By John Stang
On Monday, longtime state Sen. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, announced that he won’t run for re-election. In an interview with PubliCola, Carlyle said he has “a deep sense of fulfillment” and is “taking the luxury of going out on top.”
He is the second Seattle state senator to announce that he won’t seek re-election, following Democratic Sen. David Frockt (D-46), who announced his retirement in October.
Seattle’s liberal legislators have gradually shifted further left over time, a trend that led to rumors that Carlyle would face a primary challenge from someone on the left. (As PubliCola reported Thursday, Rep. Noel Frame, D-36, has said she will seek the seat Carlyle is vacating.)
Carlyle said his party’s ongoing leftward tilt (at least in the Puget Sound region) had nothing to do with his decision to leave. Citing his margin of victory in 2018, when he won 89 percent of the vote, Carlyle said he wasn’t worried about reelection. As of Thursday, he had $135,000 remaining in his campaign account, according to state Public Disclosure Commission records.
Instead, Carlyle pointed to the 2021 passage of the Climate Commitment Act as a crowning achievement of his legislative career. The Climate Commitment Act places a cap on greenhouse gas emissions while creating a program to auction off emissions allowances to large polluters. It took Carlyle several years to get the legislation passed, after first facing a hostile Republican-controlled Senate, then opposition from moderate Democrats in swing districts after his party took over the Senate in 2018.
Carlyle said his biggest unfulfilled wishes are eliminating the death penalty and bolstering the state’ data privacy laws — efforts that have passed the Senate, but stalled in the House.
“We won the Super Bowl of climate activities,” he said.
The 2021 law requires the state Department of Ecology to create a system by 2023 capping the state’s annual industrial carbon emissions, a cap that slowly decreases over time—from almost 100 million tons in 2018 to 50 million by 2030 and 5 million by 2050.
The state will auction off parts of the overall annual limit to large polluters—those that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of greenhouse gases annually four times a year, and companies will be allowed to trade, buy and sell those allowances. The state estimates that about 100 companies produce that quantity of greenhouse gases, including the oil, cement, steel and power industries, and predicts that the auctions will raise about $500 million a year for projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions (and alleviating the impact of climate change) across the state.
Carlyle also sponsored a bill in 2019 that will phase out all coal-fired electricity in Washington by 2025 and eventually phase out natural-gas power as well. The new law sets a goal of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045. Over the past several years, Carlyle said, “we have passed the strongest suite of climate change legislation in United States history at the state level.” Continue reading “Longtime Legislator Carlyle Says He’s Going Out on Top”