A Seattle conservative who attends Black Lives Matter protests: 2020 election from a Washington perspective

As the 2020 election approaches, KUOW is talking with Washington voters about the candidates and issues they care about.

KUOW is presenting these voices as the opinions and the perspectives which inform people's votes in 2020.

Mellina White: Founder of the Seattle Conservative blog. She strongly favors free markets, fiscal conservatism, and individual rights.

Perspective/issues: Real change for Black lives will come from tangible policies and systematic reforms. This could come from addressing more wonky policy issues, such as civil asset forfeiture and qualified immunity.

When Mellina White moved to Seattle from Florida and started up a blog, she had a pretty good idea what to call it -- something that would turn heads and earn curious clicks. She called it "The Seattle Conservative."

“I started this website in 2016, and in a way I chose that title just to be a little bit provocative," White said. "Because it is Seattle and Seattle is very progressive, very liberal. So I thought, ‘What’s going to get attention, and also what will give me the best search ranking in Google?’ Because you don’t see the words ‘Seattle’ and ‘conservative’ very often. I am certainly right-of-center, but I identify as Libertarian ... certainly fiscally, I am Conservative."

Over the years, she has written about her unique blend of right-of-center views. These days, White says the Republican Party under President Trump seems out of touch with its core principles.

More from Mellina White: Your #BLM memes aren't enough

"We have a war on free trade, which is one of the most Conservative principles," White said. "Just watching how everything has unraveling under President Trump’s coronavirus actions; he’s constantly threatening governors in other jurisdictions to do this or that and bring in the National Guard and attack them.

"Again – what happened to Conservative values of state’s rights and jurisdiction’s rights? This is an about-face to everything we are supposed to stand for. To me, everything the Republican Party looks like right now, at least the leaders in Washington -- I’m certainly not going to speak for card-carrying Republicans throughout the country – is just not what the party stands for anymore."

It's probably not a stretch to assume that White will not be giving her vote to President Trump in November. She didn't vote for him in 2016 either (she supported Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson).

Looking ahead to November 2020, she feels that Trump doesn't have as strong a standing as he did in 2016 (though a few months ago, she may have said otherwise). White says that a lot of voters were simply voting against Hilary Clinton in 2016. This year -- with a pandemic and protests for racial justice -- there is momentum building against Trump. And she says this while also feeling that Democrat Joe Biden is not such a strong candidate either.

Black Lives Matter and Joe Biden

While White is careful to note that she is not a Trump supporter, she still won't be voting for Biden. That has to do with an issue she is passionate about -- that Black lives matter.

"Unlike Trump, Joe Biden has been very careful with his words around the Black Lives Matter movement – very supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement," White said.

"But guess what? Most of the reasons I have protested in the streets (recently) … against things like qualified immunity, against things like civil asset forfeiture, and mass incarceration – that was all created by Joe Biden."

The argument is not uncommon among voters -- including Progressives -- who question Biden's record on crime and law enforcement after decades in office.

"He might get on television and say that Black lives matter, and he’s gonna have a Black woman as his VP, but I couldn't care less because unlike Trump who just talks, Biden actually took lots of action for decades to create the unequal system we have in our country today,” White said.

White has participated in Seattle-area Black Lives Matter protests in recent months. Though the topics she brings up aren't the issues that commonly make headlines, and are more wonky. Such as civil asset forfeiture or qualified immunity. These are policies she would like to take down.

“For my fellow Seattleites, when it comes to the election and when it comes to making change – let’s focus on things that can actually make differences in our lives,” White said.

“For a very short period of time, I saw some action in my Instagram feed and my Twitter feed around police reform and the Black Lives Matter movement and it quickly changed to ‘We’re getting rid of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup.’ Which, I’ll admit, I was happy about that.

"Or ‘We’re changing the name of the Washington Redskins’ and things like that. It’s nice, but not going to help a kid in the inner city. So stop focusing on these surface things and call your senators, call your congressmen. Get rid of qualified immunity. Get rid of civil asset forfeiture. Let’s reform bail. Let’s focus on things that will actually make changes in people’s lives. And in November, elect people who have the gall to do it. The people in office right now don’t.”

The good, the bad, and the Trump

Whereas the 2016 election had people voting against Hilary Clinton, White says, 2020 will have people voting against Trump. That could be because, for people like White, President Trump has a mixed record.

She is happy about the federal judges appointed under Trump, and is particularly fond of Neil Gorsuch. She argues that he, so far, has a great record on civil rights issue, particularly on decisions upholding Native American treaties.

“And one of them was for the Yakima Nation, which is pretty cool and affects us here in Washington state,” White said. “He was also the person who wrote the opinion for this latest LGBT rights legislation; for us having the right to work without being fired for being gay or transgender.

"Very meaningful for me because I am from Florida, and that was the law there. There was even companies when I was a young adult working in Florida; it was in their policy handbook that you could not be gay and work for them. Living in Seattle, I don’t think some people realize how real some of this discrimination is. And Neil Gorsuch, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote the decision on that.”

She notes that President Trump might not always be happy with the judges’ decisions, as conveyed via Twitter. And it’s most likely that the Federalist Society picks the judges for him. But she also says that if Hillary Clinton was president, they would not be on the Supreme Court at all.

“The tax breaks that we had at the beginning of Trump’s term, the tax breaks were great," she adds. "It is true that there were a lot of tax breaks for the wealthy, but there were also a lot of tax breaks for the middle class. I personally am middle class and I saw thousands of dollars go back into my pocket after that bill passed. And any time we can reform and reduce taxes, I am for that.”

White says that most objections about Trump have more to do with what he says than what he does.

"I’ll give you an example of that. He certainly escalated it, but when we are talking about detention centers for undocumented immigrants, and putting children in detention centers – horrible, horrible thing -- but it was happening under Obama ... Obama just didn’t go on Twitter and defend himself. He was very careful to keep that quiet. But he was doing the same thing. So Trump’s words are very horrible, but his actions are not as different from our other presidents.”

"Often he will tweet ‘I’m going to do this horrible thing,’ and he doesn’t do it," White said. "You hate hearing it, and that certainly isn’t a vehicle to unite a nation. But at the end of the day – what impacts me as a citizen? Let’s say I wasn’t on social media, I didn’t watch the news – how much does President Trump being in office negatively effect my daily life? .... if all that is turned off, and you’re just thinking about your day-to-day life, how much does he negatively impact you? So much of what he does is words, and not actions.”

Still, she says that the president's performance has been "abysmal" recently, especially considering the pandemic and the early response to the virus. White argues that the pandemic will last much longer than it could have because of a lack of critical leadership.

"I think a lot of what President Trump was trying to do is pander to his base, make himself look good, to undermine medical experts appointed to these public roles for these few lifetime moments to provide science so we can make decisions …. And it’s really little things, for instance with masks. There are different ways we can approach encouraging people to wear masks in public. And I am not a fan of whoever the president is saying that ‘I want a federal mandate that everyone must wear masks.’ I am not a fan of that because I believe in state’s rights. However, as the president, you should set an example and wear a mask … say ‘I’m the leader here, I’m going to listen to the science and I’m going to encourage my constituents to do the same.’ It’s as simple as that. And that level of arrogance and lack of leadership is really frustrating right now.”