One of our very own, Jacob Bond, a student here at Bellevue College, is running for the Washington State House of Representatives. He will be running against Democrat incumbent Rep. Jonathan Goodman of the 45th district, which consists of Northern Kirkland, Woodinville, half of Sammamish, parts of Redmond and Duvall.
Bond, a veteran who has served two rounds in Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps., is currently taking three classes at BC: accounting, business law and English. He said he’s getting his prerequisites done to hopefully transfer to the University of Washington and pursue a business major. Bond has also studied International Business at the University of the Americas in Pueblo, Mexico, and has been a financial adviser here in Washington for several years.
Bond is 27 years old, but says that his age should not be an issue for this job. “Olympia doesn’t need someone who is experienced in politics, they need somebody who is going to bring people together and get things done,” he said, insisting that the system in Olympia has been broken for a long time now.
“The United States of America is meant to be a melting pot […] full of diversity,” said Monica Mendoza, student at BC and Organizing Director of the Office of Student Legislative Affairs,“and bringing a younger, community college student who was once a veteran would be a fantastic choice.”
Education is a primary focus of Bond’s campaign. According to him, the state of Washington is not allocating to education the funds that it should be. “This last budget session didn’t cut any funding to education,” he said, “Well, people view that as a victory. That is not a victory to me. Because over the last ten plus years how much money have we cut from education?”
The question of how to raise the money to further fund education, however, is where the moderately conservative side of Bond, who is running as a Democrat, surfaces. “My opinion is that we are trying to fund too many social programs,” he said, addressing why the state isn’t investing more in education. “There are issues in legislation that the House and the Senate pass that prevent us from getting adequate funding for the programs that matter, like education or funding jobs or veteran support.”
Bond is favorable to cancelling the Business and Occupational tax, which is a type of receipt tax imposed on businesses. Washington is one of two states in the nation that has this tax; in fact, Washington’s tax policy is quite unique.
Washington State is one of the only six states in the country with no income tax. It makes up for it with high sales tax. This can become problematic because when the economy isn’t doing well (like in the past few years) and people are out of jobs or having their wages cut, they won’t buy as much as before, and so the state will make less revenue off of sales tax.
Although he is running as a Democrat, Bond’s position on income tax is uncertain. “Income tax is a dirty word. And if you want to get elected you stay far, far, far away from it,” he said. “The problem […] is it goes down to the fundamental argument of ‘I want programs but I don’t want to pay for them.’”
At the end of the day Bond said that even though he is favorable towards income tax, he realized that most people in his district are not. He will therefore have to vote down a law that imposes income tax (especially if it doesn’t lower sales tax in return) in order to comply with the wishes of the people he is representing.
“I do not want to be a politician, that’s not my career choice,” said Bond, “when you have representatives who are making it a career choice and depend on it to pay the bills then you get a biased view on how we should proceed in making legislation and laws.”
There are a few BC students who are working on Bond’s campaign. Jeremy Hauck, a BC student is among them. “It’s been a lot of fun,” he said, “our campaign is close-knit and we’re like a little family.”