An early poll on the 2024 governor's race

Plus that hydrogen tax break lifts off, and the Observer on TVW

The folks over at the Northwest Progressive Institute have a new poll on a hypothetical primary in the 2024 governor’s race.

With the usual it’s-a-long-way-off caveats, our immediate takeaway is that the numbers are absolutely abysmal for King County Executive Dow Constantine, who has been eying the Governor’s Mansion for years and running a shadow campaign for the office fueled by zealous fundraising for his reelection campaigns.

Constantine got the nod from just 7 percent of the likely 2024 voters in the survey, which puts him in a tie for slow third with Commissioner of Public Lands Hillary Franz. Attorney General Bob Ferguson, long considered the presumptive front-runner, leads both of his fellow Democrats with 21 percent. That’s also not great news for Franz, whose path to the general election looked like letting Constantine and Ferguson split the vote for middle-aged white guys.

Here’s why you should care about this: Gov. Jay Inslee is unlikely to seek a fourth term, so the mansion’s door would be genuinely open for the first time since his initial election in 2012. In theory, that’s an opening for a Republican to win for the first time since 1980. In practice, the real showdown probably happens among Democrats in an August primary in which relatively few people will vote. Ferguson, who enjoys strong name recognition and many admirers on the left for his battles with the Trump administration, is also sitting on a pile of campaign cash.

This could kick off soonish; former Gov. Chris Gregoire announced she wouldn’t seek a third term in June of 2011, some 18 months before the end of her term.