Looking and sounding very much like a presidential candidate, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee came to New Hampshire on Tuesday to warn that climate change must be the top issue in the 2020 elections.
And Inslee – a potential White House contender – told the Monitor that he’s “seriously considering” a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, vowing that, “If I do announce, it’s going to be in weeks, not months.”
Speaking to some 40 Saint Anselm College students gathered at the school’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Inslee called climate change an “urgent matter.”
“We’ve got about 10 or 12 years to act in this regard or basically it will be too late to stop catastrophic climate change,” he said. “We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change and we are the last who can do something about it. … We have one chance to defeat climate change, and it’s right now.”
Looking to the next election, Inslee spotlighted that “this cannot be one of many issues. It has to be a foremost issue to succeed.”
And he told students that “your generation is the most perfectly poised to do this because you’re the smartest generation in American history. You’re the most technologically adept. And you’re going to be the most entrepreneurial.”
Inslee’s trip drew local and national reporters, as well as a camera crew from C-SPAN. Later in the day, he made a similar pitch to students at Dartmouth College.
Inslee took aim at President Donald Trump, calling him “a fearful man who is a pessimist, who doesn’t believe we’re smart enough to beat climate change.”
“He is wrong about the basic character of the American people. And he is wrong about the science of climate change. And that’s going to be proven in the next election cycle if I have anything to do about it,” he said.
And pointing to what he said was a 75 percent drop in the price of solar energy and a 25 percent drop in the cost of wind energy over the past decade, Inslee touted he’s “increasingly convinced that an economic growth message that is built around beating climate change is a winning message for the Democratic Party.”
He said that thanks to a surge in green energy jobs, “the states that have moved forward on clean energy are the ones with the best economy.”
“This is a unifying issue because we can talk about job creation in any Midwest state as well as we can in California or New Hampshire,” he added.
Saint Anselm political science professor Christopher Galdieri said that climate change “could be an issue that plays really well with younger voters. I think the ones who are looking at living in the world that’s being described in these reports, where everything goes to hell in 10 or 12 years, might care about that issue more than those of us who are in our 40s and above.”
Saint Anselm senior Mitchell Young, president of the college’s “green team,” said that he would “100 percent” consider Inslee if he launches a White House campaign.
Another “green team” member, junior Emily Maier, said that climate change “is incredibly important and really influential on whom I put my (2020) backing behind.”
If Inslee does jump into the race, he’ll be facing rivals with bigger campaign bank accounts and larger name recognition, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Kamala Harris of California. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is seriously considering a second White House run, and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey appears to be moving closer to launching a campaign. And former vice president Joe Biden is huddling with friends and advisers as he mulls a third shot at the White House.
Another potential contender, billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is also a leading environmental activist. Climate change crusader, and fellow billionaire Tom Steyer, recently decided against a White House run.
Asked if he’d run as a one-issue candidate, Inslee argued that “climate change is the issue in all of our issues. Climate change is a health care issue. It is an economic development issue. It is a national security issue. It’s an educational issue. So it touches everything.”
Galdieri predicted that an Inslee candidacy would force the better known “candidates to take climate change more seriously and to put it more front and center.”
But he warned that if Inslee runs, “I think he’s got to be able to address other issues and he will encounter audiences that will want to know ‘what’s your opinion on women’s issues, what’s your opinion on foreign policy.’ ”
Inslee argued that “times are different than 10 years ago. I think that people are now experiencing climate change first hand in their personal lives. This is a first-tier issue in people’s personal lives. This is no longer just a graph on a chart. Fundamentally that has changed in people’s consciousness.”
And he spotlighted that “the country is ready for it because the American character is inherently a can-do character. It’s an optimistic viewpoint that we can solve these problems if we step up and fight them. And I believe that the character issue can win a presidential race. And we’ll be happy to test it if I become a candidate.”
Before heading to Saint Anslem, Inslee met with longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley to put out a small political fire.
Last year Inslee chaired the Democratic Governors Association, and he visited New Hampshire just days after former state senator Molly Kelly won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in the state’s Sept. 11 primary, teaming up with Kelly at multiple events. Asked during that trip if the DGA would pour resources into Kelly’s race against incumbent GOP Gov. Chris Sununu, Inslee said it would, but left the timetable open.
But the DGA ended up not putting any money into the New Hampshire gubernatorial showdown, while the rival Republican Governor’s Association showered some $300,000 into the race in the closing days, in support of Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.
At the time, an internal Democratic poll suggested Sununu’s lead had dropped to a single point. The Republican governor ended up defeated Kelly by a 53 percent to 46 percent margin.
Earlier this month, when word of Inslee’s trip was first reported, Buckley – in a rare move – publicly vented.
“I look forward to hearing from Gov. Inslee his reasons for abandoning New Hampshire in 2018 as chair of the DGA,” he said.
On Tuesday, after his meeting with Buckley, Inslee told the Monitor “I’m not sure it’s a hatchet that needed to be buried, but I had a really good discussion with Ray.
“We had a limited budget and had to make some really hard decisions. It was particularly hard because I frankly love Molly Kelly,” he explained. “This was a tough decision but we made some tough decisions and we flipped seven seats, a record for the DGA.”
“There were other states where we also didn’t have enough money to compete –Arizona, Maryland, South Carolina. But we made decisions based on what was important to the country, not important to my potential presidential ambitions,” he added.
Buckley told the Monitor that “I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with Gov. Jay Inslee this morning and support his efforts to discuss the all too important issue of climate change.”
But he didn’t mention discussing the DGA’s lack of support for Kelly’s gubernatorial campaign.