Yuri Marinchik
RepublicanQ1 America has a growing artificial intelligence (AI) industry, supporting cutting edge innovation and reshaping businesses, but raising concerns about education, ownership, and security. Application of AI technology has increased the demand placed on data centers, controversial for their resource use (such as water and land) and raising utility costs. What are your policy positions in regards to data centers and AI? What sources of evidence informed these policies?
AI should be built and used in America, with clear rules on privacy, child safety, and critical infrastructure — not a new bureaucracy that pushes the industry overseas. Data centers are welcome if they pay their own costs. Permits should measure water, land, grid capacity, and ratepayer impact before approval. Households must not subsidize private power and water loads. New large loads need real generation, including hydro and natural gas, not only intermittent sources that raise bills. Evidence: utility load data, water limits, and what happens to rates when big loads hit a tight grid. Cost is part of the evidence.
KEYWORDS: ratepayer protection, reliable power, practical rules
Q2 What are your top funding priorities for environmental projects and research in our state? If you do not have specific priorities, how would you approach setting those priorities to ensure effective environmental stewardship?
Nature is not a museum. People live in it, work in it, and are responsible for it. Stewardship means use, care, and improvement — not locking land up and calling neglect “conservation.”
A forest left to choke on fuel is not preserved. It is degraded, then it burns. Healthy woods are thinned, harvested, and renewed. Rivers should produce fish and support working communities, not only reports. Clean water, salmon habitat that actually yields fish, stormwater, culverts, and cutting wildfire and flood risk near people come first.
I fund projects with a result and a maintenance plan. Score spending by risk reduced per dollar, local benefit, and whether the work lasts after the ribbon-cutting. Use universities, tribes, ports, utilities, and the people who already manage land. Stop programs that cannot show results.
KEYWORDS: working landscapes, forest health, measurable results
Q3 What are your opinions on the current state of science literacy, and how could K-12 education standards be adapted to improve the public understanding of and relationship building in science?
Science literacy is uneven. Too many students can repeat slogans and cannot measure, calculate, or tell a strong study from a weak one. Standards should teach method: hypothesis, data, error, and trade-offs. More labs, shop and STEM pathways, basic statistics, and local problems — water, energy, buildings, engines. Teachers need materials and time, not another political curriculum. Kids should see science as a way to work with the world, not as a sermon.
KEYWORDS: hands-on STEM, data literacy, trade-offs
Q4 The Bear Gulch Fire, one of 2000 recorded fires in 2025, was the biggest on the Olympic Peninsula in 70 years, burning over 20,000 hectares and causing $42 million in damages. What are your policies around fire risk management for the state?
Prevention first. A forest packed with fuel is not “protected.” It is waiting to burn. Thin, harvest, maintain roads and access, harden homes, clear defensible space, and fund year-round local capacity — not only after the fire starts. Prescribed and cultural burning where it is controlled and appropriate.
Treat fire as land management, not a speech. Track acres treated near towns, response times, and whether money actually cut risk. Smoke and evacuation plans matter for working families. Healthy woods are used and renewed. Neglect is not conservation.
KEYWORDS: forest thinning, prevention, working forests
Q5 Puget Sound and the Washington coast are experiencing rapid changes, such as warming waters, ocean acidification, and ecosystem shifts, that have major impacts on Washington’s wildlife and fisheries. What policies and funding, if any, would you prioritize for fisheries management, scientific monitoring, and to help communities adapt to these shifts?
I care about fish that come back, not plans that pile up. Spend first on what changes the water: open blocked streams, fix the runoff that hits the Sound, and keep counts that captains and managers can actually use. If a program does not put more salmon in the river or cleaner water in the bay, it should not keep the money.
The Sound is for living and working, not for a handful of locked gates. The water itself is public. People should be able to reach it — street ends, public beaches, ramps — without a membership. I will not support selling off more shoreline or letting new development wall the public off the water. A house on the bluff can stay a house. The tide line should not become a private club.
Protect the resource and the people on it. That is recovery. Paperwork is not.
KEYWORDS: salmon returns, public access, working coast