Kincaid for Congress – Washington’s 1st District

The Problem Every few weeks another story breaks. A teacher or coach with a documented history of inappropriate conduct toward a student. Hired by a new school or college that never knew. Sometimes the warning signs were in a personnel file the new employer never asked for. Sometimes an investigation was underway and the employee simply resigned before it finished. Leaving no formal finding for anyone to disclose. Sometimes the law on the books simply did not require anyone to check. This is not a hypothetical. It happened in our own district. Shoreline Community College hired a former Henry M. Jackson High School physics teacher. Who had resigned from Everett Public Schools. While under investigation for a years long inappropriate relationship with a student. Shoreline never called the high school. State law did not require it to. Washington's 2020 disclosure law. The first of its kind in the nation. Required colleges to check with other colleges. Not with K-12 districts.  ...

Statement - Kincaid for Congress - Washington's 1st District - 2026 Background Checks for All Taxpayer Funded Housing Facilities The Housing First model has no system to detect residents with active warrants. That is not a policy gap. It is a public safety failure. And a 15 year old girl paid the price. A 15 year old girl was waiting for the bus at the Northgate transit bus stop . Joshua V. Kowalczewski, 36, rode up on a bicycle, asked her age, told her she was attractive and then threatened her and forced her into the nearby woods where he sexually assaulted this innocent child. Kowalczewski had 28 arrests and 13 convictions spanning 19 years. He had 9 active warrants across 5 jurisdictions at the time of the attack. He has had 46 warrants issued against him since 2008. Not one of his prior arrests resulted in significant jail time. A recent drug possession case had been diverted into a treatment program. He was free. His last known address was the Chief Seattle Club...

There is public outrage that Cordell Goosby will be sent to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison. Before addressing that, two things need to be said. Some of that outrage is racially motivated. The instinct to send a Black man to prison rather than seek treatment. Had the perpetrator been white, many of those same voices would not react so strongly. That applies to some people, not all. Now let's turn to those whose outrage is genuine and not rooted in racial bias. To those people, I say your outrage is misplaced. It should not be focused on where Cordell Goosby is sent. It should be focused on the fact that the deaths of Eina Kwon and her unborn baby could have been prevented. I believe those deaths could have been prevented and that is where our energy must go. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." We cannot change what happened after th...

Apps like Citizen and others are revealing something that too many families in this district do not realize. A significant number of registered sex offenders live throughout our communities many of them in close proximity to schools, parks, and places where children gather every day. Parents deserve straightforward access to accurate information. They deserve public safety policies that genuinely reduce risk not policies designed around the comfort of offenders or the avoidance of difficult conversations. This page is about both. What the data shows, what Washington's law currently allows, how we compare to other states, and what needs to change. The Problem: Washington Has No Statewide Residency Restrictions Many states restrict high risk sex offenders from residing within a defined distance of schools, parks, daycare centers, playgrounds, bus stops, and other child-focused facilities. These buffer zones typically range from 500 to 2,500 feet depending on the state and t...

The System Failed And an Innocent Woman Paid the Price The Tragic Case of Bethany McGee, Lawrence Reed, and Why We Must Reform Civil Commitment Laws When violent repeat offenders are allowed to roam freely despite decades of documented warning signs, innocent people are left playing Russian roulette simply by going about their daily lives. We must bring back long term psychiatric care. We must reform civil commitment laws. And we must stop pretending that what we are doing is working. Just months after Iryna Zarutska was randomly stabbed in the neck and killed on a train in North Carolina, another senseless attack occurred  this time on a train in Chicago. On November 17, 2025, Bethany McGee, a 26-year-old woman, was riding the CTA Blue Line when a man named Lawrence Reed poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. She was left fighting for her life. As horrifying as this attack was, it should not have come as a surprise. It was the predictable result of a system that had i...

The historic neighborhoods of Chinatown, Japantown, and Little Saigon in Seattle's International District are not part of Washington's 1st Congressional District. They belong to District 7. But the Asian American communities in Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Bothell, and across WA-01 are very much part of this campaign  and what happens in Seattle's Asian neighborhoods matters deeply to them, and to all of us. The families and business owners of Chinatown, Japantown, and Little Saigon are largely immigrants or the children of immigrants people who followed the legal immigration process, built businesses from nothing, and created some of the most culturally vibrant and economically productive communities in the Pacific Northwest. They did everything right. And for years, they have been failed by the very officials elected to protect them. To the people of these communities.  Kincaid sees you. I hear you. And I will stand with you  not just in words, but in policy and...