The House GOP ticks right against its will
Plus Big Timber's bad bets, a new Senate majority leader, and Ferguson imports a team from the AG's office
The Washington Legislature’s Democratic caucuses may have tilted further left this fall, but the House GOP minority added members from the party’s rightmost edge. This happened despite caucus leaders spending heavily to prevent it.
The first is Matt Marshall, who beat former Thurston County Sheriff John Snaza by a five-point margin for a House seat in the 2nd Legislative District, which sprawls across rural Pierce and Thurston counties. Marshall, whose resume includes establishing the Washington chapter of the Three Percenters, a right-wing extremist group, and a stint on the Eatonville School Board, has made headlines for rubbing elbows with other far-right extremist groups. Since then, Marshall and his backers have tried shedding the extremist label while protesting vaccine mandates and drag queen story hours. The seat is open because former Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox, R-Yelm, didn’t seek reelection.
Marshall won despite being massively overspent. Snaza’s campaign spent more than $150,000 on the campaign, including more than $90K dumped in by the House Republican Organizing Committee, a PAC controlled by House Republicans.1 Marshall, meanwhile, spent only about $30K.
The other MAGA Republican in this picture is former state representative Rob Chase, who beat Washington State Labor Council Vice President Ted Cummings handily in the 4th LD by 13 points. A retired realtor and previous Spokane County Treasurer, Chase got bounced from office in 2022 by state Rep. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley. Chase notably won a thumbs-up from former Republican state representative and alleged domestic terrorist Matt Shea in 2020.
Christian’s departure to the state senate left an empty seat in the house Chase filled. The far-right Republican was endorsed by now-retired Spokane Republican state Sen. Mike Padden and former state Rep. Bob McCaslin Jr., a secessionist and like-minded QAnon conspiracy theorist. Despite Chase’s association with fringe groups, voters in the 4th LD advanced him from the primary over three other Republicans and chose him over Cummings, who ran a bombastic anti-fascist campaign that flopped with voters in the conservative district.
Here’s why you should care about this: With Donald Trump en route to the White House, culture wars are bound to suck up considerable oxygen in Olympia. More MAGA energy in the statehouse is bound to pour gasoline on that fire, which might impair the minority’s already limited ability to check the majority.
On one hand, Marshall and Chase’s ascent comes at the worst possible time for the state Republican party. The party struck out in every statewide race this fall, saw three of its biggest ballot initiatives go up in flames, and failed to gain new ground in the statehouse.
As of Wednesday, it’s still unclear how many House Republicans will be seated in January. In the 18th LD, Camas Republican John Ley, also an arch-conservative, has a narrow lead over Vancouver Democrat John Zingale in the race for an open seat currently held by a Republican. Ley was also not the initial choice of the House Republican caucus. HROC put $25K behind another GOP hopeful who ran third in the August primary.
Ley is facing felony charges for allegedly registering to vote with a friend’s Battle Ground address during the 2022 campaign so he could run in the 18th.
TG
Big Timber’s bad bets
For players who saw the worst bang for their buck this election cycle, look no further than Big Timber, which came up short twice this year betting on the next Commissioner of Public Lands.
The cadre of lumber barons and their allies figured to be kingmakers in the contest for Public Lands, considering this was a crowded down-ballot race. More than half a million dollars in PAC money should have pushed any horse in their stable past the finish line.
Big Timber had two horses in this race. The first was state Sen. Kevin Van De Wege, who won a $736,000 thumbs up from the lumber magnates but went on to finish sixth as four Democrats split the vote and nearly advanced two Republicans to the general election.2
On paper, VDW looked like a sure shot for the job as the Chair of the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks Committee, a rural Washingtonian, and reliably moderate Democrat. He certainly tried to look the part. Weyerhaeuser took note too, given the chunk of change it put down on the VDW-aligned PAC, Firefighters For Protecting Public Lands.
When VDW finished well out of the money, Big Timber placed a $255K bet on former U.S. GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in the general. Her pro-business forest management style seemed comparable to VDW’s. But JHB dashed into the race with partisan baggage, having ticked off the right with her anti-Trump stance after Jan. 6 and the environmental left with a history of dicey votes in The Other Washington.
King County Democrats jazzed up about the White House could be counted on to fill the bubble for King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove, whose door-to-door game probably helped save his bacon this summer in that squeaker of a primary. In the end, that Seattle-area advantage and $411k from rich conservationists carried the day.
TG
Pedersen elected Senate majority leader
Current Senate Floor Leader Jamie Pedersen, who represents arguably the most progressive district in the state in the heart of Seattle, has been elected Senate Majority Leader. Pedersen succeeds Sen. Andy Billing, D-Spokane, who did not seek reelection this year.
Pedersen, known to TVW viewers for his procedural precision during Senate floor debate, will lead a Democratic caucus that figures to be slightly larger and perhaps substantially more progressive than the current version. Democrats look poised to flip the Senate seat in Clark County’s 18th District, which would give them a 30-19 edge and the lesser of two forms of supermajority.
While Pedersen isn’t the first openly gay lawmaker to lead a Democratic caucus, his ascent to the top job in the Senate is part of the rising clout of LGBTQ lawmakers, which played out in an interesting way earlier this year in the passage of the strippers’ rights bill.3 His Seattle district includes Capitol Hill, the city’s traditional “gayborhood.”
While Billig’s tenure as majority leader featured a caucus that moved incrementally to the left from 2017 through the 2022 election, Pedersen will start with a caucus heavily stocked with progressive lawmakers.
The 2025 Legislature will also be without centrist Sens. Mark Mullet, D-Issaquah, and Kevin Van De Wege, D-Port Angeles, who both sought higher office and lost in the primary. VDW will be replaced by the ideologically similar Rep. Mike Chapman, but Mullet’s slot goes to Issaquah Rep. Bill Ramos, a much more conventional Democrat. There will also be at least three other new faces in the caucus via upcoming appointments. Sen. Patty Kuderer, D-Bellevue, was elected Insurance Commissioner, Sen. Emily Randall, D-Bremerton, is headed for Congress, and Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, is retiring.4
As we noted last week, that shift is likely to lead to an eventful session, particularly on issues of taxation. Pedersen is a vocal champion of reforming Washington’s tax system, which falls heavily on the poor and lightly on the rich, to create new sources of revenue.
The caucus plans to announce committee chairs and other leadership positions on Nov. 21.
PQ
Ferguson imports AG leadership team into governor’s office
Governor-elect Bob Ferguson is bringing virtually his entire leadership team with him from the attorney general’s office.
That shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Ferguson has been governor-in-waiting for at least four years and arguably as many as eight. So it’s not a shocker that his inner team was already effectively in place.
But the mass move across the capitol campus is an outlier compared to past new governors. When Gov. Chris Gregoire made the same move from the AG’s office back in 2004, she kept Gov. Gary Locke’s chief of staff and didn’t bring a crowd of people with her. Gov. Jay Inslee, who moved into the governor’s mansion from a seat in the U.S. House, built out nearly all of this team without importing them from the other Washington.
In a somewhat unusual move, there won’t be a single chief of staff. Instead, both Chief of Strategy Mike Webb and Chief of Operations Shane Esquibel will report directly to Ferguson.
Webb, Ferguson’s longtime chief of staff at the AG’s office, was heavily involved in the boss’s campaign. He will run policy, legislative, and communications work, while Esquibel will oversee agencies represented in the cabinet.
Also staying in Ferguson’s inner circle will be Chief Counsel Kristin Beneski, Policy Director Sahar Fathi, Legislative Director Joyce Bruce, Deputy Chief Operations Officer Franklin Plaistowe, and Communications Director Brionna Aho, who was a sister in news for The World out in Aberdeen back in the day.
External Relations Director Jaime Martin joins the team from the Snoqualmie Tribe. Native American tribes are major players in politics in Washington, so that makes sense. What’s notable here is the lack of representation of other major forces in Democratic politics, including organized labor and the environmental movement.
Policy wonks and folks with interest in the upcoming legislative session will be particularly interested in Fathi and Bruce. Those two jobs sit atop the governor’s policy shop, where most of an administration’s priority legislation gets initially crafted.
Fathi formerly worked for the King County Council as a policy analyst and in two different roles at the city of Seattle.
Ferguson’s election ushered in the first change of administration since 2013, so expect many moves to and within Olympia to come.
PQ
For whom the bellwether tolls
We in the media use the word “historic” a tad more than we should, but 2024 could go down in history as the last time Washington will be a weird bellwether for the White House.
For the past 40 years, Clallam County called the contest in perfect sync with the nation, including Ronald Reagan in 1980, the last time a Republican carried Washington. No longer. Kamala Harris is raking in north of 57% of the vote, while Donald Trump is poised to become the country’s 47th commander-in-chief.
Our brothers and sisters in the news have taken notice of the vastly rural county, but we want to point out how weird it is that the Peninsula was ever considered representative of the US of A. Clallam County is in the neighborhood of 80% white and about 30% of its residents are in the 65 and older crowd.5
It could be that journalists closer to The Other Washington need a primer on circumstantial data.
TG
Recommended Reading
Changes coming in King County POLITICS
Hours after longtime King County Executive Dow Constantine announced he would not seek reelection in 2025, his fellow councilmember and former Bellevue mayor Claudia Balducci announced her plans to run for his seat, Dave Gutman with The Seattle Times reports.
Constantine stepping aside is likely not news to King County Council watchdogs who may have noticed the executive more or less stopped fundraising this summer. Still, we expect Balducci to be one of many politicians vying for the executive seat. Gutman reported county councilmember Girmay Zahilay is considering a run for executive, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see former Issaquah state Sen. Mark Mullet throw his hat in the ring.
SK
It’s time to sign up for our policy conference in December
Want to chew over all of this stuff in person? Then it’s time to register for our annual Re-Wire Policy Conference, which will be held in Tacoma on Dec. 3. You can register here. Look for a special edition tomorrow laying out the agenda.
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We’re on a cat jag these days….
Subscriber Pete Hanning tells us that Harry here felt left out when we featured his housemate Ron a while back. Want to see your pet in this space? Drop us a photo and some caption material.
Think things might get awkward in the caucus room? We may never know; there’s a Mafia-level code of silence about those things.
As we frequently note, while no one ever “wins” a top-two primary, what they can do is fail to advance to the general
Speaker Laurie Jinkins leads her House caucus now, and then-Sen. Ed Murray was poised to become majority leader in 2012 before Sen. Rodney Tom, a Republican turned Democrat, joined forces with the Republicans to seize the majority. Murray who held what is now Pedersen’s seat in the Senate, had to settle for minority leader.
Keiser chose to retire effective after the election so that she could have a voice in the organization of the new caucus.
Clallam County demographic data from the 2023 American Community Survey via Census Reporter.
Probably worth pointing out that for this recent tendency of both major parties to nominate extremists (cough, Shaun Scott) as our society further fragments from distrust to outright hostility and intolerance it may have just flipped the 18th Senate seat to the mainstream option. And if Cortes turns out to be a southwest MGP type as a former Republican then between him and Chapman in the 24th there will thankfully still be folks in the Senate Democratic Caucus who being a more nuanced and realistic perspective to the table.