people.”

A lot of these communities that are affected the most are communities of color like mine. I’m also thinking about our indigenous folks. They’re supposed to be having access to their land. Sometimes these corporations take over and don’t give them access to fish and practice their own customs and traditions.

For me at the end of the day, I’m going to choose my community over big business, over profit and also because of the sake of being on a livable planet. I want to make sure that we’re reducing pollution, that we’re reducing the exploitation of our natural resources for future generations to be able to have a safe, healthy and thriving planet. I plan on working with stakeholders like Washington Conservation Action and indigenous communities to continue to ensure we’re passing policies and protecting our planet.

What are your thoughts about nuclear energy and energy alternatives to dams?

Dimas: I feel like this is an area where I need to do work with more communities and different stakeholders to really give an in-depth answer. All I can say is that I’m open to exploring greener energy alternatives.

How will you work across the aisle to solve the very real problems we face: climate change, income inequality and racism?

Dimas: Those are very important issues. I think the reality is that your job as a legislator means you have to work with everybody. It doesn’t matter whether they’re the same party as you, they come from the same place, they speak the same language, you’re going to have to work together to pass laws for our communities. That’s what I plan on doing.

I’ve been working in social justice and in the community for a very long time on spectrum issues. I’m going to have to do the same thing. I’ve had to work with people that maybe I don’t see eye to eye or agree with on everything.

In the Legislature, it means having tough conversations with maybe people that you don’t always agree with. For me, I’m going to be working on policies that are going to be able to help our community in many ways, including lowering the cost of living, whether that’s looking at bills like rent stabilization and making sure that we’re able to keep people in their homes, and making sure that we’re investing in our workforce.

We’ve had so many budget cuts in school districts, which have been leaving a lot of our educators and staff at schools without a job. I want to make sure that we have funding available from K through 12 in our schools.

We’re able to keep our workers there. I’m also concerned about a lot of the contracts that have been overlooked.

I’m going to definitely be working with unions to make sure that our workers are being paid a livable wage that’s constantly evolving and looked at as the cost of living continues to go up, but also simultaneously looking at ways where we can save people money.

I think it’s not enough just to be not racist. We have to be fighting racism every single day, and so I feel like that’s going to look like ensuring we’re investing in DEI training.

The state of Washington has the first of its kind, and that’s the Office of Equity and working with the Office will be critical to looking through different lenses of how we can improve different systems. I know the state of Washington has done a lot of work such as with the Office of the Superintendent (of Public Instruction) to ensure we’re going toward multicultural and multilingual curriculums.

We’re really investing and pushing for more of these efforts in our schools, making sure we’re standing against racism in whatever capacity that we can. I think as legislators, we definitely have a huge platform where we can take advantage and say: ‘Hey, we are not going to allow this.’ We need to ensure that we’re also enforcing the Washington state’s law against discrimination. We’re going to have to make sure that we’re taking hate crime seriously.

What plans do you have to protect the electorate from disinformation?

Dimas: I think that’s going to be very critical.  We have a lot of people unfortunately that get convinced whether they get mailers or they get text messages.

I know right now, unfortunately, my running mates and myself are actually targets of a lot of misinformation. We’re really going to have to double down and continue to connect with the community. I think we really are going to have to go back to the basics and teach our community how to look up things themselves.

What is a trusted resource? It seems like that it should be something well known, but unfortunately with technology and so much information out there, it’s become harder and harder to understand what’s trusted and what’s not.

I know you’ve heard this a lot, but I think we’re going to have to crack down on those who are spreading things that aren’t true. I don’t know what that’s going to look like, but for sure there needs to be some sort of penalty or some sort of way where we hold these folks accountable. That are already taking advantage of communities that already hear a lot of misinformation and maybe don’t know enough.

Do you trust election integrity, and will you concede if you lose? 

Dimas: Absolutely. I think our state does an incredible job of ensuring that our elections remain trustworthy and so on.

Unfortunately, the recent burning of our ballot drop boxes does make me feel a little uneasy. I definitely think that there needs to be more done to ensure that doesn’t happen again. Our district also has been dealing with certain individuals going to people’s houses. Specifically, Latinos and monolingual speakers are being targeted, and they’re ballots are being taken. This has been a thing that’s been happening here in the last couple of weeks in the Yakima Valley, so I feel like there needs to be stricter laws in terms of that and how we are going to hold people accountable not to mess with people’s ballots.

I think everything’s fair and square. If there’s no suspicions of any foul play, I’m going to accept the results. At the same time, I’m not going to disappear. I’m going to continue to be involved in the community and in other efforts to ensure that whoever ultimately wins this seat, as well as the others in our district, are also going to come through with their promises and are going to put people first before their own interests.