The Washington State Republican Party is once again staring at electoral catastrophe –

In the wake of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s poor per­for­mance in the 2022 midterms, in which it lost a net of one con­gres­sion­al seat, one state Sen­ate seat, and one state House seat, while fail­ing to even get a can­di­date through to the gen­er­al elec­tion against recent­ly appoint­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs, new chair Jim Walsh took over the par­ty office vow­ing that 2024 would be different. 

Walsh, an elect­ed offi­cial him­self, penned an August 2023 let­ter to Repub­li­can donors, activists, and precinct com­mit­tee offi­cers in which he declared: “There are enough votes in East­ern Wash­ing­ton to over­turn the whims of King Coun­ty. Com­mon-sense can­di­dates can offer con­ser­v­a­tive ideals and win over all vot­ers. I know. I’ve done it. The [mass] media may scoff about Repub­li­cans win­ning statewide. I am telling you that we can do it. We will accom­plish all of these things. And we will do them togeth­er. If I did not believe this, I would not have run for WSRP Chairman.”

A few days lat­er, Lake Research’s McCauley Pugh explained right here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate that Walsh was dead wrong — and prov­ably wrong — about there being “enough votes in East­ern Wash­ing­ton to over­turn the whims of King County.”

Now we’re see­ing that Walsh has also been wrong — at least so far this cycle — about can­di­dates who offer con­ser­v­a­tive ideals being able to “win over all voters.” 

Walsh asserts that Repub­li­cans can win statewide, but the per­for­mance of his par­ty’s can­di­dates in last mon­th’s Top Two elec­tion sug­gests that they won’t. 

In fact, it is prob­a­ble that not a sin­gle Repub­li­can can­di­date run­ning statewide will get elect­ed in Novem­ber. We don’t know the future and can’t know it, so we can only dis­cuss prob­a­bil­i­ties and pos­si­bil­i­ties, but the avail­able elec­toral his­to­ry, polling, and Top Two elec­tion returns paint a pret­ty grim pic­ture for Republicans. 

Let’s go through the bal­lot and exam­ine Repub­li­cans’ poor prospects in four areas: statewide races, con­gres­sion­al con­tests, the leg­isla­tive map, and the four destruc­tive ini­tia­tives they’ve forced pub­lic votes on. 

Statewide races

There was once a time when Wash­ing­ton alter­nat­ed between hav­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can gov­er­nors, but those days have long since dis­ap­peared into the rearview mir­ror. It took a few more decades for Repub­li­cans to get entire­ly shut out of the exec­u­tive depart­ment, but that even­tu­al­ly did hap­pen, and today, there are no Repub­li­cans hold­ing a statewide office at all. Walsh suc­ceed­ed in get­ting a Repub­li­can on the autumn bal­lot for every office, avert­ing the embar­rass­ment of a lock­out, but he and his fel­low Repub­li­cans now face the dif­fi­cult task of try­ing to get even one of them elected. 

Because Wash­ing­ton has become increas­ing­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic, there sim­ply aren’t enough inde­pen­dent and Repub­li­can vot­ers to elect a Repub­li­can to statewide office. Some Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing vot­ers would have to cross over — and so far there’s no evi­dence that they will in mean­ing­ful numbers. 

That leaves Repub­li­cans in an bind. 

In the August elec­tion there were two statewide races that appeared on bal­lots the same way they will in the fall: State Trea­sur­er and State Audi­tor. That made each of those races a test run or sim­u­la­tion of the gen­er­al elec­tion dynam­ics. In each race, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date net­ted over 58% of the vote against their lone Repub­li­can opponent.

Take a look:

State Trea­sur­er

State Audi­tor

In oth­er races, if we add up the com­bined Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote, we get a per­cent­age that’s not too far off. For exam­ple, all of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates for Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands col­lec­tive­ly got 57.05% of the vote. That’s a com­fort­able majority.

The Novem­ber elec­torate will be dif­fer­ent, of course, but his­tor­i­cal­ly, Novem­ber pres­i­den­tial gen­er­al elec­tions have larg­er and more diverse elec­torates that dri­ve Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ries. We’ve seen it before… in 2020, in 2016, in 2012, in 2008, and so on. 

King Coun­ty vot­ed for Mike Pel­lic­ciot­ti and Pat McCarthy over their Repub­li­can oppo­nents by more than a 3:1 mar­gin. (If a Repub­li­can from the 1960s or 1970s saw those coun­ty results, they might well be speech­less.) Pel­lic­ciot­ti and McCarthy also won every coun­ty in the pop­u­lous north­west­ern part of the state, from What­com and Skag­it on down to Thurston. The only coun­ties their Repub­li­can oppo­nents won west of the Cas­cades were small ones, like Lewis, Mason, or Grays Harbor. 

Since the vast major­i­ty of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans live in the I‑5 cor­ri­dor, Repub­li­cans have no path to vic­to­ry with­out becom­ing much more com­pet­i­tive there.

Select can­di­dates like Dave Reichert and Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler, who are expect­ed to put more resources and effort into cam­paign­ing, may be able to out­per­form the rest of their tick­et. But even sup­pos­ing they do five points bet­ter than can­di­dates like Matt Hawkins and Sharon Hanek, they’d still lose to their Demo­c­ra­t­ic opponents. 

Congressional contests

Repub­li­cans today hold just two of the state’s ten U.S. House seats. They’re guar­an­teed to hold onto one of them, because the gen­er­al elec­tion con­test in WA-04 is a Repub­li­can ver­sus Repub­li­can matchup in which Dan New­house is fac­ing Jer­rod Sessler. In the neigh­bor­ing 5th Dis­trict, Spokane Coun­ty Trea­sur­er Michael Baum­gart­ner, Maria Cantwell’s 2012 oppo­nent, is favored to hold Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers’ seat. He faces Demo­c­rat Carmela Con­roy. Though he has been warn­ing of his race being down­grad­ed in recent emails, East­ern Wash­ing­ton has­n’t sent a Demo­c­rat to Con­gress since the ear­ly 1990s, when the late, great Speak­er Tom Foley rep­re­sent­ed the district. 

The par­ty’s prospects in the state’s oth­er eight dis­tricts are most­ly bad. Six of the eight dis­tricts look com­plete­ly out of reach. Those are the 1st, the 2nd, the 6th, the 7th, the 9th, and the 10th. Repub­li­cans argue they have a path in WA-06 with Drew MacEwen, who is fac­ing Emi­ly Ran­dall in the con­test to pick a suc­ces­sor to Drew Kilmer, but that path is awful­ly steep. The 6th has­n’t elect­ed a Repub­li­can to Con­gress in eons. And Ran­dall is a fierce cam­paign­er who loves hit­ting the trail and meet­ing voters.

That leaves the 8th and the 3rd.

The 8th was a Repub­li­can dis­trict for decades, but Democ­rats flipped it in 2018 with Kim Schri­er, and it has stayed Demo­c­ra­t­ic since then. 

Repub­li­cans made defeat­ing Schri­er a pri­or­i­ty last cycle, but they failed, and Schri­er is now run­ning for a fourth term. Her 2024 oppo­nent is Car­men Goers, an unsuc­cess­ful can­di­date for the Leg­is­la­ture who does­n’t seem to be doing much cam­paign­ing. Goers received only 44.99% of the vote in the Top Two, while Schri­er gar­nered a major­i­ty despite fac­ing two oth­er can­di­dates iden­ti­fy­ing as Democrats. 

Schri­er’s effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion has got­ten results for the 8th and a major­i­ty of vot­ers there know her and like her. The 8th may not meet the cri­te­ria to be dubbed a “safe” Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­trict, but Schri­er’s chances of hold­ing it are real­ly good, and even Repub­li­cans seem to be implic­it­ly con­ced­ing that.

Their focus is on the 3rd, the state’s one true tossup district.

Democ­rats picked up the 3rd in 2022 with Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, who defeat­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Joe Kent. Many nation­al pun­dits fig­ured she had no chance. 

We knew that she did, because we’d com­mis­sioned and released polling show­ing a com­pet­i­tive race with Kent. Although that polling made it into FiveThir­tyEight’s index, the aggre­ga­tor’s own mod­el essen­tial­ly ignored it in favor of pun­dit ratings. 

Kent decid­ed in the wake of his defeat to run again, and he was able to get an ear­ly endorse­ment from the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, to the dis­plea­sure of Camas City Coun­cilmem­ber Leslie Lewallen. Lewallen argued that she would make a supe­ri­or oppo­nent to Glue­senkamp Perez, but Repub­li­can vot­ers in the 3rd disagreed. 

The state par­ty is so invest­ed in Joe Kent that they sent out mail­ers to Repub­li­can vot­ers urg­ing them to vote for him. Those mail­ers assured Repub­li­can vot­ers that Kent would be com­pet­i­tive against Glue­senkamp Perez by cit­ing NPI’s polling.

See for yourself:

What they did­n’t tell their vot­ers was that Glue­senkamp Perez won in 2022 after being three points down at the end of our poll that cycle. This time around, she starts out effec­tive­ly tied with Kent. She may be the under­dog again, but she is arguably in bet­ter shape to win than she was in 2022. She’s proved that she can win, so she’s not hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty con­vinc­ing peo­ple to invest in her cam­paign and believe in her. 

A tossup race is a race with­out a prob­a­ble out­come, but Democ­rats have every rea­son to feel good about Marie Glue­senkamp Perez’s chances. WA-03 is tough but winnable.

The legislative map

Repub­li­cans last had a major­i­ty in either cham­ber of the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture in 2017, when they nar­row­ly con­trolled the Sen­ate. Since Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra’s spe­cial elec­tion vic­to­ry, Democ­rats have had a tri­fec­ta in Wash­ing­ton, and they’ve increased their majori­ties twice. In the 2018 midterms, they gained sev­en House seats and three Sen­ate seats. In the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion four years ago, they trad­ed seats with the Repub­li­cans to keep the over­all num­bers the same. And in 2022, they took one more House seat and one more Sen­ate seat from the Republicans. 

Repub­li­cans would need to flip a grand total of ten House seats and five Sen­ate seats to get majori­ties. That’s not going to hap­pen, and they know it. They don’t even have ten House and five Sen­ate pick­up oppor­tu­ni­ties across the state. 

For the most part, Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bents are in real­ly good shape. A few front­line mem­bers, like Clyde Shavers and Ali­cia Rule, may face a tough slog. Bill Ramos, run­ning to hold Mark Mul­let’s State Sen­ate seat, can expect an onslaught as well. 

But oth­er­wise, it’s Repub­li­cans on defense as Democ­rats try to pick up even more seats. Democ­rats see pick­up oppor­tu­ni­ties in a num­ber of dis­tricts, includ­ing the 26th, the 10th, the 17th, the 18th, and the 14th. And maybe the 12th, too. 

Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers to watch:

• Janet St. Clair, 10th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, Senate
• Maria Bel­tran, 14th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, Senate
• Jim May­hew, 12th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, Senate
• Mar­la Keeth­ler, 17th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, Senate
• Adri­an Cortes, 18th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, Senate
• Adi­son Richards, 26th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, House
• Tiffiny Mitchell, 26th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, House
• Heather Koellen, 12th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, House
• John Zin­gale, 18th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, House
• Ter­ri Niles, 17th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, House
• Ana Ruiz Kennedy, 14th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, House
• Chelsea Dimas, 14th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, House

In the Top Two, Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates col­lec­tive­ly received more votes than Repub­li­cans in fifty-eight House races and thir­teen Sen­ate races, accord­ing to our par­ty per­for­mance leg­isla­tive vote track­er, devel­oped by NPI’s Ren­nie Sawade. That is a strong indi­ca­tor that the par­ty is extreme­ly well posi­tioned to at least main­tain its cur­rent majori­ties. But the Novem­ber elec­torate could be bluer, and if it is, that could help give Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates in a few of those bat­tle­ground dis­tricts an edge. 

The initiatives

Work­ing with mul­ti­mil­lion­aire Repub­li­can donor Bri­an Hey­wood, Walsh spon­sored a slate of six destruc­tive ini­tia­tives that Repub­li­can activists and paid peti­tion­ers worked to gath­er sig­na­tures on late last year. Each was cer­ti­fied in January. 

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled Leg­is­la­ture decid­ed to adopt three of them into law to keep them off the bal­lot in a strate­gic maneu­ver, leav­ing three for vot­ers to decide. 

After the leg­isla­tive ses­sion, Walsh and Hey­wood worked with the Build­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton to qual­i­fy a sev­enth ini­tia­tive. BIAW ponied up mon­ey for a month­long sig­na­ture dri­ve which con­clud­ed around the Fourth of July. 

These four mea­sures — I‑2066, I‑2109, I‑2117, and I‑2124 — will be the first items vot­ers see on their bal­lots. They’ll even appear before the pres­i­den­tial race and the guber­na­to­r­i­al race. Each of them would take Wash­ing­ton backwards:

• Ini­tia­tive 2066 — locks our com­mu­ni­ties into dirty ener­gy while rais­ing fam­i­lies’ costs (qual­i­fied July 24th, 2024)
• Ini­tia­tive 2109 — repeals bil­lions in edu­ca­tion fund­ing by elim­i­nat­ing the cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy (qual­i­fied Jan­u­ary 23rd, 2024)
• Ini­tia­tive 2117 — repeals the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act, which is rais­ing funds to fight cli­mate dam­age (qual­i­fied Jan­u­ary 16th, 2024)
• Ini­tia­tive 2124 — sab­o­tages the WA Cares plan to help Wash­ing­to­ni­ans afford long-term care (qual­i­fied Jan­u­ary 25th, 2024)

NPI’s research has found that all four mea­sures are polling under fifty per­cent, which sug­gests that our chances of defeat­ing the entire slate are good.

Two of the mea­sures already have major­i­ty oppo­si­tion (I‑2109 and I‑2117).

A third (I‑2124) has plu­ral­i­ty oppo­si­tion. The fourth (I‑2066) has plu­ral­i­ty sup­port but is well under fifty per­cent, like its brethren. 

And this is all before the impact of the NO cam­paigns doing vot­er con­tact — some­thing all four of them are begin­ning to do as I type this. 

Repub­li­cans were not pleased to hear this, of course. Bri­an Hey­wood has already made dis­mis­sive com­ments on Twit­ter about this very finding.

But regard­less of what they say about our research, we know that Repub­li­cans take our polling seri­ous­ly. The state par­ty proved it in con­vinc­ing fash­ion when they decid­ed to cite the results of one of our sur­veys to their own vot­ers. They took a poll find­ing graph­ic right off our web­site, print­ed it up, and mailed it out. 

(Dave Reichert’s cam­paign has done the same: when we found Reichert nar­row­ly ahead of Bob Fer­gu­son last autumn, Reichert’s cam­paign wast­ed lit­tle time putting the data into fundrais­ing emails. Since then, of course, we’ve found Fer­gu­son pulling away from Reichert, and Reichert’s camp has­n’t been inter­est­ed in pro­mot­ing those findings.)

Walsh and Hey­wood see the ini­tia­tives as an orga­niz­ing and vot­er mobi­liza­tion tool, in addi­tion to being a strate­gic play that forces Democ­rats to play defense. 

But they seem not to have con­sid­ered that their ini­tia­tives could also be an orga­niz­ing and vot­er mobi­liza­tion tool for Democ­rats. While going on offense and win­ning is arguably more sat­is­fy­ing, play­ing defense can be incred­i­bly energizing. 

Our team knows all about that — our Per­ma­nent Defense project, which fights destruc­tive ini­tia­tives like these, is more than twen­ty-two years old. Every pro­gres­sive activist in Wash­ing­ton that we’ve com­mu­ni­cat­ed with is aware of the ini­tia­tives and enthu­si­as­tic about mak­ing the case for vot­ing NO to their fam­i­ly, friends, and neighbors. 

Republicans’ problems run deep and can’t be fixed with better strategies, more impressive candidates, or initiative gambits

In our research, we have explored why Wash­ing­ton is becom­ing a more hos­tile place for Repub­li­cans. We have repeat­ed­ly asked vot­ers across the state who pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed Joe Biden, par­tic­u­lar­ly in key coun­ties like Sno­homish and Pierce, if the Repub­li­can Par­ty could do any­thing to earn their sup­port in the next election. 

Most Biden vot­ers have sim­ply said no, indi­cat­ing there’s noth­ing Repub­li­cans can do to win them over, while near­ly all of the small­er num­ber say­ing “yes” have made it clear in their expla­na­tions that the Repub­li­can Par­ty would have to aban­don Trump and their extreme white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy before they’d ever con­sid­er vot­ing Repub­li­can again. (This is a case where “yes” real­ly means “no!”)

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s lack of elec­toral via­bil­i­ty stems from the par­ty’s devo­lu­tion into a cult that adores a wannabe author­i­tar­i­an. It is trag­ic that a par­ty com­mit­ted to repub­li­can­ism and democ­ra­cy — a par­ty that calls itself the Repub­li­can Par­ty — has now become a polit­i­cal force seek­ing to end our republic. 

Sad­ly, that’s where we are.

Most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans don’t like that agen­da one bit. Nor do they like the strict father, white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist world­view that has tak­en root with­in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, which will prob­a­bly per­sist well after Don­ald Trump pass­es on. 

Local Repub­li­cans some­times admit that Trump is unpop­u­lar and a drag on their tick­et. But they seem more reluc­tant to admit that vot­ers also dis­like their ide­ol­o­gy. Vot­ers know that the par­ty has lost its pro­gres­sive wing. The par­ty of Dan Evans is gone — long gone. When Patrick Har­man decid­ed to run for Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor as “Prefers Lib­er­al Repub­li­can Par­ty” — which isn’t a thing — it left reporters chuckling. 

The Seat­tle Times’ Gene Balk report­ed today, cit­ing Nielsen data, that the Seat­tle area is get­ting more lib­er­al. That helps explain why Repub­li­cans are doing increas­ing­ly poor­ly in King Coun­ty. Vot­ers in the state’s biggest polit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sion do not want to be rep­re­sent­ed by Repub­li­cans at any lev­el. They’ve made that quite clear.

The prospect of Repub­li­cans chang­ing who they are and what they believe — adopt­ing some pro­gres­sive val­ues and prin­ci­ples and com­pet­ing with the Democ­rats for pro­gres­sive vot­ers’ sup­port — seems like an utter fan­ta­sy. There is no fac­tion of Repub­li­cans left who could even try to take the par­ty in that direction. 

A like­li­er sce­nario for the next few years is that minor par­ties such as the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty become big­ger elec­toral play­ers, begin­ning in Seat­tle and King Coun­ty pol­i­tics. If that were to hap­pen, it could give the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty some com­pe­ti­tion while the Repub­li­can Par­ty con­tin­ues its fade into irrel­e­vance in the state’s urban and sub­ur­ban core and remains unable to com­pete in statewide races. 

Again, while we do not know the future and can’t know it, cred­i­ble data sug­gests Repub­li­cans are star­ing at elec­toral cat­a­stro­phe in Wash­ing­ton in 2024. They’re very like­ly to hold onto con­gres­sion­al, leg­isla­tive, and local seats in rur­al and exur­ban areas of the state, but that could be the extent of what they win here this year.