Key takeaways from the WA attorney general debates

OLYMPIA — Democrat Nick Brown and Republican Pete Serrano have argued against each other in court over state gun laws, and this week they debated head-to-head in the race to become the state’s next attorney general.

Washington will have a new attorney general in 2025, since Bob Ferguson is running for governor.

The Attorney General’s Office acts as the law firm for the state, defending state agencies against lawsuits. It also has broad power to investigate and file lawsuits on issues like civil rights and consumer protection. But the attorney general can’t bring a criminal case unless the office gets a referral from a local prosecutor or the governor.

The two debates this week showed how Brown and Serrano diverge on issues like gun control and whether the attorney general should help shape new state laws. The candidates met Wednesday in Spokane at a forum hosted by the Association of Washington Business, which on Friday endorsed Brown. They debated again Thursday at Seattle Central College.

Wednesday’s debate got sharp at times, with Brown criticizing Serrano for describing people who broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to challenge the 2020 election results as “political prisoners.”

Brown is the former U.S. attorney for Western Washington and before that, served as legal counsel to Gov. Jay Inslee. Serrano is the mayor of Pasco and a lawyer who has worked for the U.S. Department of Energy. He’s also the director and general counsel of a legal foundation that has challenged COVID-19 vaccine mandates and certain state gun laws.

Here are some key issues the candidates had different opinions on.

Guns

Washington has passed a slate of new gun regulations in recent years, with Ferguson’s support. Ferguson — and Inslee — requested the legislation barring assault-style weapons that state legislators passed in 2023, for example.

Serrano, who has challenged state gun laws, including the ban on high-capacity magazines enacted in 2022, has said as attorney general, he wouldn’t defend state laws he believes are unconstitutional.

At Wednesday’s debate, he said the Attorney General’s Office shouldn’t be “playing in” the issue of gun regulations. He added that the office is there “to make sure that the policy shaped by the Legislature or administrative agencies is fundamentally and constitutionally sound.” On Thursday, he said he advocated for individual rights and for people to be able to protect themselves.

Brown countered that firearm violence is “one of the most pressing problems that we have” and said in Thursday’s debate he’d push for more gun safety measures “because that has results and saves lives.”

Pushing new laws

Serrano said he has “struggled with” watching the attorney general champion legislation.

“To me, it’s the Legislature’s job to carry [out] its duty to create the law, but it should be done so on sound advice from the AG’s office,” he said. “And so there’s a partnering, but it’s not that we go in and we sponsor.”

He didn’t have issues with the attorney general requesting funds or “some sort of tweak to the law,” he said but objected to the attorney general proposing legislation concerning constitutional issues.

Brown said the state attorney general has a “unique opportunity” to look for potential policy improvements. He referred to former Attorney General Rob McKenna’s work to tackle meth use. McKenna, a Republican who preceded Ferguson, formed a task force focused on the problem in 2005.

“He proposed new legislation to deal with the meth crisis that we were facing, and he brought people together,” Brown said. “And actually, the meth problem went down for a whole host of reasons, but I think that was a very important piece.”

Abortion

Under Ferguson, Washington sued the Biden administration, arguing the Food and Drug Administration’s regulations of the abortion medication mifepristone are too stringent.

“That was an aggressive action taken against another Democratic administration,” Brown said Wednesday.

He said he would defend abortion access and that Washington could do more.

“We should not simply rest on where we’ve been as a state but think about how we can provide greater protections for people,” he said.

Serrano, asked whether he would go to court to protect Washington residents’ access to mifepristone at Thursday’s debate, said abortion has been “a settled question” in Washington since 1970, when Washingtonians passed a ballot measure decriminalizing it. In 1991, voters codified Roe v. Wade in state law.

“There’s no reason that I would go and undo what’s been done for 50 years,” he said.

In a surprising moment, Serrano added he intended to go to court if there was a threat to Washingtonians’ access to mifepristone.

Sexual violence

In the debate Thursday, Brown and Serrano were asked about whether the attorney general was keeping the public safe from “high-risk predators.”

The Attorney General’s Office pursues civil commitment of people with histories of sexual violence who are considered to be at a high risk of reoffense. In August, a Seattle Times investigation found 1 in 4 people who have been committed and subsequently released from the Special Commitment Center have been arrested for new crimes.

Brown said the attorney general needed to make sure the division has “the proper resources.” Serrano said people at Washington’s civil commitment center for sexually violent predators on McNeil Island aren’t getting proper treatment and need it.