Republicans Can’t Even Win Kentucky Governor Races, So They Probably Shouldn’t Bother With Washington

But if they want to humiliate themselves, we won’t stop them.

Jay Inslee: Washington state, say goodbye to THIS!

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is not running for re-election, so Republicans believe 2024 is their year to claim the governor’s mansion. He’s 72 and could serve seven more terms like a common Joe Biden — Washington state has no gubernatorial term limit — but he’s retiring like a man who doesn’t think he’s the Queen of England. (Wonkette editrix Rebecca and I will miss him very much; you see that picture up there. He also would have been a solid choice in the 2020 presidential primary, but his platform of “what if we didn’t get murdered by climate change” didn’t … heat anyone up. However, he demonstrated tremendous leadership during the earliest, scariest days of the pandemic.)

Washington is a solidly Democratic state that last elected a Republican governor in 1980. President Joe Biden carried the state by 19 points (that’s roughly equal to Donald Trump’s winning margins in Louisiana and Mississippi).

There was some recent talk about Republicans flipping the Washington Senate seat in 2022, during the anticipated “Red Wave” that was more like a drizzle. The New York Times proclaimed on November 2: “Patty Murray Faces Stiff Challenge in Senate Re-election Race.” A week later, Murray crushed Republican Tiffany Smiley by 15 points and a popular vote margin that amounted to the population of Wyoming. The Times still insisted that Murray had somehow “beat back a surprisingly stiff challenge” from a competitor without a Wikipedia entry.

Legacy media’s horse race obsession has probably contributed to Republican bullishness about this upcoming election. The current frontrunner for the party’s nomination is Dave Reichert, a former King County sheriff who served in the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2019. He boasts significant name recognition, and Politico notes that Reichert was from the “moderate wing” of the Republican Party while in DC and “may be tougher to paint as a MAGA diehard.” That statement’s not easily challenged … well, unless you have basic access to Google, then it’s quite simple: Reichert supported Trump’s 2017 ban on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries entering the US. That’s hardly “moderate.”

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Reichert thinks he has an opening this year thanks to Washington’s struggles with crime and homelessness, specifically in Seattle. He’ll also campaign on the economy. This strategy relies on voters’ forgetting that Republicans never have actual constructive solutions to these issues.

But first Reichert has to get past far-right nuisance candidate Semi Bird, who claims he’s modeled his campaign platform after Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears.

“I am seen as the grassroots candidate. Dave Reichert is looked at as the left-moderate conservative,” Bird said in an interview. “He cannot win in King County, nor can he win in Eastern Washington. The only way Dave Reichert can win the primary is if I am not in the primary.”

The only elected office Bird has held was on the Richland School Board, and voters later ousted him in an August recall. (Bird and a couple other school board members had made masks optional at Richland schools in early 2022 — a move that might not have been entirely legal.) It was around that time that Republican House Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers met with Bird at Spokane’s historic Davenport Hotel and requested that he end his go-nowhere gubernatorial campaign.

“She poured honey in my ear about how articulate I am,” Bird said, saying McMorris Rodgers encouraged him to be a team player and step aside.

Rodgers didn’t literally pour honey in Bird’s ear at a fancy hotel — though that scandal would be more interesting than his campaign. Bird is Black, so I’m not sure why Rodgers assumed telling him he “speaks good” would win him over.

Anyway, a honey-based seduction plot might’ve proven a better use of Rodgers’ time. There’s no evidence that Bird poses even a semi-serious threat to Reichert’s candidacy. His true obstacle is Democrat Bob Ferguson, the state’s attorney general, or as I like to call him, the next governor of Washington. Ferguson personally defeated Trump’s Muslim travel ban — filing a lawsuit within 72 hours that would block enforcement of the ban nationwide.

That’s already the perfect contrast between Ferguson and Reichert, and we can expect Democrats to hammer Reichert on his anti-abortion record, as well. I don’t advise taking any election for granted, though, and recommend that voters from my former state turn out in droves to send Republicans the strongest message possible.

[Seattle Times / Politico]

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