By The Chronicle Editorial Board

Washington state has had one-party control of the governor’s mansion for 40 years.

Gov. Bob Ferguson will add at least four more years for Democrats to control the executive branch of state government.

We have become accustomed to partisan left-leaning policies and rhetoric from 12 years of Gov. Jay Inslee.

This editorial board feared Ferguson would bring more of the same.

There are three basic camps in American and Washington state politics: left, middle and right, with gradations on both the left and right extending out to far left and far right.

Gov. Inslee and a majority of the current legislators, from our viewpoint, come from a pretty far-left position with little interest in listening to other points of view or ideas that don’t already fit their ideology.

Gov. Ferguson is communicating clearly in his first days in office, indicating that he intends to govern more from the middle. If that is so, we welcome that development as a refreshing return to what Washington state had seen from our governors, from both parties, for decades.

The longest-serving Republican governor, Dan Evans, served from 1964-76, and the most recent Republican governor, John Spellman, served from 1980-84. They were moderate Republicans. 

Democratic governors Gardner, Locke and Gregoire were more liberal than Evans and Spellman but still governed from positions closer to the middle than the far left.

The state government’s spending has increased so dramatically under Inslee that now, to keep all of the current programs going and add in costs of state salary increases and other inflation, it would require $13 billion in new taxes.

That’s what many in the majority in Olympia today call “a budget deficit,” and their answer, led by Inslee, is “tax the rich more” to pay for “the deficit.”

We all know that somehow “taxes on the rich” always end up being paid by all of us, either because the Legislature decides we’re all rich, or because the cost of the new taxes gets passed along through higher prices, or because the higher taxes cause businesses to shut down or leave the state, raising unemployment and decreasing other state revenue.

When combined with wasteful spending and inefficiencies that plague some state programs, it’s no surprise that many Washingtonians feel frustration and distrust toward Olympia.

Ferguson’s proposal to look for savings in the budget instead of defaulting to new taxes is refreshing and, frankly, overdue. This is exactly the type of leadership that could help avoid hitting families and businesses with additional financial burdens they can’t afford.

We encourage Republicans and moderate Democrats to engage with the effort to find ways to reduce the growth rate in state spending in a way that avoids new taxes that will hit Washington families, jobs and businesses.

Gov. Ferguson has a real opportunity to address a core problem in Washington state. A commitment to fiscal restraint and smarter spending would be a welcome change for the state and a good first step in restoring balance to our government.

Areas like public safety, education and job creation offer real opportunities for compromise, and a governor willing to engage across party lines could create lasting solutions to some of the state’s biggest problems.

To sustain his proposed course, Ferguson will need to lead efforts to fix these problems, focus on efficiency and bring transparency to state finances. That would signal a real departure from the practices of the last 12 years.