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On Tuesday, Washington voters will decide on a series of primaries, including major races to oversee state elections and potentially redo the partisan composition of the state legislature and the US House.
Political reporters Austin Jenkins and Troy Brynelson recently sat down with Crystal Ligori to talk about the campaigns they are most interested in in a special OPB Politics Now election preview episode. Here are the highlights:
Crystal Ligori: Let’s start with the big races. US Senator Patty Murray is looking for a sixth term and appears to have a fairly smooth path to re-election. Republicans have a better chance with another position that normally wouldn’t even be in the ballot. The GOP held the post of secretary of state for nearly six decades, until last fall. It was then that Kim Wyman resigned to go to work for the Biden administration and Governor Jay Inslee appointed a Democratic senator, Steve Hobbs, to replace her.
Now Hobbs has to run to serve the remaining two years. So how is its competition?
Austin Jenkins: It’s a crowded field with eight candidates running, but I think this is really a three-way race between Hobbs, Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson, who runs as a non-party candidate and one of the Republican candidates. There are two I’m looking at: state senator Keith Wagoner and former state senator Mark Miloscia. Miloscia has raised more money, but Wagoner has the backing of former Secretaries of State Ralph Munro and Sam Reed.
Of course, only two candidates will emerge from these primaries. The question that comes to mind is whether in a race like this, for the state’s top electoral official, voters will stick with candidates declaring a party or maybe they’ll be intrigued by the idea of a candidate who doesn’t run with a label party. .
Ligori: Washington Secretary of State, it is worth reminding people, he oversees elections and electoral security and this is a particularly tough topic right now, given former President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and ongoing investigations. on the attack of January 6 on the Capitol. What impact does this have on the primary?
Jenkins: This is certainly informing or influencing some of the applications. But we may have to wait until after the primary to find out if it’s animating the voters. One of the candidates for the post of Secretary of State, Tamborine Borrelli, leads a group that is suing county auditors for the 2020 election. So her candidacy represents where we are now, in terms of broad swathes. of the American public who doubt the election results. On the other hand, Julie Anderson, the Pierce County Auditor, says Washington has a standard electoral system, but says there is always room for improvement and Steve Hobbs is very focused on fighting electoral misinformation and disinformation. . So these topics are definitely part of this primary campaign.
Ligori: Washington, like Oregon, votes by mail. Are any of these candidates talking about big changes in the process?
Jenkins: Republican Mark Miloscia, the former state senator, wants to redesign the election observer system. He wants to create fraud and audit divisions in every county and do more “clean up” of the electoral roll. It also calls for more mandatory and random audits. It would also eliminate same-day voter registration and require voter IDs. Other candidates for the office of secretary of state have asked for an end to the vote by post and a return to voting in person. It would be a dramatic change, but not likely. But we are witnessing a series of cross-cutting proposals. In Washington, the top two finish in the top two in the primaries advancing to the November general election.
Ligori: We talked about Trump’s impact on the Secretary of State’s race. But Troy, you covered another great primary where the former president looms. Can you give us an overview of the camp in Washington’s Third Congressional District?
Troy Brynelson: Trump is definitely casting a shadow on this race. This dates back to when incumbent US Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler voted to impeach Trump after January 6. This caused a conservative backlash and several Republicans rushed to try to eliminate it. And it really is the Republicans right now who have dominated this race. They’ve raised most of the funds, they’re scrambling for one of the top two places.
You have Joe Kent, who is a Trump-backed career soldier. It raised about $ 2 million.
Then there is the Christian podcaster Heidi St. John. He raised about $ 1 million dollars and also benefited greatly from outside spending, then there’s incumbent Herrera Buetler, he raised about $ 3.5 million. Meanwhile, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is basically the only Democrat in the race; raised about $ 240,000. But your campaign wants you to win the market with the Democrats.
Ligori: What are the major issues that are being talked about in that race?
Brynelson: I would say this was a nationalized contest – if you go to a city hall or a rally, they mostly talk about issues that aren’t unique to southwestern Washington. There is a lot of talk among Republicans about inflation, gas prices, energy independence. There are also many conversations about police support.
On the Democratic side, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign believes that with the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, this has probably awakened many Democratic voters who otherwise would not have been able to vote in the primary.
Ligori: And in this election, something unusual is happening, at least unusual during the COVID-19 pandemic: candidates are actively campaigning – or most of them are.
Brynelson: A lot of campaigns are happening in person, especially when compared to 2020, when the most we saw was like city halls where everyone is in their car. Right now, Kent basically holds town halls every day, sometimes several times a day in the towns and cities of the district. It’s not just him. Herrera Beutler, on the other hand, did not spend much time campaigning in the district. I met her on Monday on a tour of a waste treatment plant in Washougal and she said that at this point, going to the primary, her strategy for the campaign is to trust the voters who are following her votes in Washington.
Ligori: There is also a lot of external money being spent on this race. Who are the major financial players and what do they want?
Brynelson: External spending has really increased in the past few weeks. The biggest development here is that there has been a significant expense on Heidi St. John’s behalf; as I said before, more than $ 700,000 benefited from his campaign alone. This is interesting because polls and funding for her election campaign put her in roughly third place among the three Republicans. The super PAC that gave her that money is called Conservatives for a Strong America, and they haven’t actually revealed much about themselves or who their donors are. All we know is that they are based on the east coast. Among other campaigns, the conclusion they are drawing is that those funds are likely designed for the benefit of Herrera Beutler, to amplify St. John’s message among the Conservatives and likely to alienate people who would otherwise have voted for Kent.
Ligori: Austin, all members of the Washington State House and half of the state senators are running for election this year. For much of the past 20 years or so, the Democrats have controlled both chambers. But Republicans think they have a chance of winning at least one, if not both, this year. Can you talk about why?
Jenkins: In the House, Republicans are expected to collect nine seats; in the Senate, they would have to earn four to get a majority. The Senate is actually probably a more difficult bone to crack. Republicans should really run the tables there. Republicans could win the House if there was a so-called “red wave”. But at this point, my feeling is that Democrats are more likely to lose a few seats, but not the majority. And I say that partly because of some of the recent polls, especially in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it seems to favor the Democrats, but it is still early and there are several months between here and November.
I wasn’t here for that, but 1994 is a year that many people at Olympia remember; that was the year of the Gingrich Revolution, when the Republicans took control of Congress. Here in Washington, in the House, the Democrats had a supermajority until November and lost that majority to the Republicans. So it can happen.
Ligori: The current term of Governor Jay Inslee will expire in 2024. How much does the scrutiny of the legislature affect your agenda for the next two years?
Jenkins: It’s pretty critical. He is a governor for three terms. It is unusual. It is obviously prioritizing climate change measures as its distinctive problem; when Republicans held the state senate, it was really hampered, especially on climate issues. So I say there is some real bad blood between Inslee and the legislative Republicans, mostly because of his emergency powers during COVID and how he handled the pandemic. If they were in control of one or both chambers, I don’t think they would feel compelled to help him get his program to the finish line, and indeed they might delight in countering it.
It was interesting how many fundraising missives the governor has sent in the past few weeks for someone who is presumably no longer running. It communicates regularly with its donor base.
