Former eastern Washington U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers talks about life in Spokane after 20 years in Congress. She recently announced she has created a new non-profit organization to promote leadership and traditional American values. She’ll talk about that with us.
We’ll ask Spokane native Janine Parry about her career as a political scientist at the University of Arkansas. Each year, Parry directed a public opinion poll that was eagerly anticipated by people wanting to know which issues were most important to Arkansans. Parry has retired and moved home to Spokane, but she’s still keeping an eye on politics, especially at the state capital level.
And speaking of polls, Greater Spokane recently conducted its second Pulse Survey to gauge which issues are at the top of voters’ priority list. We’ll talk with GSI chief executive Alisha Benson.
Former eastern Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers has been out of the spotlight since leaving Congress at the beginning of the year.
"I made one trip to D.C. since December. I've really been taking a break and not in a hurry to fill a schedule," she said.
McMorris Rodgers says she hasn’t made the decision about whether there’s another office to run for or another job that would put her back in the public eye. But she has created a non-profit, The Cathy McMorris Rodgers Leadership Institute, to promote values important to her.
"I find myself reflecting on my time in Congress, and you know, coming from Kettle Falls, farm kid, first in my family to graduate from college. I'm so grateful for all the mentors that I had and people who took time to mentor me, as well as leaders that I looked up to, and opportunities that I had that really made a difference in my life, and I want to be part of it as a desire to provide more opportunities for leadership development, both here in Spokane, and we might do some partnerships across the country, too."
Janine Parry is an example of the classic Spokane story. She left town after high school to go experience life somewhere else. She earned her undergrad degree at Western Washington University, master’s and doctorate in political science from Washington State. Then she was off to an academic career at the University of Arkansas.
"When I was hired there and until I finished just last year, I was generally a professor of American politics, but my specialties have always been state politics. And I very quickly became an expert in Arkansas politics on top of that," she said.
Parry also became known for the annual Arkansas Poll.
"It's one of just a handful now remaining of totally public, so entirely transparent, public opinion projects that kind of go beyond election prediction and certainly beyond national elections into what it is about state politics and policy that people really want."
"We would be on the phone about 18 to 20 minutes every October with 750 to 800 Arkansans. We did the math, I think in the final year, and I think we'd spoken to something like 20,000 Arkansans asking I don't even know how many questions over the years."
And speaking of polls, last fall, Greater Spokane conducted what it calls a Pulse Survey and this spring, it followed up with another.
"We’ve learned that homelessness and public safety continue to be the top issues on people's mind that we need to tackle as a community," said Greater Spokane Chief Executive Alisha Benson.
"We've learned that people really want a clear plan from their elected leaders that then help to support the investment and the policies that are created. We've learned that people care a lot about our parks, which I think we all knew, but we've learned a lot about that. We've learned that they wanted kind of an all-of-the-above solution around supporting the mental and behavioral health challenges of our community, that they care about kids. And I think even, kind of interesting, we're extremely divided on growth and housing, but a lot of support for investment and infrastructure."
