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Connelly: Gov. Inslee, climate champion, tests national political climate

By , SeattlePI.comUpdated
Ambition fulfilled, ambition remaining?  President Barack Obama and Governor Jay Inslee laugh following their speeches at a Democratic fundraiser at the Washington State Convention Center on Friday, June 24, 2016.

Ambition fulfilled, ambition remaining?  President Barack Obama and Governor Jay Inslee laugh following their speeches at a Democratic fundraiser at the Washington State Convention Center on Friday, June 24, 2016.

GRANT HINDSLEY/SEATTLEPI.COM

Gov. Jay Inslee was upholding the Paris climate accords Thursday against President Trump's "bumper sticker bombast," has lately spoken from steps of the Colorado State Capitol, and has a coveted upcoming gig at the Iowa Democratic Party's "Hall of Fame" celebration.

It's a challenging gig: The Iowans' speaker last year was actor Alec Baldwin, the hilarious Trump impersonator from Saturday Night Live.

The Trump presidency has brought Washington's two-term Democratic governor -- "the greenest governor in the country" in words of League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski -- to the national stage.

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Inslee likes it there. Iowa will hold America's first presidential caucuses in 2020. Inslee has lately appeared in Nevada, another early caucus state.

Inslee is moving across the political landscape as head of the Democratic Governors Association, and as a convener of the U.S. Climate Alliance, formed to resist Trump's decision to take the United States out of the Paris climate accords.

It's very early to talk about aspirations to higher office, but . . .

Two future presidents, Govs. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, made their names nationally and piled up the IOU's campaigning around the country for the election of more Democratic governors.

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Washington Becomes Tenth State to Ban Conversion Therapy State Gov. Jay Inslee signed the bill on Wednesday, banning conversion therapies for anyone under the age of 18. Washington state Sen. Marko Liias Washington state Sen. Marko Liias 11 States and Washington D.C. have outlawed the practice, according to The Human Rights Campaign. Various organizations including The American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association deem the "treatment" to be ineffective and a catalyst for increased suicide risk.Wibbitz

So upfront were Clinton's ambitions, heading the Democratic Governors Association, that Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn brought him onstage at a party event with the words: "The governor I am introducing has managed to be a promising young political figure in three different decades."

(Inslee has now served in Congress, and as Governor, in three different decades and two centuries.)

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Inslee has troops to rally. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper is retiring from the Colorado statehouse after two terms, with a scramble to succeed him in a "purple" state. Iowa has a field of Democratic gubernatorial contenders, with a labor-backed state senator facing accusations of inappropriate behavior toward women.

Democrats hold just 15 statehouses, but promise a major push to restore their fortunes in such Rust Belt states as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, which were the key to President Trump's upset win in 2016. They are favored to take back Illinois.

Inslee is no shrinking violet. He and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown upstaged a Trump delegation's presentation on the virtues of nuclear power and "clean coal" during an international climate conference in Bonn, Germany, last year.

The governor confronted President Trump at the White House after the Parkland, Florida, high school massacre, challenging Trump's call to arm teachers, saying they should be teaching and not "packing heat."

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(When Trump announced plans to campaign here in 2016, Inslee half-jokingly proposed building a wall around Washington to keep him out.)

Inslee was star of a Thursday news conference by the League of Conservation Voters -- which has heavily supported him in two elections -- on the one-year anniversary of Trump pulling America out of the Paris agreement.

The message: Nobody is heeding Trump in his denial of climate change, and nobody is following the Trump administration's agenda of reviving the coal industry.

"Across the country, clean, renewable energy has become an unstoppable force," Inslee said. "People want clean air, a healthy environment, and the jobs and investments that come with building the next generation economy, and nothing the federal government chooses to do changes that."

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Unmentioned was the fact that Inslee was unable to get his "polluters pay" agenda through a Democrat-controlled Legislature earlier this year, and that it did not come to a floor vote in either chamber.

In the coming few months, however, the election of new Democratic governors in places like Iowa and Nevada would raise Inslee's profile. The best guess: He is, to the extent possible, running for vice president on the 2020 Democratic ticket.

SeattlePI.com writer Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com

|Updated

Joel is a reporter and columnist for seattlepi.com.