August 1, 2023
Ballots for your local primary races are due back at an official drop box by 8pm tonight! CASE’s work to increase access to public transit, increase housing affordability, protect our community’s health & wellbeing, and more are heavily influenced by local policymakers. Your voice in the primary makes a difference!
As a newly formed CASE Political Workgroup, CASE members researched candidates, received and reviewed candidate questionnaires, and conducted candidate interviews. We are proud to announce the following UAW endorsements for candidates that we feel will strongly support the goals of our unit and fight for our priorities wherever possible.
Pullman City Council Ward 2 – Carla De Lira
Running as a first-time candidate in Pullman, our very own Carla is a graduate student and part of the UAW/WSU-Coalition of Academic Student Employees movement. You won’t see her on the ballot during the primary as she is running in an uncontested race, but we wanted to make sure to get her name on your radar!
Carla is running to ensure that ASEs, renters, and low-income workers are represented in Pullman. Carla has also put in hard work at the student, university, and city levels to push for transit improvements so everyone can get around town easily. Carla’s hard work to fight back against increasing student fees has helped to work towards a sustainable model for transit funding that students can use reliably. Carla will also advocate for bringing grocery stores back to Ward 2 and enable the local food pantry’s Mobile Market to make more frequent visits. One of Carla’s exciting ideas is to establish worker councils in Pullman to encourage collaboration and solidarity, and fight for better wages in our rural area. Because of these reasons, and many more, we’re convinced Carla is the right candidate for her election. Vote for Carla!
Spokane Mayor – Dr. Lisa Brown
Some of you will have known Dr. Lisa Brown when she was the chancellor of WSU-Spokane until 2017, but many more of you will recognize her name from her storied history as a politician and community leader in Eastern Washington. Dr. Brown’s decades long history in expanding investments into affordable housing and her commitment to working with community organizations to better Spokane precede her. Her strong commitment to labor is clear as she was an early advocate for the bill that allowed ASEs collective bargaining rights while she was in the state legislature. As an inaugural member of EWU’s faculty bargaining unit, she knows exactly where we are in the bargaining process and exactly what support we’ll need. Our conversations with her have made it clear that she has a vested and long-standing interest in continuing the work she did to make working at WSU more affordable, reasonable, supported – including supporting our fight to expand childcare and paid leave benefits. On the city level, Lisa will bring compassion and community to solve housing issues in Spokane and to respond to homelessness. We believe that we will see a better Spokane if we vote Lisa Brown for Mayor!
As a Political Workgroup, we’re still reviewing and assessing candidates in other races for the general election in November. If you would like to join us, ask questions, or learn more about the process or these candidates, please email us at wsu-case-political@
In Solidarity,
WSU-CASE Political Workgroup