Jay Inslee Running For President, Will Focus On Climate Change

SEATTLE, WA - For the first time since the 1970s, a Washington politician will run for president. Gov. Jay Inslee officially announced his intention to run on Friday, and is the first Democratic governor to enter the race.

"I’m running for President because I am the only candidate who will make defeating climate change our nation’s number one priority," Inslee said of his run.

He made the announcement official on Friday with a short video:

Inslee, 68, is the fifteenth Democrat to enter the 2020 primary race. Recent polling indicates he has a long way to go to build name recognition. A Feb. 26 Morning Consult poll ranked Inslee dead last out of 21 Democratic candidates. He scored zero percent, just behind former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe.

Inslee has been involved in Washington politics for more than 30 years. In his first run in a special election for the state House in 1988, he was polling behind former Yakima mayor Lynn Carmichael, but went on to beat her in the general election. He went on to win a seat in Congress in 1992, only to be unseated in the 1994 Republic sweep.

Inslee represented Washington's 1st Congressional District from 1999 to 2012, when he was elected governor. He was long an advocate for fighting climate change, co-authoring the book "Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy" in 2007.

In announcing his candidacy Friday, Inslee released four principles for fighting climate change - running the economy on clean energy, creating jobs in the green energy sector, fighting for environmental justice, and ending subsidies for fossil fuel companies. Inslee has also pledged not to accept donations from corporate political action committees (PACs), including, of course, fossil fuel companies.