The wonder isn’t that so few people bother to vote, it’s that so many bother to run.

When Washington’s jobless rate rose to 7.2 percent in August, we slipped past Oregon (7 percent) to take the title of the state with the highest unemployment rate in the country.

The latest revenue projections have dropped $300 million to bring the anticipated state deficit for the next couple of years to over $2 billion. People, said chief economist Chang Mook Sohn, just aren’t spending.

There is a likelihood that Referendum 51, funding a $7.7 billion transportation budget with a 9 cents a gallon gasoline tax increase, will not pass in November, but that Initiative 267, requiring all state sales taxes on new and used vehicles go to roads, will, taking $750 million a year out of the general fund.

Boeing appears to be gasping for breath. The landscape is littered with ex- computer-related jobholders. Our economy, folks, is in the toilet, and likely to stay there awhile, Dr.Sohn says.

So why would anyone want to run for office, facing such almost insurmountable problems? Well, I know why, of course. Power. Yet when they get elected and have the power, they too often lack the guts to use it. Both political parties are to blame.

About four years ago, the Legislature had the votes in both houses and both parties for a gas tax increase and a governor willing to sign it. Then-Republican state chair Dale Foreman, in a scathing public speech, pulled his House votes off for fear it would cost them the majority, so they never even took a vote

After Initiative 695 scared lawmakers into eliminating the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax and instituting a $30 vehicle tab, they were short even more money for transportation needs. Even the no longer veiled warnings from Boeing to do something about the crowded highways or it would go where the business climate was friendlier, couldn’t prod them into doing their duty.

Terrified that a vote for a gas tax increase might find them cleaning out their Olympia offices on Nov. 6, legislators passed the buck to their constituents via referendum.

If the 2002 Legislature had passed that $7.7 billion transportation budget last spring, probably none of the three problems I listed above would exist today. Enactment of the budget would have generated thousands of construction jobs all over the state, which would have put money in people’s pockets and made them more inclined to buy instead of save, so there probably would not have been that $300 million shortfall in projected revenues. The $1. 8 billion deficit would still be there but not as seemingly insurmountable as it is now, because the job climate would have been better.

Faced with proof of the Legislature’s intention to deal with traffic congestion, Boeing might not have laid off all those employees. But that’s Monday morning quarter backing although I told you that back then.

We are faced now with deciding whether Democrats or Republicans will step up to the task of putting the state back into the black. Awhile back, I would have said that the choice was between a gas tax increase a la the Democrats or no tax increase as per the Republicans. But I have heard Republicans on the campaign trail call for one, usually smaller than the 9 cents in R-51, and I have heard Democrats against it, responding to the wishes of their constituents.

Transportation is the biggest problem we have now, affecting everything else we do. I suggest that all of us, in the political forums between now and Nov. 5, pin candidates down on what they will do or support if R-51 fails, and if I-267 passes. How much of a gas tax increase or what other kind of tax increase will they vote for, and if they peel off and talk cutting waste in government, make them say exactly where and how much. We’ve been hornswoggled long enough.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.).