Senator Lorraine Wojahn

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turned out, he wasn’t able to collect sufficient
signatures for it to be brought to the 1993
Legislature. Initiative drives are complicated,
expensive things to do, but did his failure to
complete this initiative process have an impact
on the debate? Was it a kind of public
temperature-taking?
Sen. Wojahn: I don’t know that it had any
impact on the debate. There were not enough
organized groups behind that to let it pass. The
insurance companies would be battling it.
Ms. Kilgannon: So, was it premature? An
under-funded campaign?
Sen. Wojahn: I don’t know what it was. It
probably was under-funded because he didn’t
have enough organized support for it.
Ms. Kilgannon: When a person goes out for a
big initiative drive like this, for their project
they have been trying to get for years…
Sen. Wojahn: You better get your ducks in a
row before you ever start to do it!
Ms. Kilgannon: And then when they don’t
make it…
Sen. Wojahn: Well, that can happen, no matter
how good the thought is and how excellent the
idea, but if you don’t have your ducks in a row
and your financing organized and in place
before starting it, it’s not going to happen. He
needed labor behind him on that; he needed all
of the liberal groups, including that prepaid
health care group…
Ms. Kilgannon: You mean Group Health
Cooperative?
Sen. Wojahn: Group Health. I don’t believe
they were there. These are the big groups he
needed behind him to even pass that and Group
Health probably would have fallen in if it had
happened, but I don’t think he had them and
maybe they didn’t have the money. They’d have
had to generate the money through their unions
or their organizations and I’m not so sure even
the AFL-CIO organization would have enough
money to put behind that. You don’t know how
many of these unions have people working for
small employers, you see, so it wasn’t going to
happen.
Ms. Kilgannon: Is health care is so
complicated people kind of shy away from
addressing it through the initiative process?
Sen. Wojahn: But you see, when you have a
big initiative going on – when we did the
initiative on “twelve percent is enough on the
usury tax,” we had them all behind us. We had
the AFL-CIO, we had Group Health, we had the
energy people. They were all there. And we
could do it.
Ms. Kilgannon: Should health care reform be
accomplished by initiative? Or is that more
properly a legislative concern?
Sen. Wojahn: It should be done legislatively. It
is public and it’s probably the one issue which is
the closest to everybody’s heart, even if they
wouldn’t admit it. Because if you don’t have
your health, you have nothing. And it should be
the number-one issue before everybody, even
education! Because if you don’t have your
health, education is no good. It’s got to be
health. And if you can’t entice the American
people, or the people of the state of Washington
behind you, what else are you going to do? If
you can’t persuade them, educate them that it’s
important…
Ms. Kilgannon: But as an initiative, the
wording has to be just so and then it’s a little
harder to amend than normal legislation. Is that
a danger? If this had passed, would that have
locked you in, in a way which might not have
been as flexible and responsive as if it had been
a normal bill?
Sen. Wojahn: Well, I think an initiative to the
Legislature would probably be more desirable in
an issue like this because then something has to
happen. The Legislature has to either accept it,
reject it and let it go on the ballot with their
rejection, or put a substitute out there to vote on
it. And so something has to happen. But with an
initiative, nothing has to happen, unless you get
the signatures.