Part 2: Will Semi Bird Transcend the Political Divide?

Move Over Red and Blue, the Path to Peace Might Be Purple

On the brink of tears. 

That’s where I sit right now, fingertips poised over the laptop, waiting for the first line of this article to spill forth like it usually does.

But all that spills today is tears. I feel a seachange coming.

Misipati “Semi” Bird—jolly and wise and the salt of the Earth—gave me my marching orders last Friday when he announced his candidacy for Governor of Washington. He stood in the rotunda of the capitol building in Olympia, surrounded by a multi-colored crowd, and said with singular clarity “We will unify this state”.

He didn’t say he’d start a red wave. He didn’t say he’d destroy the blue.

He didn’t even mention which political party he affiliates with in his first campaign ad.

In Olympia Semi addressed the crowd for at least 20 minutes without any notes. The audience listened intently—not because he had well-placed theatrics but because his words were effortless.

From what I know of him it won’t matter what sort of labels will be thrown his way along the campaign trail.  What matters is the end result in November 2024—will Washingtonians still be at each other’s throats, waging a war of shortsightedness and short tempers?  Or will we wise up to the Agenda that was purposely playing us against each other? 

This means as I writer I need to stop taking the easy way out and preaching to the choir. No more assumptions that my audience are all on the same “side”.  No more name calling, even if it makes for fun wordsmithing and gets a laugh.  No more succumbing to the tribalism of the “right,” no matter how righteous it might make me feel.

And for goodness sake, I must stop calling this dramatic time in our history a “fight”.  Predictive text is not just a tool on our phones. What we’re going through is an awakening, a cleansing, the growing pains of a new era of truth.  It won’t stop feeling like a war until we stop using terms from the battlefield.

The outcome of the recent election was predictable, in my estimation.  To steal a little Mick Jagger wisdom--we may not get what we want, but we’ll always get what we need. November 8th (and the 9th, 10th, and 11th ad nauseam) didn’t fan the flames of either party. It exposed the areas that need more work and paved the way for a third option to emerge which could supersede the old guard Republicans and the Communist-light Democrats. 

This is where I believe Semi Bird comes into the picture.

Washington doesn’t need a Republican or a Democrat.  It simply needs someone who is incorruptible.

Am I naively suggesting Semi is our next saint or superhero? To put him up on a pedestal, like many did with Trump, is a folly I hope we’ve learned not to repeat with any man or woman. Not to mention that sort of pressure can break a man. But I do believe he’s got what it takes to stay on the straight and narrow path all the way to Olympia. 

What makes me so confident? 

It’s easy to spot a man who’s already been through hell and come through it not only stronger, but ready to go back into the fire if asked to.

I’ve had three chats with Semi over the last month, and he’s never hesitated to spend a couple hours on the phone with me if we needed it. We’ve covered every topic from lack of affordable housing to the role China has played on the international stage.  This PhD student is no slouch in the brains department. Although he’ll proudly tell you he was a high school drop-out.

Semi could have been the poster child for Critical Race Theory if he had chosen to be.  He grew up in the inner-city ghetto of East Oakland, California. The real saint in the family may have been his mother, Rosa, who raised seven children on her own. Semi says he was a stubborn, strong-willed kid and gives his mother and the Marine Corps all the credit for where he’s at today—a PhD student of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and a very successful business consultant with a long resume in various leadership roles.  I met his wife and youngest daughter on Friday, and they were both as down-to-earth as he is.

Friday, he told the audience, “I was born into privilege. Anyone who is born in the United States of America is born into privilege, and never forget it.”

It wasn’t a cliché. As a former Army Special Forces Green Beret, and Senior Advisor to the US Ambassador to Bangladesh, he’s been all over the world. To be fair, he’s probably seen more about priviledge and suffering than most Americans have, so he knows firsthand what we’re taking for granted.

“The Marine Corps knocked some sense into me. My country has given me more than I can explain.”  

After the Marine Corps he later enlisted in the US Army at the age of 40. Despite his lack of formal education, he rose through the ranks to serve as a leader in Special Forces in Intelligence and Operations, and as a Special Forces Engineer.  His list of medals and commendations is impressive. Check it out at www.birdforgovernor.com. 

I told you in the previous article that my favorite part of Semi’s background is that he’s NOT a career politician.  But that doesn’t mean he’s a novice to the machine of government. He’s served in three roles with the US Department of Energy, namely the Federal Director of Training & Leadership Development.

Semi’s also making waves in the Richland School District. On his first day in office as a school board director he led an initiative to create the first-ever parent advisory board.  Then he stood up against Inslee’s mask mandate and rallied Richland and adjacent districts to offer mask choice to their students.  Despite being sued, and an attempt to recall him from his position, Semi is still unwavering in his stand for medical freedom.

“I did what I promised during my campaign for school board. I honored my word to the parents of our district.”

So we know he can hold his own in Western Washington. But how will he handle a hornet’s nest like Pierce and King County?

I asked him to offer a solution for the rise in crime across Washington.

He explained a multi-tiered approach to get more trained police officers into the field. It involved building partnerships with community leaders and schools that would funnel a larger pipeline of candidates into training programs for the police force.

This seemed right on the money, especially after a recent conversation I had with a friend who just had his catalytic converter stolen off his truck sitting in his own driveway.  Before the pandemic my friend had bought a cute little house in a nice neighborhood of Tacoma, which transformed into a campground for the homeless and drug addicted in less than two years. Now theft in his neighborhood is a regular occurrence. He said Pierce County started off with 620 police officers when he moved to his home, and now employs only 340.

Besides a police shortage, Semi knows that the system itself has our officers operating with one hand tied behind their backs.

“We need to unwind bad policies, like non-pursuit.  We need to hold county prosecutors and district attorneys accountable to operating under the rule of law.”

“Justice is supposed to be blind. The court is supposed to be free, objective, fair and balanced. If we are doing that effectively, there is no need for wokeism in the justice system. We won’t discriminate or give preferential treatment to anyone based on their color.”

When we discussed the economy, Semi spoke directly to my own concerns as a single mother trying to weather another rent increase.

“The welfare system is broken. It should not be subjugating generations to a lifetime of poverty, unable to ever buy a house or a car. The progressive plantation was created to control certain groups of people, we know that.” 

He outlined a plan to use tax dollars to stipend a single parent’s living expenses (including childcare) while the parent is training for a trade and getting job placement support. It wouldn’t be free money to stay home. It would be an incentive to get educated to be a contributing member of the economy.  He also described a plan to create a pipeline from these training programs to potential employers.  

Semi likes pipelines.  I could hear his background as a business consultant underpinning most of our conversation.

“What a single parent will pay in future taxes will off-set the cost of the childcare stipend”.

I liked his idea as long as the childcare options provided for are not limited to crappy, state-run daycare centers with a 25:1 child to caregiver ratio, complete with transgender training for our kindergarteners and SISCO hot lunch programs not fit to be prison food.  We already have a fight on our hands with state-run schools. The last thing we need to do is give state-run daycare centers easier access to our precious littles.   But I digress…   

“As governor, I’d make educated decisions based on good intelligence. No more band-aid solutions pushed from special interest groups.”

“I would also call for a third-party audit of the entire state government. We’d look for redundancies and apply Lean methodology to remove waste.  That includes WSSDA (Washington State School Directors Association) and OSPI (Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction). We’ll find out if these organizations are necessary to run public education, with measures of accountability implemented in every program.”

Like President Trump, Semi is a big proponent of School Choice. This gives me hope that he’d also be a proponent of “Daycare Choice” for single parents.

The other topic close to my heart is the lack of affordable housing not only in our state, but across the whole country.  A couple of months ago I attended an affordable housing summit organized by the Chamber of Commerce in our little valley.  We listened to panels of experts from a cross section of the problem including developers, lenders, and non-profits.  Elected officials had specifically NOT been allowed to take the microphone. They’d been invited to listen in the audience, but nothing else.   We were there to find real solutions and offer them some help.  After an entire day of discussion, I can honestly say that there were no clear or readily obvious solutions.   Inflation, property taxes and zoning ordinances are intertwined in a hot mess. 

So I put the question to Semi, “What would you do about the lack of affordable housing?”

And that’s when I got the best answer of all.

“Eryn, I don’t know.  I am a real estate investor, so I know the challenges we have with zoning and property taxes, but affordable housing is a problem I still need to learn more about. I’d partner with stakeholders to find solutions.”

Yes, dear readers, hell hath frozen over.  A politician chose to tell the truth instead of spinning a yarn and handing me a shallow pile of a bull dung.  He didn’t mansplain or repeat the question back to me with notes of equity and inclusion, while suggesting we “circle back” later.  He just admitted he had more to learn.

That, my friends, is why Semi Bird has got a shot at making it all the way to Olympia. Good leaders don’t need to have all the answers. They just need to be willing to ask the right questions of the right people.

We wrapped up our conversation by talking about how his campaign would unfold over the next two years. To me it looked more like an “independent study” crash course for his PhD on Washington governance.  He’s going to travel the state and meet with everyone he can, in a roundtable format, who is committed to proposing well thought-out solutions for every challenge we’re facing.  No belly achin’.  He’s interested in fixing problems, not just complaining about them.

He asked for my help.

He’s asking for your help. 

That means this campaign is not just about Semi on a journey to Olympia.

This time we’re ALL going to Olympia.

If you have a vital roundtable discussion for Semi to attend, email me at eryn@eryndefoort.com. His ground team is organizing right now.  For contact with his team and a chance to volunteer, go to www.birdforgovernor.com