Ahead of the Aug. 6 primary election, the My Neighborhood News Network submitted a list of questions to candidates running for election. We are publishing responses as we receive them.

Bruce Guthrie is a 61-year-old retired operations, sales and marketing executive, with a second career in teaching. He has lived in Edmonds since 2008 and moved from the Midwest to Washington state in 1994. He and his wife Julia have three kids in local private schools.

Guthrie received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, a master’s in business administration from Northwestern University and a master’s in teaching from Seattle University. A veteran of political campaigns, Guthrie has also run the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate as a Libertarian.

How do you plan to stay in touch with constituents while you are in office?

Email, phone, text and a webform on my web page.

What are the top three priority areas you would focus on as a lawmaker?

Cut taxes and spending: Most of the incumbents in Olympia want to implement a state income tax. I promise to vote against any such attempts. I want to cut sales taxes and property taxes, and cutstate spending by even more so that we may fully fund the rainy day fund.

School choice: About half of the other U.S. states have school choice, and Washington needs it, too. Competition and choice improve product and service quality, and keeps prices in check for retail consumers, and it works in education as well. Private schools prove that. Homeschooling is even better in terms of both educational outcomes and reduced costs. Vouchers and charter schools are great steps in the right direction. Parents should more easily be able to move their children to any public school that has space.

Transportation: Instead of spending more money on trains, buses and bike lanes, Washington needs another lane on I-5.

What are the priority areas of your legislative district?

I think my district wants lower inflation, better job opportunities, and better public safety. Inflation is mostly caused by the Federal Reserve, but excessive government spending in Washington is also a factor. High business and occupation, sales and property taxes are dragging down our economic growth in Washington. If we reduce taxes and regulation, then the free market will produce more living wage jobs. But if the government taxes money away from the people, its spending produces fewer jobs than if that money had stayed in the hands of the people. Taxation destroys jobs. Right now, we are not enforcing shoplifting, so we are getting a lot more shoplifting, and this is fueling homelessness. Recently, we ended the policy of not chasing suspects fleeing in cars. This was a good move and will tend to improve public safety. Recently, I was arrested for peacefully collecting ballot petition signatures in a public park. If the police focused on murderers, rapists and thieves, instead of on those trying to exercise their First Amendment rights, that would help.

What do you think the state’s top three budget priorities should be?

The only legitimate function of the government is the defense of our equal, individual rights to life, liberty and property. To that end, we need the state militia or National Guard, police and courts. It is a Constitutional requirement in Washington to ensure education, so I advocate vouchers and charter schools as a first step towards eventual full privatization of the failing government school system. Eventually, over the very long term, the state voucher system I propose should also be privatized, and the Washington Constitution changed, so that we may enjoy a complete separation of school and state.

Recent state legislation has focused on housing initiatives to increase housing supply and the construction of middle housing. Do you support these initiatives? Why or why not?

No. The best thing government can do is to get out of the way.  Government efforts to increase housing supply are generally counterproductive. Subsidizing building is just corporate welfare, and handouts to wealthy developers. Instead, we should ease zoning restrictions, which just violate the right to property of property owners; reduce property taxes, which tend to increase rents; and improve highway transportation on I-5 and I-405 so that more people can live further out without having horrible commute times.  

With rent rising, does the state have a responsibility to cap rent increases? Do you have ideas for supporting struggling renters?

Rent control has failed everywhere it has been tried. All one has to do to see this is to look at the examples of San Francisco and New York City. There, rent control has reduced housing availability, reduced the quality and upkeep of units on the market, and resulted in no reductions in market rent levels. The best way to reduce rent is to reduce property taxes, which are all passed through in rent; to reduce housing regulation, which tends to increase housing costs, to reduce zoning restrictions, so housing density and building heights can increase; and to improve highway transportation flow rates so that people can live further out. 

Is there more that lawmakers could be doing to address behavioral health issues related to mental health and substance abuse? What about homelessness? 

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Instead of solving the problems of addiction and homelessness, we are merely subsidizing them. And if you tax something, you get less of it, and if you subsidize something, you tend to get more of it.  y paying for tents, needles, food, etc. we are subsidizing homelessness, and that’s why we are seeing more of it. Private charities are better able to solve this problem. They are able to restrict access to their services to clients willing to forgo drugs and alcohol. Until clients are willing to stop using their substance of choice, their problem can not be solved. Olympia and King County and Seattle have made it possible to be homeless as a lifestyle. So more people are choosing homelessness. Let private nonprofit orgs handle this problem, and fund them privately, without taxpayer subsidies, and the problem will be reduced over time. We have to stop subsidizing homelessness. 

What responsibility does the state have in mitigating the impacts of climate change? 

Efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are causing more harm to the poor than they are helping the climate. [Gov.] Inslee’s carbon tax is making gas unaffordable to the working poor who need it to get to work. And as long as China continues to ramp up its CO2 emissions, any reductions we are able to achieve in Washington are insignificant and will not measurably reduce global temperatures. Deleting natural gas is another major blunder that will hurt the poor and yield no significant climate cooling. We need to let the free market innovate, and produce new technology to solve this problem, without hurting the economy and the poorest. 

What is your opinion on a state income tax?

I oppose it with every fiber of my being. When you tax something, you get less of it. Taxing income is discouraging productive employment. It will wind up hurting the poor, even if the rich pay most of it, because the rich employ people, and the rich spend on good and serviced produced in the state, and the rich invest in businesses and factories that employ people. Every marginal dollar taxed from the people and spent by government produces fewer jobs than if it had been left in the hands of the people who earned it. There must be no state income tax. I drive around with a sign on my car saved from an old Tim Eyman initiative that reads “No State Income Tax.” Government spending is hurting the poor.  Olympia has too much power and money. We need to reduce the amount of money sent to Olympia, not increase it. 

School districts are facing drastic budget cuts, which many say is due to the legislature’s failure to fully fund basic education. Is this a fair criticism? If so, how would you propose addressing it? 

Government schooling is a failed social experiment. And since it fails most spectacularly in poor urban neighborhoods with disproportionately BIPOC residents, the effect of the government school system is racist. The fundamental reason for this horrible injustice is the lack of competition in schooling.  Government schools are trying to make themselves in to a monopoly, and monopolies have high costs and lower service quality. I am fortunate enough not to be poor, and I send my kids to three different local, secular private schools. There we are treated as customers. The school knows we can send our kids somewhere else, so they know the have to provide excellent education, and they do. I want to extend this privilege to all kids in Washington. Vouchers and charter schools are good first steps to empower parents to choose the schools best for their kids, but in the long run, we need full school privatization. If I had my dream, each government school building would be turned in to a private, nonprofit org, with a local parental board, and would charge tuition. A full-ride scholarship would be given to the bottom half in this state, based on income and assets. Each school would specialize, and compete on, the basis of cost and quality. Some schools would focus on STEM, others on fine and performing arts, others on special needs, and other schools would be generalists. Parents could choose among the schools as they saw fit for their kids. This system would allow reductions in property taxes for all. Over time, even this voucher program could be privatized and funded by private, voluntary contributions. I’m a teacher, and I know the importance of passion and teacher enthusiasm to the motivation of students and hence to their educational outcomes. Currently, teacher passion is being sucked out of the system because Olympia tells teacher what they have to teach, how they have to teach it, and when they have to teach it. It crushes creativity. Instead, good managers know to hire good people, and set them free to do a great job. Private schools do this. Government schools tend not to. In order to solve this horrible injustice of the racist effect (despite good intentions) of the government school system, schooling should be totally privatized. But in the short run, vouchers and charter schools have proven themselves successful in other states. Despite opposition from unions, they should also be implemented here in Washington.  

What role should the state play in supporting underrepresented groups? 

The only legitimate function of government is the defense of our equal, individual rights to life, liberty and property. We are not groups. We are individuals. It doesn’t matter what our race or sex or sexual orientation is, we each have the same individual rights. I ran for Congress back in 2002, and one of my top three issues was marriage equality. I recognized that because the government would not recognize same-sex marriage, the rights to liberty of gays and lesbians were being violated. My Democratic opponent at the time, Rick Larsen, said that marriage was between one man and one woman. He would not take a risk to lead on this, the civil rights struggle of the time, because it was not yet popular, and all he cared about was getting reelected. Similarly, the property rights of the poor must be defended. The poor are more likely than the rich to be victims of street crime, and inflation hurts the poor and middle class more than the rich, who have investments that tend to protect them from inflation. Affirmative action is racist. Reparations are racist, too. They assume that anyone who is Black must have ongoing harm caused by slavery in the 1800s. But this is not true. And no white person in the U.S. is guilty of U.S. slavery. Special treatment of Black or Hispanic-owned business is also racist. Instead, reduce taxes and burdensome regulation on small business so that business owners of any race, sex or sexual orientation may prosper.

The Legislature failed to pass several police accountability bills during the last session. Would these be a priority for you in 2025? 

As I said above, I was recently arrested for collecting ballot access signatures in a public park. All police should be retrained so that they know that they must not violate the First Amendment. Qualified immunity must not protect an officer who violates our civil rights. The Nuremberg Defense (I was just following orders) is not a valid defense, and should not shield any officer from personal responsibility for violating civil rights of detainees. All officers should continue to wear bodycams.  And handcuffs that restrain the arrestee, but which do not hurt, should be kept in all police cars. 

How can we increase civic engagement among younger age groups?

By allowing candidates to run who are interesting to younger people. Right now, third-party candidates rarely get through the top-two primary system. Ranked choice voting, or instant runoff voting, would make more choices available to voters, and would be more engaging to young people. Right now, third-party candidates must get 2,000 petition signatures to ensure they have enough to get on the ballot for President in Washington. And if the two big, old political parties run candidates as horrible as Trump, Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and George Bush for president, we should not be surprised if, young or old, fewer people are inspired to vote.

Learn more at Guthrie’s website.

— By Jasmine Contreras-Lewis