State Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Bryant began his speech Wednesday morning at Oddfellas Pub and Eatery on West Main Street with this question:

“Who got Jay Inslee elected?”

Then answered his own query: “Republicans.”

That is, he said, by too many members of the GOP having not voted in 2012. That, he added, must not happen again this go-around.

Four Democrats, three Republicans, and three third-party and independent candidates are in the running. The Aug. 2 state primary will winnow the field down to the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation.

Bryant’s visit to Auburn came halfway through a two-week-long, 25-city whistle stop circuit of the state, a tour that began in Port Angeles, dropped into Snohomish County then pushed on to Central and Eastern Washington before hitting the cities of Puyallup, Shelton, Oak Harbor, Bellingham and Mount Vernon.

At every stop Bryant and volunteers worked phones to urge people who had not yet voted to turn in their ballots before Aug. 2.

“It’s going well, people all across the state are coming out to work because they want new leadership,” Bryant said.

What that means, he said, is electing a Republican to be Washington state’s governor for the first time in 31 years.

“I think people are ready to say we need to have someone in there provide a different perspective than we’ve had,” Bryant said. “And what we’re talking about doing is really not going in with a partisan approach but to start fixing some of the problems that have languished under Gov. Jay Inslee.”

That is, Bryant said, the state must address the issues highlighted by the McCleary decision, which declared it the paramount duty of the state to fund public K-12 education.

“We need to ensure every kid has an equal chance to get ahead, that we fund every kid’s education equally, and we’re not doing that right now. Kids in wealthy school districts have access to programs that kids in poorer, rural school districts don’t. That’s not only unconstitutional, it’s morally wrong,” Bryant said.

‘Door to college never closes’

Another education issue is collapsing graduation rates, with roughly a quarter of high school kids failing to graduate each year.

“Part of the problem is that kids who don’t want to go college are being told, ‘We’ve got to get you college ready.’ But unless they are interested in sports, they’re at risk of dropping about in their junior and senior years,” Bryant said. “I want to reinvent the last two years of high school so that it’s relevant to what kids want to do after they graduate. And if they don’t want to go to a university or community college, we should have pre-apprenticeship programs in their junior and senior years. And if they want to work in a trade for four years and then go to college, that’s great. The door to college never closes.”

Another top priority is figuring out how to reduce congestion and find a cost-effective traffic system to make it happen — one people will use.

Also, Bryant said, the state must address its high unemployment rate.

“Let’s figure out how we deal with the fact that Washington state has the ninth-highest unemployment rate in the country. People in Bellevue and Seattle don’t understand that, but we are equal with Mississippi in this regard,” Bryant said. “The farther you get away from King County, a lot of families are really struggling and need jobs. Let’s figure out how we can have the government focus on really helping the private sector generate family-wage jobs.”

A large part of creating those jobs, Bryant said, will be enacting meaningful regulatory reform.

“I’ve talked to small businesses all over the state who say they’re being crushed with new regulations all the time. So, as I’ve said, on day one of my administration, I’m going to announce a moratorium on new regulations until the departments can justify the ones we’ve already got,” Bryant said.

All across the state, he said, people recognize problems that have banked up under Inslee, which include, he noted, the early release of prisoners, a poorly functioning mental health system and collapsing salmon runs.

Bryant, 55, is chairman of BCI: a firm that helps farmers and agricultural companies export their crops.

Asked to explain how he differs from Inslee, Bryant laughed.

“Oh, in so many ways. My whole career has been rooted in the private sector, and most of that in agriculture and international trade. On the other hand, Jay Inslee’s entire career has been as an elected politician, and most of that in Congress and Washington, D.C. I think that shapes how we look at policy and how we govern. I’ve learned that in negotiating international trade agreements you lead by building coalitions and finding agreements that benefit everyone. He comes from Congress and has introduced a highly-divisive style, and it’s not getting it done,” Bryant said.