NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, February 23rd, 2024

VICTORY! Washington State Senate sends bill ending child marriage to Governor Inslee

A North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute pri­or­i­ty bill that would advance human rights in Wash­ing­ton State by end­ing the prac­tice of allow­ing child mar­riages is on its way to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. Forty-eight out of forty-nine sen­a­tors vot­ed yea this after­noon to pass House Bill 1455, prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier (D‑49th Dis­trict: Clark Coun­ty) and cham­pi­oned by Sen­a­tor Derek Stan­ford (D‑1st Dis­trict: King and Sno­homish Coun­ties) in the Senate.

The vote con­cludes the bil­l’s jour­ney through the leg­isla­tive process. Intro­duced on Jan­u­ary 19th, 2023 by Stonier, HB 1455 passed the House unan­i­mous­ly in 2023 before run­ning into a leg­isla­tive log­jam in the Sen­ate Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee. Thank­ful­ly, the House revived the bill and again sent it back to the Sen­ate unan­i­mous­ly on the first day of the cur­rent short ses­sion. This time, it got a speedy hear­ing from Chair Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Sam­mamish, Duvall), a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion boardmember.

The rank­ing Repub­li­can on the Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, Sen­a­tor Mike Pad­den, attempt­ed to weak­en the bill with an amend­ment allow­ing sev­en­teen year-olds to mar­ry under lim­it­ed cir­cum­stances, but this was reject­ed by voice vote. No sen­a­tor spoke against the bill on the floor, but one Repub­li­can did vote nay — Jeff Holy. Pad­den and all oth­er Repub­li­cans joined Democ­rats in vot­ing yea.

Here’s the Sen­ate roll call on HB 1455:

Roll Call
HB 1455
Child mar­riage
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
2/23/2024

Yeas: 48; Nays: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Boehnke, Braun, Cleve­land, Con­way, Dhin­gra, Dozi­er, For­tu­na­to, Frame, Gildon, Hansen, Hasegawa, Hawkins, Hunt, Kauff­man, Keis­er, King, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Lovick, MacEwen, McCune, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Nguyen, Nobles, Pad­den, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rivers, Robin­son, Sal­daña, Salomon, Schoesler, Shew­make, Short, Stan­ford, Tor­res, Trudeau, Valdez, Van De Wege, Wag­oner, War­nick, Well­man, Wil­son, C., Wil­son, J., Wil­son, L.

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tor Holy

With his nay vote, Sen­a­tor Holy gained the dis­tinc­tion of becom­ing the one and only leg­is­la­tor to oppose the enact­ment of this human rights breakthrough.

Holy rep­re­sents the 6th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, which encom­pass­es Med­ical Lake, Air­way Heights, Fairchild Air Force Base, and parts of the City of Spokane. Accord­ing to the biog­ra­phy on his cam­paign web­site, he is Catholic:

Jeff grad­u­at­ed from Catholic grade school, attend­ed Catholic Sem­i­nary as a high school fresh­man, con­tin­ued Catholic High School as a sopho­more, and grad­u­at­ed from Issaquah High School.

While in high school, Jeff start­ed his Repub­li­can involve­ment by door­belling for then first-time WA State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives can­di­date, Kent Pullen. Once out of high school, Jeff dis­cov­ered the val­ue of man­u­al labor, while work­ing in a foundry, at a lum­ber treat­ment plant and by dri­ving a combine.

In 1975, Jeff enlist­ed in the U.S. Army where he spent three years with the 9th Infantry Divi­sion and trained as a Scout. Once his enlist­ment was over, Jeff attend­ed Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty where he grad­u­at­ed with a B.S. in Psy­chol­o­gy. While at WSU, Jeff met his wife Cindy. Plans for a future togeth­er includ­ed apply­ing to Gon­za­ga Law School. Then, as even now, the expense of Law School cre­at­ed an uneasy moment. Locat­ing a job that had shift work and paid well enough to afford Law School was a chal­lenge. Find­ing that the Spokane Police Depart­ment would allow Jeff to work grave­yard shift while com­plet­ing law school, seemed to be a per­fect fit. Jeff and Cindy cel­e­brat­ed their wed­ding on a Sat­ur­day, and the fol­low­ing Mon­day morn­ing Jeff start­ed Law School.

In Wash­ing­ton State, most Catholic church­es oper­ate under the juris­dic­tion of the Arch­dio­cese of Seat­tle, which states explic­it­ly in its poli­cies on mat­ri­mo­ny (adopt­ed in 2007) that parish priests are to dis­cour­age child marriage: 

IX. Age of Marriage

Pas­tors are to urge young cou­ples not to mar­ry before the age of 18 (see CIC, c. 1072). A priest or dea­con may have seri­ous doubts about the young couple’s readi­ness for mar­riage due to their age and matu­ri­ty. In such cas­es, the sacra­ment may be delayed (see CIC, c. 1077 §1).

The poli­cies also state that “local civ­il state stat­ues regard­ing the age of
mar­riage are to be fol­lowed.” As of this spring, that will include the statute that House Bill 1455 is amend­ing, despite Sen­a­tor Holy’s no vote.

On Catholi­cAn­swers, Fr. Hugh Bar­bour, O.Praem., writes:

The age for legit­i­mate mar­riage depends on the cul­ture. Nowa­days it is eigh­teen at the ear­li­est, but there are still states where it is pos­si­ble to mar­ry younger. Cur­rent Church law is more strict than civ­il or com­mon law, although until recent­ly it was not. The key here is pru­dence and con­cern for the suc­cess of the union in the matu­ri­ty of the cou­ple. Even today there are some cul­tures in which ear­ly mar­riage is pos­si­ble because of the rel­a­tive matu­ri­ty and expec­ta­tions of the par­ties, but sure­ly in ours that is not the case.

Empha­sis is mine. Noth­ing in the bill con­flicts with the teach­ing of Sen­a­tor Holy’s faith. To the con­trary, the bill is whol­ly con­sis­tent with the guid­ance the Church has been giv­ing to parish priests for decades.

Sen­a­tor Holy did not speak dur­ing floor debate, but he did talk to Grace Deng from The Wash­ing­ton State Stan­dard about his vote. Here’s what he said:

Holy told the Stan­dard that he had friends in high school who mar­ried at approx­i­mate­ly the same age due to preg­nan­cies and had “suc­cess­ful marriages.”

“Most of what you heard out here was hyper­bole or talk­ing points,” Holy said, refer­ring to law­mak­ers speak­ing about the sto­ries of child mar­riage survivors.

Holy also said he doesn’t want to “force” preg­nant peo­ple to either “have an ille­git­i­mate child or have an abor­tion,” and that as a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer who worked in the sex crimes unit, he trusts the jus­tice sys­tem to make deci­sions on whether chil­dren who mar­ry are act­ing of their own free will.

To assert that the case for the bill rests on “hyber­bole” is both false and insult­ing to forced mar­riage sur­vivors. Also, chil­dren born out of wed­lock are not “ille­git­i­mate.” Holy is fright­en­ing­ly out of touch: our polling has found that 80% of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers sup­port this leg­is­la­tion.

Our team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute is grate­ful to the one hun­dred and forty-six oth­er Wash­ing­ton State leg­is­la­tors who vot­ed yea and got HB 1455 out of the Leg­is­la­ture and over to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk.

We’re also thank­ful for the sur­vivors who came and brave­ly told their sto­ries to law­mak­ers and all of our allies that lob­bied enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly for this bill.

We have espe­cial­ly enjoyed work­ing with Unchained At Last and Zon­ta to get this done. We were hon­ored to be able to pro­vide cov­er­age of the “chain-in” that Unchained At Last orga­nized last month in Olympia. If you haven’t read the sur­vivors’ sto­ries that we fea­tured in our cov­er­age, we urge you to do so now.

Once Gov­er­nor Inslee signs HB 1455, the clock will start tick­ing on its enact­ment. It will go into effect in June, nine­ty days after ses­sion adjourn­ment, and from that day for­ward, Wash­ing­ton will require that both par­ties wish­ing to mar­ry be at least eigh­teen years of age. The days of child mar­riage in Wash­ing­ton will be over.

Wednesday, February 21st, 2024

A majority of Washington voters want Democrats to keep control of the Washington State Legislature in 2025, NPI poll finds

The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty appears nice­ly posi­tioned to main­tain its leg­isla­tive majori­ties in the Wash­ing­ton State House and Sen­ate in the com­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, with a major­i­ty of like­ly vot­ers say­ing they’d pre­fer con­tin­ued Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance to a Repub­li­can takeover next January.

51% of 789 like­ly 2024 vot­ers sur­veyed ear­li­er this month (Feb­ru­ary 13th-14th) by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute said they’d pre­fer Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties after the next elec­tion, while 41% said they’d pre­fer Repub­li­can majori­ties. Anoth­er 8% said they were not sure.

It’s the lat­est indi­ca­tion that Repub­li­cans are utter­ly fail­ing to make inroads with Wash­ing­ton vot­ers, despite their fer­vent attempts to exploit the hous­ing cri­sis, the fen­tanyl and sub­stance abuse cri­sis, and the ris­ing cost of living.

If you fol­low the House and Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus accounts on social media, you’ve prob­a­bly noticed they reg­u­lar­ly crit­i­cize Demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies — pro­posed or adopt­ed — with hash­tags like “Unwise­WA” or “Unaf­ford­able­WA” or “Unsafe­WA.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly for them, their memes and nar­ra­tives aren’t mov­ing the nee­dle. Wash­ing­ton vot­ers seem most­ly sat­is­fied with Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship and want to con­tin­ue along the path the state has been on for anoth­er two years.

This is the sec­ond straight cycle in which we’ve asked Wash­ing­ton vot­ers which par­ty they’d like to see in charge of the Leg­is­la­ture after the next election.

In 2022, we asked this ques­tion three times and con­sis­tent­ly found a lead for Democ­rats. Repub­li­cans ignored or dis­missed our research, but when the midterm elec­tions were cer­ti­fied, our data was vindicated.

Repub­li­cans sud­den­ly found them­selves with few­er seats than before, with their much-hyped “red wave” hav­ing total­ly failed to mate­ri­al­ize. They’re under no oblig­a­tion to take these results seri­ous­ly, but if they think we can’t be right, then they’re set­ting them­selves up for anoth­er Elec­tion Night shock this November.

Here’s the exact ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: Which par­ty would you pre­fer have major­i­ty con­trol over the Wash­ing­ton State House and the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate in Olympia after the next elec­tion: the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty or the Repub­li­can Party?

ANSWERS:

  • Would pre­fer Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties in the State House and Sen­ate after the next elec­tion: 51%
  • Would pre­fer Repub­li­can majori­ties: 41%
  • Not sure: 8%

Our sur­vey of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 13th through Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th, 2024.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (42%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (58%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

NPI and PPP have worked togeth­er for a decade and have a track record of excel­lence, as detailed in this 2022 elec­toral polling recap and this 2020 one.

Detailed comparison to our 2022 findings

In the 2021–2022 bien­ni­um, Democ­rats con­trolled 57 House seats and 28 Sen­ate seats. In the 2022 midterms, they gained one House seat and one Sen­ate seat, respec­tive­ly, increas­ing their majori­ties to 58 and 29, with Clyde Shavers’ win in the 10th Dis­trict and Sharon Shew­make’s vic­to­ry in the 42nd District.

Our pre­elec­tion polling at this junc­ture two years ago found only a five point lead for Democ­rats. They weren’t above the fifty per­cent mark, but they did have a lead in our leg­isla­tive con­trol question:

Feb­ru­ary 2022 Responses

  • Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty: 49%
  • Repub­li­can Par­ty: 44%
  • Not sure: 7%

Poll of 700 like­ly Novem­ber 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers, con­duct­ed Feb­ru­ary 17th-18th, 2022

By June, Democ­rats had expand­ed their lead to nine points:

June 2022 Responses

  • Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty: 51%
  • Repub­li­can Par­ty: 42%
  • Not sure: 7%

Poll of 1,039 like­ly Novem­ber 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers, con­duct­ed June 1st-2nd, 2022

By Octo­ber, the mar­gin shrunk back to around where it had been in February:

Octo­ber 2022 Responses

  • Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty: 49%
  • Repub­li­can Par­ty: 43%
  • Not sure: 8%

Poll of 782 like­ly Novem­ber 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers, con­duct­ed Octo­ber 19th-20th, 2022

Again, as men­tioned, Democ­rats went on to do extreme­ly well in leg­isla­tive races in 2022. They held seats that were open (such as in the 47th Dis­trict), reelect­ed their incum­bents, and reduced Repub­li­cans’ num­bers by one in each cham­ber in a year when Repub­li­cans had hoped to flip con­trol of both cham­bers, hav­ing enjoyed an aver­age lead of just six to sev­en points in our polling.

Here, Democ­rats have a ten point lead in our gener­ic leg­isla­tive ques­tion. They have entered dou­ble-dig­it ter­ri­to­ry for the first time.

Repub­li­cans should be very, very, very wor­ried. It’s pos­si­ble they’ll lose even more seats this year, bring­ing Democ­rats clos­er to hav­ing super­ma­jor­i­ty control.

We don’t know what will hap­pen, of course. Mas­ter Yoda put it well in Star Wars Episode II: Impos­si­ble to see, the future is. But the avail­able evi­dence is not encour­ag­ing for the Par­ty of Trump. They’re in a hole and mak­ing it deeper.

The twin cud­gels that Repub­li­cans say Democ­rats used so effec­tive­ly against them in 2022 — Trump and abor­tion — have arguably only got­ten more potent since.

Pre­tend­ing the Dobbs deci­sion isn’t hurt­ing peo­ple and ignor­ing Trump’s fas­cist rhetoric and attacks on democ­ra­cy is not going to help Repub­li­cans improve their odds this year. Rather than get­ting them­selves back on the road to becom­ing a nor­mal or semi-nor­mal polit­i­cal par­ty again, they’ve become even more cult-like. Vot­ers have noticed, and our polling strong­ly sug­gests they’d like to keep Democ­rats at the helm instead of giv­ing Repub­li­cans a chance to govern.

Wednesday, February 21st, 2024

Voting in Washington’s 2024 presidential primary: Your questions answered

This week, elec­tions offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton’s thir­ty-nine coun­ties will mail out bal­lots for the 2024 Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­maries. Vot­ers who would like to par­tic­i­pate in the nom­i­nat­ing process for either par­ty must cast their bal­lot and return it no lat­er than March 12th, 2024, the vot­ing deadline.

The pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry is a spe­cial event in state pol­i­tics that only takes place once every four years. Because it’s the sub­ject of qua­dren­ni­al con­fu­sion, we’ve pre­pared a Q&A to help to demys­ti­fy it. We hope this infor­ma­tion is help­ful to reg­u­lar and new read­ers alike. If you have a ques­tion the dis­cus­sion below does­n’t answer, please feel free to leave a com­ment and we’ll respond.

Q&A: The 2024 Washington State presidential primary

Q: What is the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry? Why do we have it?

A: The pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry is a way for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to express a pref­er­ence for a can­di­date seek­ing the nom­i­na­tion of one the nation’s two major polit­i­cal par­ties. Although the state clas­si­fies it as a “spe­cial cir­cum­stances elec­tion,” it is actu­al­ly not an elec­tion at all, but rather a nom­i­nat­ing event.

When you vote in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, you are express­ing a pref­er­ence as to which can­di­date you want Wash­ing­ton’s share of nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates allo­cat­ed to at either the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion or the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion. We have the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry because cast­ing a bal­lot through the state’s elec­tions infra­struc­ture is the eas­i­est way for lots of peo­ple to express a pref­er­ence. Both par­ties have pledged to use the results of this year’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to allo­cate their del­e­gates, so the results will be binding.

Q: Does this year’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry real­ly matter? 

A: Since the results are bind­ing, as men­tioned in the pri­or answer, it does mat­ter, although at this junc­ture, nei­ther par­ty’s nom­i­na­tion looks par­tic­u­lar­ly con­test­ed. Joe Biden has no strong oppo­si­tion for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion and Don­ald Trump has just a sin­gle rival left — Nik­ki Haley — who has­n’t per­formed very well in ear­ly states. Biden and Trump seem like­ly to win Wash­ing­ton’s primary.

Q: What will the bal­lot look like? Who will be on it?

A: The bal­lot will have two columns: a Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­umn, with a blue head­ing, and a Repub­li­can col­umn, with a red heading.

The fol­low­ing choic­es will appear on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side:

  • Joseph R Biden Jr
  • Dean Phillips
  • Mar­i­anne Williamson
  • Uncom­mit­ted Delegates
  • ___________________

The fol­low­ing choic­es will appear on the Repub­li­can side:

  • Chris Christie
  • Ron DeSan­tis
  • Nik­ki Haley
  • Vivek Ramaswamy
  • Don­ald J. Trump
  • ___________________

The final choice is a line where you can write in a candidate.

To vote, sim­ply fill in the oval for one of the choic­es and then place the bal­lot in the secu­ri­ty enve­lope. Place the secu­ri­ty enve­lope into the return enve­lope, sign it, date it, and mark the box indi­cat­ing that you under­stand you are affil­i­at­ing with the par­ty whose nom­i­nat­ing process you wish to par­tic­i­pate in, then return your bal­lot to a drop box or post office. (To ensure deliv­ery, NPI rec­om­mends against putting your bal­lot in a mail recep­ta­cle that isn’t at a post office.)

Q: Who decid­ed which names would appear on the ballot?

A: The major polit­i­cal par­ties did. Each par­ty has a process that spells out what a can­di­date must do to qual­i­fy for its col­umn on the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lot.  State law gives them the par­ties this respon­si­bil­i­ty, rec­og­niz­ing that it is their First Amend­ment right to deter­mine who their can­di­dates should be. The Sec­re­tary of State sim­ply uti­lizes the list of names that the par­ties provide.

Q: Why is there an option called “Uncom­mit­ted Del­e­gates” on only one side of the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry ballot?

A: Under the rules of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, “uncom­mit­ted” is a legit­i­mate pres­i­den­tial pref­er­ence. This is the option you should fill out if you are not sure or unde­cid­ed, but you want to par­tic­i­pate in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s process. It’s sort of like the “not sure” option in a pub­lic opin­ion research sur­vey, but in this con­text, it could count for some­thing. If enough Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers feel sim­i­lar­ly, there will be uncom­mit­ted del­e­gates at the 2024 DNC from Wash­ing­ton State.

Q: It looks like the bal­lot con­tains names of can­di­dates who have dropped out. Why weren’t those can­di­dates’ names removed?

A: That’s cor­rect. As of press time, Mar­i­anne Williamson, Chris Christie, Ron DeSan­tis, and Vivek Ramaswamy had sus­pend­ed their pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns. But you can still vote for them because they sub­mit­ted the req­ui­site paper­work, sig­na­tures, and fees to qual­i­fy for Wash­ing­ton’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. State law does not allow sub­mit­ted names to be removed once they are submitted.

While you can vote for a can­di­date who is no longer run­ning an active cam­paign, can­di­dates who have dropped out often don’t attract enough sup­port from oth­er vot­ers to earn any nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, for instance, has a min­i­mum via­bil­i­ty thresh­old of 15%. If a can­di­date can­not meet that with­in a giv­en state, they won’t get any of that state’s delegates.

Q: Why am I only allowed to vote for one can­di­date from one party?

A: The major polit­i­cal par­ties’ rules require that vot­ers not par­tic­i­pate in anoth­er par­ty’s nom­i­nat­ing process. Fur­ther­more, nei­ther par­ty uses a vot­ing method like ranked choice vot­ing or approval vot­ing that would allow you to express a pref­er­ence for more than one can­di­date. Accord­ing­ly, you can only vote one par­ty’s bal­lot — your bal­lot will be invalid if you fill out an oval in both columns.

Q: If I vote in the pri­ma­ry, will the par­ty I affil­i­at­ed with get my name?

A: Yes. If you vote in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty will get your name. And if you vote in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, the Repub­li­can Par­ty will get your name. The par­ty whose pri­ma­ry you did­n’t vote in will also be able to fig­ure out that you vot­ed in the oppos­ing par­ty’s pri­ma­ry. Please note that the dis­clo­sure of the list of vot­ed in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to the polit­i­cal par­ties is express­ly autho­rized by state law. This is in keep­ing with the idea that how you vote is a secret, but whether or not you vot­ed is a mat­ter of pub­lic record.

Q: I don’t want to affil­i­ate with either par­ty. What should I do?

A: If you are a true inde­pen­dent who does­n’t want to affil­i­ate with either par­ty, you should recy­cle your pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lot rather than return­ing it. You are under no legal or moral oblig­a­tion to par­tic­i­pate. As men­tioned above, the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry is not an elec­tion. You are not vot­ing to allo­cate Wash­ing­ton’s Elec­toral Col­lege votes if you par­tic­i­pate in the pri­ma­ry — rather, you are vot­ing to allo­cate one of the major par­ties’ nation­al con­ven­tion delegates.

Q: Now that the par­ties are using the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to allo­cate del­e­gates, are cau­cus­es and state con­ven­tions a thing of the past?

A: No. The par­ties use the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to allo­cate their del­e­gates, but they still hold cau­cus­es and con­ven­tions for oth­er pur­pos­es, like adopt­ing plat­forms and res­o­lu­tions, hear­ing from can­di­dates, and fundraising.

And while the pri­ma­ry elim­i­nates the need to stand in a gym, liv­ing room, or school cafe­te­ria for hours just to express a pres­i­den­tial pref­er­ence, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who are inter­est­ed in going to a nation­al con­ven­tion need to engage with the par­ty of their choice to par­tic­i­pate in del­e­gate selec­tion. The rules for the elec­tion of del­e­gates and the time­frames for run­ning dif­fer by party.

  • Repub­li­cans: To file as a Repub­li­can can­di­date for del­e­gate to the 2024 RNC in Mil­wau­kee (July 15th — 18th), you have to pay a mon­e­tary fee and file by April 12th. The form to do so is here.
  • Democ­rats: To file as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date for del­e­gate to the 2024 DNC in Chica­go (August 19th — 22nd), you must declare by May 12th for the con­gres­sion­al dis­trict lev­el and June 2nd for the state lev­el. There is no fee. Del­e­gate fil­ing has not yet begun, but you may preg­is­ter and let the par­ty know of your inter­est using this form.

Repub­li­cans will hold their state con­ven­tion in April, in Spokane; Democ­rats will hold their state con­ven­tion in June, at a loca­tion to be announced.

Have a question we didn’t answer above?

Please leave a com­ment and we’ll respond! Hap­py voting.

Tuesday, February 20th, 2024

NPI’s even year elections bill advances out of Senate State Government Committee

NPI’s pri­or­i­ty leg­is­la­tion to give cities and towns the free­dom to switch their elec­tions to even years has cleared anoth­er key hur­dle in the leg­isla­tive process.

Today, a major­i­ty of the Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment & Elec­tions Com­mit­tee vot­ed to give HB 1932, prime spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mia Gregerson, a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion, send­ing it on to the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee, where its sib­ling, Sen­ate Bill 5723, has been hiber­nat­ing for more than a year.

HB 1932 would change an old state law dat­ing back to the 1960s that requires munic­i­pal­i­ties to hold their reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tions in odd-num­bered years. Under our leg­is­la­tion, they would gain the free­dom to switch to even years if they want­ed, but they would­n’t be required to change their timing.

HB 1932 was vot­ed out of the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ear­li­er this month and was heard in the Sen­ate last Fri­day. It need­ed to get a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion at today’s com­mit­tee meet­ing to remain active, because tomor­row is the cut­off for oppo­site cham­ber pol­i­cy bills.

Due to the brevi­ty of the 2024 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, com­mit­tees only had a few days to hear and report out bills from the oppo­site chamber.

The Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment & Elec­tions Com­mit­tee had to sched­ule an extra com­mit­tee meet­ing last Thurs­day evening just to accom­mo­date all of the House bills per­tain­ing to its area of focus that it want­ed to con­sid­er. Today, its list of bills slat­ed for action in exec­u­tive ses­sion totaled twen­ty-one, includ­ing HB 1932.

Most of the list of twen­ty-one bills were vot­ed out effi­cient­ly, but not HB 1932. Repub­li­cans, evi­dent­ly hop­ing to sink the leg­is­la­tion, engaged in a time-wast­ing exer­cise of try­ing amend it almost a dozen dif­fer­ent ways, forc­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty to rhyth­mi­cal­ly mow down their amendments.

One of those amend­ments, offered by Jeff Wil­son, tried to res­ur­rect Tim Eyman’s now dead push polls, which this orga­ni­za­tion and Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er (who took point in respond­ing to the Repub­li­cans’ pro­pos­als) were respon­si­ble for abol­ish­ing last year in tan­dem with State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Amy Walen.

Anoth­er amend­ment, offered by Phil For­tu­na­to, odd­ly tried to exclude the 31st Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict (which For­tu­na­to rep­re­sents) from the legislation.

Addi­tion­al amend­ments were sourced from the House Repub­li­can cau­cus, which pro­posed a slew of changes to HB 1932 when it was on the House floor.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty took only one amend­ment, from Kud­er­er, which mod­i­fied the scope of the bill to make it resem­ble Sen­ate Bill 5723, the leg­is­la­tion the com­mit­tee con­sid­ered last year. The bill now only per­tains to cities and towns — school dis­tricts, ports, and oth­er lev­els of local gov­ern­ment are no longer includ­ed in the bill and would not gain the free­dom to choose their own elec­tion timing.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Sen­a­tor Kud­er­er’s amend­ment spec­i­fies that cities and towns wish­ing to switch must do so through a vote of both their gov­ern­ing body and a vote of the peo­ple, rather than just one or the oth­er. Like SB 5723, the bill still allows cities and towns any­where in Wash­ing­ton to switch to even years.

The vote to send HB 1932 on up to Rules was 4–3:

Vot­ing for a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Sam Hunt, Pat­ty Kud­er­er, Javier Valdez, and Bob Hasegawa

Vot­ing for a “do not pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jeff Wil­son, Phil For­tu­na­to, and Per­ry Dozier

If HB 1932 gets pulled from Rules, select­ed for floor action, and passed either in its cur­rent form or with fur­ther changes, it would then return to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The House could choose to con­cur in the Sen­ate’s amend­ments, or it could ask the Sen­ate to recede from its amendments.

In the event that the Sen­ate chose to recede from its amend­ments, the bill would revert to its pri­or incar­na­tion. If the House vot­ed to accept the Sen­ate amend­ments, the bill would go to Gov­er­nor Inslee. Oth­er­wise, the bill would go to con­fer­ence, allow­ing the two cham­bers to nego­ti­ate a final com­pro­mise version.

NPI thanks Sen­a­tors Hunt, Kud­er­er, Valdez, and Hasegawa for pri­or­i­tiz­ing this impor­tant, much-need­ed leg­is­la­tion. Their vote today gives this bill a chance to be con­sid­ered by the full Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate between now and March 1st.

Fol­low this link to urge your state sen­a­tor to sup­port HB 1932.

Tuesday, February 20th, 2024

Bill to end child marriage moves to the floor of the Washington State Senate

One of NPI’s pri­or­i­ty bills for the 2024 leg­isla­tive ses­sion is get­ting clos­er to leav­ing the Leg­is­la­ture and head­ing to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk for signature.

House Bill 1455, prime spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier (D‑49th Dis­trict: Clark Coun­ty) would require that both par­ties in a civ­il mar­riage must be at least eigh­teen years of age, putting an end to the abhor­rent prac­tice of child mar­riage, which the U.S. State Depart­ment calls a human rights vio­la­tion. The leg­is­la­tion would make Wash­ing­ton the eleventh state to end child marriage.

HB 1455 was pulled from Rules today and is now on sec­ond read­ing. It just needs to be select­ed for floor action and receive the affir­ma­tive votes of at least , and then its jour­ney through the leg­isla­tive process will be complete.

NPI is work­ing with Unchained At Last, Zon­ta, and the Wash­ing­ton Coali­tion to End Child Mar­riage to pass the bill. I tes­ti­fied in favor of it last month and pre­sent­ed our research show­ing that 80% of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sup­port the bill. Sev­er­al forced mar­riage sur­vivors also spoke at the hear­ing, deliv­er­ing sober­ing and grip­ping tes­ti­mo­ny to a bipar­ti­san pan­el of legislators.

With­in forty-eight hours of when the cham­ber of ori­gin cut­off had passed, the Sen­ate Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee vot­ed to send HB 1455 up to the Rules Com­mit­tee. A major­i­ty offered a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion. Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mike Pad­den and Lyn­da Wil­son vot­ed to refer it with­out recommendation.

The Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, chaired by North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Sam­mamish, Duvall) reject­ed an amend­ment from Pad­den that would have weak­ened the bill.

Pad­den’s amend­ment would have allowed sev­en­teen year olds to mar­ry under cer­tain con­di­tions. NPI opposed this amend­ment — we believe that sev­en­teen year-olds wish­ing to mar­ry can sim­ply wait until they are eigh­teen. This bill does not pre­vent younger cou­ples from get­ting mar­ried in their faith tra­di­tion, it sim­ply estab­lish­es that both par­ties in a mar­riage must be the age of majority.

“Child mar­riage, or mar­riage before age 18, was legal in all 50 U.S. states as of 2017,” a primer from Unchained At Last explains.

“Thanks to Unchained’s relent­less advo­ca­cy, that is chang­ing. Delaware and New Jer­sey in 2018 became the first two states to end this human rights abuse, fol­lowed by Amer­i­can Samoa in 2018, the U.S. Vir­gin Islands, Penn­syl­va­nia and Min­neso­ta in 2020, Rhode Island and New York in 2021, Mass­a­chu­setts in 2022 and Ver­mont, Con­necti­cut and Michi­gan in 2023.”

“How­ev­er, child mar­riage remains legal in 40 states and is hap­pen­ing in the U.S. at an alarm­ing rate: Unchained’s ground­break­ing research revealed that near­ly 300,000 chil­dren as young as 10 were mar­ried in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018 – most­ly girls wed to adult men.”

Unchained’s founder came to Wash­ing­ton State last month for a demon­stra­tion against child mar­riage, which we cov­ered here on NPI’s Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate.

HB 1455 passed the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives unan­i­mous­ly in 2023 but did not receive even a hear­ing in the Sen­ate due to a log­jam of bills. The House passed it unan­i­mous­ly again on the first day of the cur­rent ses­sion, and it is on a glide path to pas­sage in the Sen­ate this time, with NPI’s sup­port. All the Sen­ate needs to do is pass it as-is, and it can be pre­sent­ed to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for signature.

Tuesday, February 20th, 2024

Sam Hunt to retire from the Washington State Legislature after many decades of service

One of Wash­ing­ton State’s longest serv­ing and most beloved state leg­is­la­tors has decid­ed against seek­ing reelec­tion and will retire at the end of this term.

Sen­a­tor Sam Hunt (D‑22nd Dis­trict: Olympia) informed his col­leagues and the pub­lic of his deci­sion today, say­ing he feels it’s time to pass the torch.

“The time has come to let some­body else face the chal­lenge of being a state sen­a­tor,” Hunt said. “I would like to thank the many leg­is­la­tors with whom I have served, as well as the bright and ded­i­cat­ed staff who enable the Leg­is­la­ture to do its work. With­out civil­i­ty among mem­bers work­ing togeth­er and the excel­lent staff, Wash­ing­ton would not be in the great shape we find it today.” 

Hunt was first elect­ed to the House in 2000 and moved over to the Sen­ate in 2016, after Karen Fraser’s retire­ment. He has spent much of his time in the Leg­is­la­ture work­ing on vot­ing jus­tice and access to democracy.

“Dur­ing Hunt’s tenure as chair of the House State Gov­ern­ment and Trib­al Affairs Com­mit­tee and as chair of the Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment and Elec­tions Com­mit­tee, Wash­ing­ton passed land­mark elec­tion leg­is­la­tion,” the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus not­ed in Hunt’s retire­ment announcement. 

“Uni­ver­sal vote-by-mail, the Wash­ing­ton Vot­ing Rights Act, the Native Amer­i­can Vot­ing Rights Act, online and elec­tion day vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, paid return postage for mailed bal­lots, secure state-fund­ed bal­lot drop box­es were all reforms brought about on Hunt’s watch. He also spon­sored and passed leg­is­la­tion to mod­ern­ize Washington’s elec­tions, switch­ing our state from a cau­cus to pri­ma­ry system.” 

“I am par­tic­u­lar­ly proud that under my guid­ance, we have the most secure, accu­rate, and acces­si­ble elec­tion sys­tem in the coun­try,” Hunt said. 

“Wash­ing­ton is a mod­el for oth­er states to fol­low.” 

In a Dear Col­league let­ter, Hunt elab­o­rat­ed on his deci­sion to retire, explain­ing that he has been serv­ing the pub­lic for more than forty years.

My career in Olympia began in 1980 when I came to work for the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate,” Hunt wrote in his let­ter. “I also worked for Gov­er­nor Booth Gard­ner and the Depart­ment of Infor­ma­tion Ser­vices (now part of DES) before being elect­ed to the House of Representatives.”

“Dur­ing my leg­isla­tive tenure I also served on the House Appro­pri­a­tions, Nat­ur­al Resources, Rules, Labor, and K‑12 Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tees and Sen­ate Ear­ly Learn­ing & K‑12 Edu­ca­tion and Ways & Means Committees.”

“In addi­tion, I served 11 years as the chair of the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, start­ing what is the longest con­sec­u­tive time as the major­i­ty par­ty in the House. I was involved in advo­cat­ing for con­sid­er­able civ­il rights mea­sures, includ­ing the state’s land­mark mar­riage equal­i­ty law.”

“We have seen impres­sive increas­es in fund­ing for edu­ca­tion from preschool through high­er edu­ca­tion, includ­ing the Elson Floyd School of Med­i­cine at Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty (Go Cougs!), the sec­ond Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge, a wider Inter­state 5 between Olympia and Seat­tle and improve­ments to I‑90 across Sno­qualmie Pass. The list of major accom­plish­ments is, indeed, very long.

“I would like to thank the many leg­is­la­tors with whom I have served, as well as the bright and ded­i­cat­ed staff who enable the Leg­is­la­ture to do its work. With­out civil­i­ty among mem­bers work­ing togeth­er and the excel­lent staff, Wash­ing­ton would not be in the great shape we find it today.

NPI does a lot of work on elec­toral reform and rev­enue reform because these have pos­i­tive ben­e­fits for a long list of crit­i­cal issues, so we have had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to work with Sen­a­tor Hunt over the years. He is one of the kind­est and most thought­ful leg­is­la­tors we know — an exem­plary lawmaker.

Impor­tant­ly, Sen­a­tor Hunt stood with us in our effort to get rid of Tim Eyman’s mali­cious push polls, which Eyman false­ly called “advi­so­ry votes.”

Thanks to Sen­a­tor Hunt and our prime spon­sor Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er — who has also worked with Hunt for many years as a mem­ber of the Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment & Elec­tions Com­mit­tee — we were able to get that leg­is­la­tion out of the Sen­ate twice. Last year, with the help of our cham­pi­on State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Amy Walen and State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joe Fitzgib­bon, we got the bill to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk and it was signed into law last spring.

Fit­ting­ly, Sen­a­tor Hunt was with us for the bill sign­ing.

He will be missed in the statehouse.

His good humor and good sense is wide­ly appre­ci­at­ed and admired. Sen­a­tor Hunt is a trea­sure, and we wish him the very best as he begins his next chapter.

The 22nd Dis­trict is a pro­gres­sive bas­tion, so the par­ty should have no dif­fi­cul­ty keep­ing the seat in Demo­c­ra­t­ic hands this autumn. Both of Hunt’s House coun­ter­parts are Democ­rats: Jes­si­ca Bate­man and Beth Doglio. One of them may now switch to run­ning for the Sen­ate to take over for Hunt in 2025.

Tuesday, February 20th, 2024

State Representative Jacquelin Maycumber launches campaign for Congress in WA-05

The con­test to suc­ceed retir­ing U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers in Wash­ing­ton’s 5th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict is on.

Today, Repub­li­can State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jacquelin May­cum­ber announced that she will leave the state­house to seek elec­tion to Con­gress this year, declar­ing: “My jour­ney as a moth­er, farmer and for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer has equipped me with a unique blend of expe­ri­ences that I have lever­aged to enhance the qual­i­ty of life for the res­i­dents of East­ern Washington.”

“As a Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­tor cur­rent­ly serv­ing the largest dis­trict in the state, I know the impor­tance of lis­ten­ing to every voice. I am com­mit­ted to engag­ing with com­mu­ni­ties from Repub­lic to Pomeroy, Cusick to Spokane Val­ley, Wal­la Wal­la to Ritzville, and every­where in between. As a farmer, I will con­tin­ue to fight for the voice of rur­al Wash­ing­ton,” May­cum­ber added.

May­cum­ber, forty-four, has rep­re­sent­ed the 7th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict since 2017. Pri­or to becom­ing a law­mak­er, she worked as a leg­isla­tive aide to for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and now Sen­a­tor Shelly Short, who took over for Bri­an Dansel after his res­ig­na­tion to take a job with the Trump regime. May­cum­ber was cho­sen from a list of three names sup­plied by the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty by coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers in the five leg­isla­tive dis­tricts that are in the 7th District.

A fourth gen­er­a­tion landown­er, May­cum­ber lives in the Repub­lic area with her hus­band Mar­ty and three chil­dren. She has a bachelor’s degree in bio­chem­istry and has a back­ground in bio­med­ical research and law enforce­ment. She also has expe­ri­ence in the K‑12 edu­ca­tion are­na as a school board member.

May­cum­ber is part of House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship — she serves as Minor­i­ty Floor Leader, work­ing with State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier (D‑49th Dis­trict: Clark Coun­ty) to man­age floor action. (The major­i­ty par­ty con­trols what hap­pens on the floor, but does so in con­sul­ta­tion with the minor­i­ty party.)

May­cum­ber says her pri­ma­ry focus “will be on ensur­ing our nation’s safe­ty by secur­ing our bor­ders, there­by pro­tect­ing our econ­o­my and com­mu­ni­ties from the threats of human traf­fick­ing and the influx of nar­cotics like Fentanyl.”

She is also opposed to breach­ing the Snake Riv­er dams that block fish pas­sage. “Secur­ing the Snake Riv­er dams is cru­cial for ener­gy pro­duc­tion, agri­cul­ture and trans­porta­tion,” her cam­paign announce­ment con­tends. “These dams play a sig­nif­i­cant role in pro­vid­ing hydro­elec­tric pow­er, irri­ga­tion and facil­i­tat­ing nav­i­ga­tion for trans­porta­tion. There­fore, ensur­ing the secu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of these dams is vital for the over­all well-being and devel­op­ment of the region they serve and I promise to con­tin­ue fight­ing to pro­tect them.”

May­cum­ber says she is endorsed by the fol­low­ing peo­ple and groups at the out­set of her cam­paign for Congress:

  • Spokane Coun­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Fire­fight­ers, IAFF Local 2916
  • Coun­ty Sher­iffs Fer­ry Coun­ty Ray­mond May­cum­ber, Stevens Coun­ty Brad Manke, and Pend Oreille Coun­ty Glenn Blakeslee
  • Stevens Coun­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Fire­fight­ers, IAFF Local 4333
  • 7th Dis­trict State Sen­a­tor Shelly Short
  • 7th Dis­trict Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joel Kretz
  • 8th Dis­trict State Sen­a­tor Matt Boehnke
  • 8th Dis­trict State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive April Connors
  • 16th State Dis­trict Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mark Klick­er and Skyler Rude
  • Spokane Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Chair Mary Kuney
  • Spokane Coun­ty Clerk Tim Fitzgerald
  • Spokane Val­ley City Coun­cil Al Markel
  • Curt Holmes Kalispel Tribe vice-chair
  • The Kalispel Tribe
  • Doreen and Alice Moran Pend Oreille County
  • Bri­an Whitely
  • Andrew and Danielle Holstine
  • Pend Oreille Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er John Gentle
  • Grant and Lin­da Peter­son, for­mer Asso­ciate FEMA Direc­tor con­firmed under two pres­i­dents, for­mer Spokane Coun­ty Commissioner
  • May­or of Chewe­lah Gre­go­ry McCunn
  • Deer Park City Coun­cil Bil­ly Costello
  • Pend Oreille Coun­ty Audi­tor Mar­i­anne Nichols
  • Bob Gumm, Vet­er­ans Ser­vice Officer
  • Nick Richard­son, Vet­er­ans Advisor
  • Ray Liv­ingston, wildlife con­trol oper­a­tor, TV personality

The 5th Dis­trict is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be “Safe Repub­li­can” turf. It is Wash­ing­ton’s east­ern­most con­gres­sion­al dis­trict, which rarely votes for Democ­rats or pro­gres­sive caus­es. The last Demo­c­rat to rep­re­sent the 5th was the ven­er­a­ble Speak­er Tom Foley, the only Speak­er in Unit­ed States his­to­ry to be from the State of Wash­ing­ton. Foley lost his reelec­tion bid in 1994 to Repub­li­can George Nether­cutt. Nether­cutt chal­lenged Pat­ty Mur­ray ten years lat­er and lost, end­ing his time in Con­gress. He was replaced by McMor­ris Rodgers, who in 2001 had become the House Minor­i­ty Leader in the Wash­ing­ton State House.

McMor­ris Rodgers earned 60% of the vote in her first con­gres­sion­al cam­paign, trounc­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic rival Don Bar­bi­eri. In sub­se­quent cycles, she usu­al­ly matched or exceed­ed that, though in 2018, she only man­aged to get 55% of the vote against Lisa Brown, who is now serv­ing as May­or of Spokane after she defeat­ed McMor­ris Rodgers ally Nadine Wood­ward in a hard fought election.

Three oth­er can­di­dates have filed with the Fed­er­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion to run for Con­gress in WA-05 this cycle: Repub­li­can John Guen­ther, Demo­c­rat Carmela Con­roy, and Demo­c­rat Ann Marie Dan­imus. Guen­ther has only raised $5,872.24 so far. Con­roy has raised $72,270.49 and Dan­imus has raised $103,575.80.

If no oth­er cred­i­ble Repub­li­can files, May­cum­ber would be favored to win the seat. But it’s been two decades since WA-05 was an open seat, and it would­n’t be sur­pris­ing if one or two more cred­i­ble Repub­li­can can­di­dates were to jump in.

Monday, February 19th, 2024

Senator Maria Cantwell widens lead over Republican rival Raul Garcia to sixteen points

Democ­rats in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate face a tough map to keep con­trol of Con­gress’ upper cham­ber this autumn, with twen­ty-three seats to defend, but one state they prob­a­bly don’t have to wor­ry about hold­ing is Wash­ing­ton, where Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell’s path to reelec­tion appears to be get­ting even easier.

53% of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers sur­veyed last week for NPI said they would sup­port Cantwell if the elec­tion for U.S. Sen­ate were being held now. 37% said they would sup­port Gar­cia, Cantwell’s expect­ed Repub­li­can gen­er­al elec­tion oppo­nent. Anoth­er 10% were not sure.

That six­teen point advan­tage is the biggest spread we’ve found for Sen­a­tor Cantwell so far this cycle, and it’s sev­en points wider than the spread between Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray and Repub­li­can chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley that we found two years ago… a poll that the NRSC liked so much, they put out a press release tout­ing it. (I rather doubt they’ll be pro­mot­ing this finding.)

Cantwell’s only tight race thus far as a Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor was her first, when she top­pled Slade Gor­ton in 2000 in a close con­test. She was reelect­ed eas­i­ly in 2006, 2012, and 2018, all wave years for Democ­rats in Wash­ing­ton State.

In the Sen­ate, Cantwell has focused on envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, reg­u­lat­ing deriv­a­tives and oth­er com­plex finan­cial instru­ments, and strength­en­ing the coun­try’s infra­struc­ture. She is a key archi­tect of the CHIPS and Sci­ence Act, and cur­rent­ly chairs the pow­er­ful Com­merce Com­mit­tee. Her office often orga­nizes events to bring togeth­er sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists, and busi­ness lead­ers to dis­cuss issues like space explo­ration or arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI).

Sen­a­tor Cantwell is known for being one of the few in the Sen­ate who real­ly under­stands tech­nol­o­gy issues, along with Ore­gon’s Ron Wyden; the duo stood strong against harm­ful bills like SOPA and PIPA ear­ly on. Fit­ting­ly, she is one of the first elect­ed offi­cials ever to have guest post­ed on NPI’s Cas­ca­dia Advocate.

Repub­li­can Raul Gar­cia, who was run­ning for gov­er­nor until he yield­ed to Dave Reichert, is like­ly to be Cantwell’s gen­er­al elec­tion opponent.

Gar­cia has the back­ing of a lot of promi­nent Repub­li­cans: leg­endary for­mer Gov­er­nor Dan Evans, Dino Rossi, Rob McKen­na, Sam Reed, Ralph Munro, and of course Reichert. Dozens of Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tors and local elect­ed offi­cials have also endorsed him. But although Gar­cia has man­aged to get the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty appa­ra­tus to coa­lesce around his cam­paign, he’s not gen­er­at­ing the sort of buzz or media inter­est that Tiffany Smi­ley did last cycle.

Nor is Gar­cia rais­ing much mon­ey. He has so far raised a mere $244,241.96, which is utter­ly dwarfed by Cantwell’s $9+ mil­lion in receipts. Repub­li­cans are not excit­ed­ly tout­ing him as the can­di­date who will end Sen­a­tor Cantwell’s run in the Sen­ate. Part­ly that’s because the par­ty seems to have oth­er pri­or­i­ties, like elect­ing Reichert or pass­ing Bri­an Hey­wood and Jim Wal­sh’s slate of initiatives.

That’s a dynam­ic Democ­rats are hap­py to accept.

Here’s the ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Unit­ed States Sen­ate were being held today and the can­di­dates were Demo­c­rat Maria Cantwell and Repub­li­can Raul Gar­cia, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

  • Maria Cantwell: 53% (+2% since November)
  • Raul Gar­cia: 37% (-1% since November)
  • Not sure: 10% (-1% since November)

Our sur­vey of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 13th through Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th, 2023.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (42%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (58%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

NPI and PPP have worked togeth­er for a decade and have a track record of excel­lence, as detailed in this 2022 elec­toral polling recap and this 2020 one.

Insights from the crosstabs

Vot­ers who iden­ti­fy as female are par­tic­u­lar­ly enthu­si­as­tic about Cantwell’s reelec­tion — 65% of them pre­fer her, while only 26% pre­fer Garcia.

Among vot­ers of col­or, Cantwell also has an advan­tage. 63% of them pre­fer Cantwell, while only 22% would vote for Garcia.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are almost uni­form­ly behind Cantwell. 92% of self-iden­ti­fied Democ­rats want Cantwell, while 88% of self-iden­ti­fied Repub­li­cans back Gar­cia. Inde­pen­dents, mean­while, are split between Cantwell and Garcia.

With respect to age, the youngest and old­est vot­ers in the elec­torate are Cantwell’s strongest groups, just as they are for Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

The trend so far this cycle, visualized

Below you can see all of our pre­vi­ous find­ings for this con­test plotted.

More U.S. Senate polling to come

We plan to poll this race again in the spring­time, after Fil­ing Week, and we’ll see where the con­test stands at that time.

Monday, February 19th, 2024

Presidential Greatness Project’s 2024 survey finds Lincoln is the best, Trump is the worst

Yes­ter­day, in the lead-up to Pres­i­dents Day, two pro­fes­sors of polit­i­cal sci­ence unveiled the lat­est incar­na­tion of the Pres­i­den­tial Great­ness Expert Sur­vey, which is a com­pre­hen­sive effort to rank all of the pres­i­dents of the Unit­ed States.

Con­duct­ed online via Qualtrics from Novem­ber 15 to Decem­ber 31, 2023, the sur­vey, helmed by Bran­don Rot­ting­haus from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton and Justin S. Vaughn from Coastal Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty, engaged 154 experts, includ­ing mem­bers of the Pres­i­dents & Exec­u­tive Pol­i­tics Sec­tion of the Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion and schol­ars with recent pub­li­ca­tions in rel­e­vant aca­d­e­m­ic out­lets. With a response rate of 29.3%, the sur­vey offers insights into how experts assess the per­for­mance of U.S. pres­i­dents through­out history.

Par­tic­i­pants were tasked with rat­ing each pres­i­dent on a scale of 0 to 100, reflect­ing over­all great­ness, with 0 rep­re­sent­ing fail­ure, 50 indi­cat­ing aver­age per­for­mance, and 100 sig­ni­fy­ing great­ness. The orga­niz­ers then aver­aged the rat­ings for each pres­i­dent and ranked them from high­est aver­age to low­est. This is the third time the sur­vey has been orga­nized; the last one was in 2018.

Abra­ham Lin­coln once again emerged as the top-ranked pres­i­dent, with an aver­age rat­ing of 95.03, fol­lowed close­ly by Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt and George Wash­ing­ton. Notable changes include Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt’s ascent to the sec­ond posi­tion from last year’s third spot and Dwight Eisen­how­er’s decline to eighth place. Don­ald Trump appro­pri­ate­ly received the low­est rat­ing, with James Buchanan, Andrew John­son, Franklin Pierce, William Hen­ry Har­ri­son, and War­ren Hard­ing ranked just above him in the bot­tom tier of presidents.

Joe Biden, the coun­try’s cur­rent pres­i­dent, was includ­ed in the sur­vey and was ranked four­teenth over­all by the schol­ars who participated.

“Pro­po­nents of the Biden pres­i­den­cy have strong argu­ments in their arse­nal, but his high place­ment with­in the top 15 sug­gests a pow­er­ful anti-Trump fac­tor at work,” said Rot­ting­haus and Vaughn in a guest essay for the Los Ange­les Times. “So far, Biden’s record does not include the mil­i­tary vic­to­ries or insti­tu­tion­al expan­sion that have typ­i­cal­ly dri­ven high­er rank­ings, and a fam­i­ly scan­dal such as the one involv­ing his son Hunter nor­mal­ly dimin­ish­es a president’s ranking.

“Biden’s most impor­tant achieve­ments may be that he res­cued the pres­i­den­cy from Trump, resumed a more tra­di­tion­al style of pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship and is gear­ing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall.”

There were more changes in the mid­dle than in the top or bot­tom tiers.

“What is most note­wor­thy about the remain­ing pres­i­dents con­cerns who has risen and fall­en over time,” said Rot­ting­haus and Vaughn in a statement.

“Since our ini­tial sur­vey, sev­er­al pres­i­dents have had sig­nif­i­cant changes in their rank­ings. Barack Oba­ma has risen 9 places (from #16 to #7), as has Ulysses S. Grant (from #26 to #17), while Andrew Jack­son has fall­en 12 places (from #9 to #21) and Calvin Coolidge has dropped 7 spots (from #27 to #34).”

Their full press release and rank­ings can be found below:

Pres­i­den­tial great­ness white paper

My commentary and rankings

I like the schol­ars’ cur­rent top four choic­es, and I also agree that Buchanan and Trump should rank at the bot­tom. As for the mid­dle, I’d order the pres­i­dents a bit dif­fer­ent­ly than the schol­ars did collectively.

Rank­ing all of the pres­i­dents is not a sim­ple exer­cise. To do it knowl­edge­ably, you’ve sim­ply got to know your Amer­i­can his­to­ry. But even if you do know your his­to­ry, there’s still a lot of con­sid­er­a­tions to weigh. Luck­i­ly, I had an expert I could eas­i­ly turn to for help mak­ing deci­sions. After con­sult­ing with my father, a retired teacher of Advanced Place­ment (AP) Amer­i­can his­to­ry, I came up with the fol­low­ing list. I may revise it in the future, but right now, I’m hap­py with it.

Here it is, for your enjoy­ment on this Pres­i­dents Day 2024.

The American Presidents ranked, from best to worst

Note that for each Pres­i­dent, I’ve pro­vid­ed a short com­men­tary focus­ing on what they did or did­n’t do in office. These com­men­taries focus on their tenures, rather than what they did before becom­ing Pres­i­dent or after leav­ing office. 

  1. Abra­ham Lin­coln — Eman­ci­pat­ed Black Amer­i­cans in bondage and saved the Union by defeat­ing the Con­fed­er­ate rebel­lion with a “Team of Rivals” cab­i­net that brought togeth­er Democ­rats and Republicans.
  2. Franklin D. Roo­sevelt — Res­cued the nation from the Great Depres­sion, cre­at­ed Social Secu­ri­ty, helped allies fight­ing fas­cism, and led Amer­i­ca to vic­to­ry through much of World War II in mul­ti­ple theaters.
  3. George Wash­ing­ton — Over­saw the suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment of the first pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion in his­to­ry and set a long-fol­lowed two-term prece­dent while ably man­ag­ing the new coun­try’s for­eign relations.
  4. Theodore Roo­sevelt — Pro­tect­ed many majes­tic and wild places for future gen­er­a­tions, nego­ti­at­ed an end to Rus­so-Japan­ese war, broke up bad trusts, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved the safe­ty of food and medicine.
  5. Lyn­don B. John­son — Strength­ened Amer­i­ca with Medicare, the Civ­il Rights Act, Vot­ing Rights Act, and the Great Soci­ety, but sad­ly also deep­ened Amer­i­ca’s destruc­tive entan­gle­ment in Vietnam.
  6. Har­ry S. Tru­man — Led the coun­try out of World War II and worked to turn ene­mies into allies with the Mar­shall Plan, while also stand­ing up to com­mu­nism around the world with the Berlin Air­lift and defense of Korea.
  7. Thomas Jef­fer­son — Pro­hib­it­ed the slave trade, fought the Bar­bary pirates, peace­ful­ly acquired the Louisiana Ter­ri­to­ry and sent Lewis and Clark to explore it, but also imple­ment­ed the cost­ly Embar­go Act.
  8. John F. Kennedy — Estab­lished the Peace Corps and the suc­cess­ful Apol­lo moon land­ing pro­gram, avert­ed cat­a­stro­phe by peace­ful­ly resolv­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, signed the first nuclear weapons treaty.
  9. Dwight D. Eisen­how­er — Nego­ti­at­ed an armistice in Korea that remains in effect today, enforced court orders to inte­grate schools, devel­oped the Inter­state High­way sys­tem, but covert­ly orches­trat­ed sev­er­al coups abroad.
  10. Joe Biden — Over­saw Amer­i­ca’s recov­ery from COVID-19, worked with Con­gress to invest tril­lions of dol­lars into crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, cli­mate action, and health­care; diver­si­fied the fed­er­al judiciary.
  11. Barack Oba­ma — Got Amer­i­ca back on its feet after the Great Reces­sion had knocked the coun­try down, signed the land­mark Patient Pro­tec­tion Act, nego­ti­at­ed New START treaty, Paris cli­mate accords, and JCPOA with Iran.
  12. William Howard Taft — Secured pas­sage of a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to ensure the future of the fed­er­al income tax, set­tled dis­putes with France and the U.K. through arbi­tra­tion, con­tin­ued Roo­sevelt’s antitrust campaign.
  13. Woodrow Wil­son — Signed Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion and Clay­ton Antitrust Act; reluc­tant­ly led Amer­i­ca into World War I on the side of the vic­to­ri­ous Allies, but failed to per­suade Con­gress to join League of Nations.
  14. Bill Clin­ton — Advanced peace in North­ern Ire­land and the Mid­dle East, signed Brady Bill, and expand­ed EITC, but unwise­ly tri­an­gu­lat­ed on many issues, includ­ing trade, crime, LGBTQ+ rights, and finan­cial deregulation.
  15. John Adams — Known for being the first to peace­ful­ly trans­fer pow­er after los­ing the pres­i­den­cy, he signed the Alien and Sedi­tion Acts, fought an unde­clared war with France, and worked to build a strong U.S. Navy.
  16. Jim­my Carter — Cham­pi­oned con­ser­va­tion and solar ener­gy, advanced peace through the Camp David Accords, and returned the Pana­ma Canal, but strug­gled to con­front “stagfla­tion” and end the Iran hostage crisis.
  17. James Madi­son — Took the Unit­ed States into an unnec­es­sary war with the Unit­ed King­dom (the War of 1812) but did pre­side over a very effec­tive post­war peri­od of leg­is­lat­ing in coop­er­a­tion with the 14th Congress.
  18. James Mon­roe — Per­haps best known for the Mon­roe Doc­trine, he acquired Flori­da, pur­sued the demil­i­ta­riza­tion of the U.S.-Canadian bor­der, nego­ti­at­ed the Rus­so-Amer­i­can treaty of 1924, and dealt with a panic.
  19. Ulysses S. Grant — He effec­tive­ly defend­ed the civ­il rights of freed Black Amer­i­cans dur­ing Recon­struc­tion, sign­ing a bill cre­at­ing the Jus­tice Depart­ment and fight­ing the Ku Klux Klan, but strug­gled with corruption.
  20. Grover Cleve­land — The only Amer­i­can so far to serve non-con­sec­u­tive terms as Pres­i­dent, he fos­tered Navy mod­ern­iza­tion while butting heads with Con­gress and fail­ing to pro­tect work­ers dur­ing a time of labor strife.
  21. William McKin­ley — A pro­po­nent of the gold stan­dard and a busi­ness sym­pa­thiz­er, he took Amer­i­ca into a short war with Spain and pro­mot­ed tar­iffs to pro­tect domes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing pri­or to his assassination.
  22. James K. Polk — Known for doing what he said he’d do, he took the coun­try in and out of war with Mex­i­co, cre­at­ed the Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or, and nego­ti­at­ed a set­tle­ment over Ore­gon coun­try with the U.K.
  23. Chester A. Arthur — Signed the Chi­nese Exclu­sion Act after veto­ing its ini­tial incar­na­tion, but also cham­pi­oned civ­il ser­vice reform through the Pendle­ton Civ­il Ser­vice Reform Act of 1883 and the rebirth of the Navy.
  24. Ben­jamin Har­ri­son — Presided over the admis­sion of six west­ern states, includ­ing Wash­ing­ton, signed the Sher­man Antitrust Act, and imple­ment­ed the McKin­ley Tar­iff, but strug­gled to empow­er Black Americans.
  25. John Quin­cy Adams — Elect­ed by the U.S. House after the Elec­toral Col­lege dead­locked, he could­n’t get much done dur­ing his sin­gle term, but he sup­port­ed wom­en’s and indige­nous rights and opposed slavery.
  26. Ger­ald R. Ford — Unwise­ly par­doned Richard Nixon and inef­fec­tive­ly tried to com­bat ris­ing infla­tion with gim­micks instead of good poli­cies, but he did sup­port the Equal Rights Amend­ment and advance arms con­trol dialogue.
  27. George H.W. Bush — Pro­vid­ed steady lead­er­ship when the Berlin Wall fell and signed the Amer­i­cans With Dis­abil­i­ties Act, but also invad­ed Pana­ma, inter­vened in the Gulf War, and strug­gled to address a recession.
  28. James A. Garfield — Purged cor­rup­tion in the Post Office and pro­posed major civ­il ser­vice reforms that Con­gress adopt­ed in 1883 but failed to address ris­ing eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty and inequity before his assassination.
  29. Ruther­ford B. Hayes — End­ed Recon­struc­tion as a con­di­tion of a deal that made him Pres­i­dent and deployed the U.S Army to break a rail­road strike while also harm­ing trib­al nations with forced assim­i­la­tion policies.
  30. Andrew Jack­son — Unjust­ly dis­placed thou­sands of Native Amer­i­cans from their ances­tral homes and trig­gered a pan­ic by killing the Bank of the Unit­ed States while facil­i­tat­ing the enfran­chise­ment of “the com­mon man.”
  31. Mar­tin Van Buren — Strug­gled to address the Pan­ic of 1837 that was caused by his pre­de­ces­sor’s poli­cies and con­tin­ued oppress­ing Native Amer­i­cans through con­flicts like the Sec­ond Semi­nole War.
  32. Zachary Tay­lor — Died in office hav­ing failed to com­plete a sin­gle term or achieve any major progress for the coun­try, though he did secure rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Clay­ton-Bul­w­er Treaty with the Unit­ed Kingdom.
  33. John Tyler — Though he alien­at­ed his par­ty and became polit­i­cal­ly home­less after tak­ing over from William Hen­ry Har­ri­son, he worked to stop ocean­ic African slave traf­fick­ing under the Web­ster-Ash­bur­ton Treaty.
  34. Ronald Rea­gan — Respon­si­ble for Iran-con­tra scan­dal, imple­ment­ed harm­ful eco­nom­ic dereg­u­la­tion, inef­fec­tive­ly respond­ed to AIDS epi­dem­ic, but did even­tu­al­ly find an arms con­trol part­ner in Mikhail Gorbachev.
  35. William Hen­ry Har­ri­son — He hard­ly did any­thing because he was only Pres­i­dent for a few weeks, so some schol­ars might argue he should­n’t be ranked at all, but includ­ing him for com­plete­ness makes sense.
  36. Calvin Coolidge — Sup­port­ed wom­en’s suf­frage and racial equal­i­ty, but his harm­ful “lais­sez-faire” eco­nom­ic poli­cies set the stage for one of the worst eco­nom­ic calamites in mod­ern times: the Great Depression.
  37. Her­bert Hoover — Coolidge’s suc­ces­sor, deserved­ly known for an inef­fec­tive, uncar­ing response to the Depres­sion, includ­ing the refusal to pro­vide ear­ly cash redemp­tion of vet­er­ans’ ser­vice bonus certificates.
  38. Andrew John­son — Lin­col­n’s suc­ces­sor botched Recon­struc­tion and end­ed up feud­ing with his own par­ty in Con­gress, becom­ing the first pres­i­dent to find him­self impeached by the House of Representatives.
  39. Mil­lard Fill­more — Sup­port­ed the dis­as­trous Com­pro­mise of 1850, includ­ing the Fugi­tive Slave Act, and empha­sized anti-immi­gra­tion and anti-Catholic poli­cies after tak­ing over from Zachary Taylor.
  40. War­ren G. Hard­ing — Made bad per­son­nel deci­sions that result­ed in cor­rup­tion and scan­dals like Teapot Dome, refused to join the League of Nations, and imple­ment­ed an inef­fec­tive dis­ar­ma­ment agreement.
  41. Richard Nixon — Sev­er­al very pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy achieve­ments for a Repub­li­can pres­i­dent, but he per­pe­trat­ed atroc­i­ties abroad with Kissinger in South­east Asia and dam­aged the pres­i­den­cy with scan­dals like Watergate.
  42. George W. Bush — Ignored intel­li­gence sug­gest­ing al Qae­da would strike the U.S., launched unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, cut tax­es for the wealthy, and did not effec­tive­ly respond when the Great Reces­sion hit.
  43. Franklin Pierce — Opposed the abo­li­tion­ist move­ment, nixed the Mis­souri Com­pro­mise through the Kansas-Nebras­ka Act, enforced the immoral Fugi­tive Slave Act, and lost so much sup­port that he was­n’t renominated.
  44. James Buchanan — Backed the Supreme Court’s hor­rif­ic Dred Scott deci­sion as well as South­ern schem­ing to admit Kansas into the Union as a slave state and failed to con­front the Con­fed­er­ate insurrection.
  45. Don­ald Trump — Failed to effec­tive­ly respond to the onset of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, ran a hor­rif­i­cal­ly cor­rupt regime that flout­ed ethics laws and vio­lat­ed polit­i­cal norms, and irre­spon­si­bly cut tax­es for the wealthy.

The schol­ars were just a lit­tle too char­i­ta­ble to Richard Nixon and way too char­i­ta­ble to George W. Bush, and I don’t think either Har­ri­son deserves to be ranked below Hard­ing, Fill­more, Hoover, Coolidge, or Nixon. But for the most part, their rank­ings are quite defen­si­ble. These sorts of eval­u­a­tions are inher­ent­ly opin­ion­at­ed, but this sur­vey pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for build­ing consensus.

Amer­i­ca has had a lot of what I con­sid­er to be mediocre pres­i­dents, which in my esti­ma­tion out­num­ber both the real­ly good and real­ly bad ones.

Our cur­rent pres­i­dent, Joe Biden, gets a lot of neg­a­tive and unflat­ter­ing media cov­er­age, and faces an oppo­si­tion (espe­cial­ly a Repub­li­can Par­ty no longer com­mit­ted to repub­li­can­ism) that is less loy­al to democ­ra­cy than any oth­er in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry, but he has nev­er­the­less achieved a lot. His pres­i­den­cy is still ongo­ing, so a prop­er appraisal of his lega­cy is not yet possible.

If Biden can pre­vent Trump’s return and con­tin­ue strength­en­ing the coun­try despite all that he faces, future his­to­ri­ans may rank him as one of the great­est pres­i­dents, along­side Lin­coln, FDR, Wash­ing­ton, and Ted­dy Roosevelt.

Friday, February 16th, 2024

Joe Biden’s 2024 lead over Donald Trump in Washington State rebounds to sixteen points

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has slight­ly widened his lead over pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump in the Ever­green State with eight months to go until bal­lots get mailed out to in-state vot­ers, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s lat­est sur­vey of the like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton elec­torate has found.

54% of 789 like­ly vot­ers sur­veyed Feb­ru­ary 13th-14th, 2024 by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute said they would vote for Biden if the elec­tion were being held today, while 38% said they would vote for Trump. Anoth­er 8% were not sure. It’s Biden’s best per­cent­age so far this cycle in our Wash­ing­ton State polling — bet­ter than the 53% he got last June, and bet­ter than the 52% Biden got in Novem­ber in head-to-head matchups with Trump.

The Ever­green State has been a Demo­c­ra­t­ic bas­tion for a rather long time. It last vot­ed for a Repub­li­can for Pres­i­dent in the 1980s, when Ronald Rea­gan was the Grand Old Par­ty’s nom­i­nee. Since then, it has vot­ed for Democ­rats, often by fair­ly lop­sided mar­gins. Michael Dukakis, Bill Clin­ton, Al Gore, John Ker­ry, Barack Oba­ma, and Hillary Clin­ton all won Wash­ing­ton State, as did the Biden-Har­ris tick­et four years ago. And no cred­i­ble polit­i­cal observ­er expects that to change.

Wash­ing­ton may not be a bat­tle­ground state, but that has nev­er stopped us from ask­ing peo­ple who they’re sup­port­ing for Pres­i­dent. It’s use­ful, fas­ci­nat­ing data to have, and we’re glad to be able to share it pub­licly with you, our readers.

Here’s the exact text of the ques­tions we asked and the responses:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States were being held today, would you vote for Demo­c­rat Joe Biden or Repub­li­can Don­ald Trump?

ANSWERS:

  • Joe Biden: 54%
  • Don­ald Trump: 38%
  • Not sure: 8%

Our sur­vey of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 13th through Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th, 2023.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (42%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (58%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

NPI and PPP have worked togeth­er for a decade and have a track record of excel­lence, as detailed in this 2022 elec­toral polling recap and this 2020 one.

Insights from our crosstabs

Because we ask our respon­dents who they sup­port­ed in the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, we always have 2020 pres­i­den­tial vote crosstabs avail­able to look at. As you might expect, pret­ty much every­one who vot­ed for Biden last time is pre­pared to do so again, and the same is true for Trump voters.

How­ev­er, we noticed that in this sur­vey, there are more Biden vot­ers will­ing to stick with Biden than Trump vot­ers will­ing to stick with Trump, and that Trump has an advan­tage among those who vot­ed for some­one else or did not vote.

Take a look:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States were being held today, would you vote for Demo­c­rat Joe Biden or Repub­li­can Don­ald Trump?

ANSWERS BY 2020 PRESIDENTIAL VOTE:

  • 2020 Biden voters 
    • Joe Biden: 92%
    • Don­ald Trump: 2%
    • Not sure: 6%
  • 2020 Trump voters 
    • Joe Biden: 4%
    • Don­ald Trump: 90%
    • Not sure: 6%
  • Some­one else / did not vote 
    • Joe Biden: 16%
    • Don­ald Trump: 46%
    • Not sure: 38%

With respect to par­ty, Democ­rats are more unit­ed behind Biden than Repub­li­cans are for Trump. 93% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are back­ing Biden, where­as only 89% of Repub­li­can vot­ers are. Self-iden­ti­fied inde­pen­dents are about even­ly split: 41% for Biden, 42% for Trump, and 17% are not sure.

And, in more good news for Biden, Wash­ing­ton’s youngest vot­ers still sup­port his reelec­tion by about a 2:1 mar­gin, despite his han­dling of the con­flict between Israel and Hamas in the Mid­dle East. 66% of respon­dents ages eigh­teen to twen­ty-nine are for Biden and 34% are for Trump, with none unde­cid­ed — the only age group that did­n’t have a “not sure” response in this poll.

Biden does about as well with seniors: 62% of those above the age of six­ty-five are in Biden’s camp and only 32% pre­fer Trump. Trump’s strongest age group are Gen Xers and younger boomers, but even a plu­ral­i­ty of them pre­fer Biden.

In a sig­nif­i­cant diver­gence from our last sur­vey, we also found Pres­i­dent Biden with a lead among vot­ers with only a high school education.

In our Novem­ber poll, Trump had a ten point advan­tage, with 49% sup­port among that group. But in this poll, he’s at 45% and Biden has a plu­ral­i­ty lead of 48%, with 7% unde­cid­ed. Biden also has a nar­row lead over Trump among vot­ers who’ve tak­en some col­lege cours­es but did not fin­ish (47% to 45%) and those with two-year degrees (48% to 42%). Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Biden’s sup­port is in the six­ties with vot­ers who have four-year degrees (62% to Trump’s 30%) and among vot­ers with post­grad­u­ate degrees (69% to Trump’s 22%).

As before, Biden leads in all geo­graph­ic regions of Wash­ing­ton State except for East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton, where Trump has major­i­ty support.

Biden also has a lead with vot­ers in every income brack­et in our survey.

Trump’s strength with Republican voters nationally could be helping President Biden and Democrats locally

Don­ald Trump has won nom­i­nat­ing con­tests in each of the states that has held a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry or cau­cus thus far, and now appears head­ed for a third con­sec­u­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion this sum­mer. But his strength with Repub­li­can vot­ers seems to be work­ing to Pres­i­dent Biden’s advan­tage, at least here in Wash­ing­ton State, as his over­all sup­port is going up and he’s doing much bet­ter with a key con­stituen­cy — vot­ers with only a high school education.

Many in state Repub­li­can cir­cles des­per­ate­ly want to define the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial and guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions on their terms, and they’re hop­ing a slate of six ini­tia­tives fund­ed by megadonor Bri­an Hey­wood will help them do it.

But with Trump promis­ing to be a dic­ta­tor on day one and encour­ag­ing Rus­sia to do what­ev­er it wants to Amer­i­ca’s NATO allies, the 2024 elec­tion is pret­ty much guar­an­teed to be anoth­er bat­tle for the soul of the nation. Repub­li­cans appear stuck with Trump, and NPI has over half a decade of state and local polling that makes it abun­dant­ly clear Trump and his pol­i­tics are utter­ly abhor­rent to a major­i­ty of vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State. Trump’s pres­ence atop the tick­et is like­ly to be a seri­ous prob­lem for Repub­li­cans run­ning down­bal­lot this year.

When spring rolls around, we’ll check in again and see where the race stands. Between now and then, we’ll get some data from Wash­ing­ton’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry — a unique event in state pol­i­tics that only hap­pens every four years — and that will give us more num­bers to exam­ine as the con­ven­tions approach.

Friday, February 16th, 2024

Bob Ferguson overtakes Dave Reichert in NPI’s first gubernatorial poll of 2024

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son has jumped ahead of for­mer Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Dave Reichert in NPI’s first guber­na­to­r­i­al poll of 2024 and fourth over­all of the cycle, open­ing up a four point head-to-head lead after pre­vi­ous­ly trail­ing Reichert by two points in our Novem­ber 2023 survey.

Asked this week who they would vote for in a two-way race if the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion were being held today, 46% of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers said they’d back Fer­gu­son, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic fron­trun­ner, who is endorsed by out­go­ing Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell. 42% said they would vote for Reichert, the Repub­li­can fron­trun­ner. 11% were not sure.

In Novem­ber, it was Reichert who gar­nered 46%, with Fer­gu­son at 44%. But with 2024 hav­ing final­ly arrived, our lat­est research sug­gests the dynam­ics are shift­ing. Reichert’s pri­or advan­tage was due to Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers’ inter­est in his can­di­da­cy. That has waned: Few­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers indi­cat­ed in this sur­vey that they would vote for Reichert if the elec­tion were being held now. Instead, Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers  are more uni­form­ly coa­lesc­ing behind Fer­gu­son as the par­ty’s stan­dard bearer.

Fer­gu­son has held statewide office since 2013. He won three con­sec­u­tive cam­paigns for Attor­ney Gen­er­al pri­or to enter­ing the guber­na­to­r­i­al race when incum­bent Jay Inslee announced he would­n’t seek an unprece­dent­ed fourth term.

Reichert served for over a decade in Con­gress, rep­re­sent­ing Wash­ing­ton’s 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. He went unde­feat­ed in all of his con­gres­sion­al cam­paigns, but Democ­rats picked up the 8th with Dr. Kim Schri­er fol­low­ing his retire­ment in 2018. Reichert con­tem­plat­ed run­ning against Inslee in 2016 and 2020, but opt­ed against it. With the seat now open, how­ev­er, Reichert has entered the are­na.

While Fer­gu­son and Reichert are their respec­tive par­ty’s fron­trun­ners, they have com­pe­ti­tion. They are each fac­ing one rival from with­in their par­ty who has raised a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey and meets the cri­te­ria that we have pre­vi­ous­ly estab­lished for inclu­sion in our 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al polling. In Fer­gu­son’s case, that is State Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let, and in Reichert’s case, it is for­mer Rich­land school board mem­ber Semi Bird, who was oust­ed in a recall last summer.

Accord­ing­ly, we also asked our respon­dents a four-way ques­tion as well, which actu­al­ly pre­ced­ed the head-to-head ques­tion in our sur­vey. In that ques­tion, we found an eight point lead for Fer­gu­son, with 35% of respon­dents say­ing they’d vote for him if the August Top Two elec­tion were being held now, 27% pre­fer­ring Reichert, 9% pre­fer­ring Bird, and 4% pre­fer­ring Mul­let. 25% were not sure.

NPI poll finding: 2024 Washington State gubernatorial race as of February 2024 (four candidate field)

Visu­al­iza­tion of the first part of NPI’s Feb­ru­ary 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al poll find­ing, which asked respon­dents about a field of four can­di­dates (North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute)

Fer­gu­son and Reichert were tied in the four-way ques­tion back in Novem­ber, so Fer­gu­son’s eight-point lead here is a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment in the race.

Our cri­te­ria for inclu­sion in the Top Two guber­na­to­r­i­al ques­tion is as follows:

  • Must be an offi­cial­ly declared can­di­date for the office who has filed a C1 with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (PDC)
  • Must have declared an affil­i­a­tion with a major par­ty (the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty or the Repub­li­can Party)
  • Must have report­ed rais­ing at least $50,000 in ear­ly mon­ey for their cur­rent guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign or have pre­vi­ous­ly raised at least $250,000 in a pri­or cam­paign for any state-lev­el office, or both

Fer­gu­son, Reichert, Mul­let, and Bird are the only can­di­dates for gov­er­nor who meet this cri­te­ria out of more than a dozen who have filed, so the field was lim­it­ed to them. As the data shows, nei­ther of them is gain­ing any trac­tion. In fact, they’ve both slipped by a smidgen: Bird went from 10% in June and Novem­ber of 2023 to 9% in this sur­vey, and Mul­let went from 5% to 4%.

Polls aren’t pre­dic­tive — I feel I’m oblig­ed to say that every time we release a major elec­toral poll find­ing — but all of the cred­i­ble data that we have sug­gests Fer­gu­son and Reichert are high­ly like­ly to pre­vail in the Top Two elim­i­na­tion round and dis­patch their rivals. There would have to be the equiv­a­lent of a polit­i­cal earth­quake before ear­ly August for that dynam­ic to change.

Here is the full text of both ques­tions we asked and the answers we received:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State were being held today, and the can­di­dates were Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son, Repub­li­can Semi Bird, Demo­c­rat Mark Mul­let, and Repub­li­can Dave Reichert, who would you vote for?

Half the poll sam­ple saw the ques­tion with the order of can­di­dates as shown above and half the sam­ple saw the ques­tion with the order of can­di­dates shown below. The word­ing was the same, but the order was invert­ed to make the ques­tion as neu­tral as possible. 

If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State were being held today, and the can­di­dates were Repub­li­can Dave Reichert, Demo­c­rat Mark Mul­let, Repub­li­can Semi Bird, and Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

  • Bob Fer­gu­son: 35%
  • Dave Reichert: 27%
  • Semi Bird: 9%
  • Mark Mul­let: 4%
  • Not sure: 25%

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor were being held today and the can­di­dates were just Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son and Repub­li­can Dave Reichert, who would you vote for?

Half the poll sam­ple saw the ques­tion with the order of can­di­dates as shown above and half the sam­ple saw the ques­tion with the order of can­di­dates shown below. The word­ing was the same, but the order was invert­ed to make the ques­tion as neu­tral as possible. 

If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor were being held today and the can­di­dates were just Repub­li­can Dave Reichert and Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS:

  • Bob Fer­gu­son: 46%
  • Dave Reichert: 42%
  • Not sure: 11%

Our sur­vey of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Novem­ber 13th through Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th, 2024.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (42%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (58%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

NPI and PPP have worked togeth­er for a decade and have a track record of excel­lence, as detailed in this 2022 elec­toral polling recap and this 2020 one.

Why’d the lead flip? In a couple words: Democratic voters

To under­stand why Bob Fer­gu­son is now ahead after hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly trailed Reichert in our last sur­vey, let’s dive into the crosstabs.

Here are the respons­es by par­ty for that question:

QUESTION: If the elec­tion for Gov­er­nor were being held today and the can­di­dates were just Demo­c­rat Bob Fer­gu­son and Repub­li­can Dave Reichert, who would you vote for?

ANSWERS BY PARTY:

  • Democ­rats
    • Dave Reichert: 12%
    • Bob Fer­gu­son: 82%
    • Not sure: 6%
  • Repub­li­cans
    • Dave Reichert: 89%
    • Bob Fer­gu­son: 4%
    • Not sure: 7%
  • Inde­pen­dents
    • Dave Reichert: 48%
    • Bob Fer­gu­son: 32%
    • Not sure: 20%

In Novem­ber, Reichert had 17% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers. Now he has only 12%, with Fer­gu­son’s sup­port among self-iden­ti­fied Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers hav­ing climbed from 76% to 82% over the past few months. Since Reichert’s stand­ing with Repub­li­can and inde­pen­dent vot­ers is undi­min­ished from our last sur­vey (89% ver­sus 90% for the Repub­li­cans and 48% ver­sus 47% for inde­pen­dents) we can say that it’s this shift among Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers that is dri­ving Fer­gu­son’s win­ter­time lead.

Analysis and takeaways

As allud­ed to above, to win the gov­er­nor­ship this year, Dave Reichert needs to con­vince vot­ers who usu­al­ly lean Demo­c­ra­t­ic to back his can­di­da­cy instead of Bob Fer­gu­son’s. That was always like­ly to be a tall order, but this new find­ing sug­gests it could be ridicu­lous­ly dif­fi­cult, since it shows Reichert start­ing to fade ear­ly, with­out even the influ­ence of attack ads and oppo­si­tion messaging.

Our team thinks the fol­low­ing polit­i­cal dynam­ics may be work­ing against Reichert at this par­tic­u­lar junc­ture in the 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al campaign:

  • Lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty. Reichert has not been run­ning a force­ful, vis­i­ble cam­paign thus far. He’s done a lit­tle earned media, but not much. He seems to have been bliss­ful­ly coast­ing along on name recog­ni­tion and that’s not going to be suf­fi­cient to defeat Bob Fer­gu­son, in our view.
  • Don­ald Trump’s march to the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. Since our last sur­vey field­ed, sev­er­al states have held pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nat­ing events and Trump has won them all, while his rivals for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion have all bowed out, except for Nik­ki Haley. Trump is polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic in Wash­ing­ton State and his tight hold on the par­ty could be hurt­ing Reichert.
  • Con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans’ infight­ing and incom­pe­tence. Opti­cal­ly speak­ing, the last few weeks have been a dis­as­ter for Repub­li­cans, with unforced error after unforced error. Notably, nation­al Repub­li­cans just killed the bor­der deal they them­selves demand­ed. And vot­ers seem to be tak­ing notice. Reichert may not be in that cau­cus any­more, but he’s nev­er­the­less ask­ing vot­ers to take a chance on him while his par­ty makes a big mess of things in the Oth­er Wash­ing­ton. The behav­ior of his for­mer col­leagues in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives does­n’t inspire confidence.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic groups have yet to launch elec­tion­eer­ing oper­a­tions against Reichert, but they will. They can be expect­ed to high­light Reichert’s oppo­si­tion to repro­duc­tive rights and assail his 2017–2018 vot­ing record in the House as being dis­turbing­ly aligned with Don­ald Trump’s extreme agenda.

Abor­tion and Trump were, in the eyes of sev­er­al Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors, two very pow­er­ful cud­gels wield­ed by Democ­rats that led to their awful per­for­mance in the 2022 midterms. Both cud­gels are sure to be deployed against Reichert, and they could fur­ther under­mine his prospects.

Favorability ratings: Ferguson starts out 2024 with a positive spread, while Reichert begins the year underwater

In addi­tion to our usu­al sea­son­al “horser­ace” polling, for this sur­vey, we asked respon­dents how they per­ceive each can­di­date. We found a four-point pos­i­tive spread for Bob Fer­gu­son and a six-point neg­a­tive spread for Reichert:

QUESTION: Do you have a favor­able or unfa­vor­able opin­ion of Demo­c­rat Bob Ferguson?

ANSWERS:

  • Favor­able: 39%
  • Unfa­vor­able: 35%
  • Have not heard of Bob Fer­gu­son: 13%
  • Not sure: 13%

QUESTION: Do you have a favor­able or unfa­vor­able opin­ion of Repub­li­can Dave Reichert?

ANSWERS:

  • Favor­able: 26%
  • Unfa­vor­able: 32%
  • Have not heard of Dave Reichert: 24%
  • Not sure: 19%

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and its allies have been argu­ing that Fer­gu­son is unliked and unpop­u­lar, cit­ing research done by their poll­sters. But our new polling sug­gests it’s Reichert who has a favor­a­bil­i­ty deficit. A plu­ral­i­ty of respon­dents had an unfa­vor­able opin­ion of him and anoth­er quar­ter had­n’t heard of him. And many vot­ers may not like what they hear as the year goes on.

New cycle, old story

Reichert isn’t the first Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­ful to have relin­quished an ear­ly lead in pub­lic opin­ion research to a Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent. As I explained when we pub­lished our last poll find­ing in this race, the last time the gov­er­nor­ship of Wash­ing­ton was open, Repub­li­can AG Rob McKen­na jumped out to an ear­ly lead, only to be eclipsed by Jay Inslee short­ly before the vot­ing peri­od began. Inslee’s cam­paign put togeth­er a first-rate bio­graph­i­cal ad that turned the tables.

Inslee has been win­ning with Wash­ing­ton vot­ers ever since. He dis­patched McKen­na, cruised past Bill Bryant in 2016, and wal­loped Loren Culp in 2020.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates have a stel­lar, proven track record of clos­ing with vot­ers in guber­na­to­r­i­al races. Repub­li­cans, mean­while, have a his­to­ry of run­ning out of gas and falling short. That his­to­ry now extends back sev­er­al decades. Wash­ing­ton has­n’t vot­ed for a Repub­li­can for gov­er­nor since 1980, when John Spell­man was elect­ed. The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s win­ning streak in guber­na­to­r­i­al con­tests now goes back forty years. It’s is the longest such streak in the country.

Can Democ­rats keep it going this year? We won’t know till Novem­ber. Right now, though, it looks like Reichert’s cam­paign is run­ning into some head­winds while Fer­gu­son’s cam­paign is catch­ing a nice lit­tle tailwind.

We plan to poll this crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant race again once spring rolls around and anoth­er sea­son has elapsed. At that time, we’ll bring you anoth­er poll finding.

Thursday, February 15th, 2024

Sound Transit’s East Link gets an opening date: 2 Line service to begin on April 27th

Sound Tran­sit has, at last, fixed a date for the inau­gu­ra­tion of ser­vice on the Red­mond to Belle­vue por­tion of its long-await­ed East Link exten­sion: April 27th!

On that day, the pub­lic will be able to start using the 2 Line to get around the East­side, and enjoy com­mute times between Red­mond and Belle­vue’s down­towns that are half as long as a trip on Metro’s RapidRide Line B.

The debut of light rail in NPI’s home­town is a huge mile­stone and one we’ve been eager­ly await­ing since this orga­ni­za­tion’s ear­ly years. The vot­ers of this region backed the East Link project in 2008 as part of Sound Tran­sit’s Phase II sys­tem expan­sion, and it’s tak­en over a decade and a half to design and build.

But our patience is being rewarded.

Open­ing Day will soon be here, bring­ing high capac­i­ty tran­sit ser­vice to Over­lake, Bel-Red, the Spring Dis­trict, down­town Belle­vue, Sur­rey Downs, and south Belle­vue. On and after April 27th, here’s what East­siders and vis­i­tors to East King Coun­ty can expect, accord­ing to Sound Tran­sit’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion team:

  • Ser­vice will run from 5:30 AM to 9:30 PM sev­en days a week and will con­nect with the region­al tran­sit net­work at South Belle­vue, Belle­vue Down­town and Red­mond Tech­nol­o­gy stations.
  • Park­ing is avail­able at South Belle­vue, BelRed and Red­mond Tech­nol­o­gy sta­tions. Sev­er­al sta­tions are acces­si­ble from the Eas­trail cor­ri­dor and the region­al trail net­work. Secure bike park­ing is avail­able at every station.
  • Every­one is invit­ed to cel­e­brate open­ing day with Sound Tran­sit and its part­ners on Sat­ur­day, April 27th. The fes­tiv­i­ties will start with a rib­bon cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny at Belle­vue Down­town Sta­tion at 10 AM. Link ser­vice will begin oper­at­ing after the rib­bon cut­ting at approx­i­mate­ly 11 AM.
  • Fol­low­ing the rib­bon cut­ting and through­out the day, all eight of the new sta­tions will fea­ture dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties, exhibits and enter­tain­ment. Any­one who par­tic­i­pates in a Discover.Stamp.Win activ­i­ty and vis­its all eight sta­tions will be eli­gi­ble to enter a prize drawing.

“The open­ing of the 2 Line on the East­side took the vision, cre­ativ­i­ty and tire­less work of many peo­ple to make good on the promise we made to vot­ers in 2008,” said Sound Tran­sit Board­mem­ber and King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci. “I pushed to open this 6.5‑mile, 8‑station starter line to con­nect some of the region’s largest employ­ers, grow­ing neigh­bor­hoods, and incred­i­ble des­ti­na­tions. Today we’re set­ting the stage for the Eastside’s con­tin­ued trans­for­ma­tion and con­nect­ing peo­ple to oppor­tu­ni­ty now. I can’t wait to ride it!”

“With the open­ing of the 2 Line on the East­side this spring, and our major expan­sion into Sno­homish Coun­ty this fall, we’re bring­ing the con­ve­nience of light rail to hun­dreds of thou­sands more peo­ple across the region. That means more peo­ple will be able to use Link light rail to skip the traf­fic and park­ing has­sles and get to school, work, games, con­certs and more, inex­pen­sive­ly and on time, every time,” said King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, the chair of ST’s board.

“We are thrilled to cel­e­brate the 2 Line open­ing at Belle­vue Down­town Sta­tion,” said Belle­vue May­or Lynne Robin­son. “Bellevue’s part­ner­ship with Sound Tran­sit has been guid­ed by a shared vision to improve mobil­i­ty and access for every­one who lives, works and plays in Belle­vue and the region. This open­ing brings us even clos­er to a future with a mul­ti­tude of effec­tive trans­porta­tion options to get where you need to go on the East­side and beyond.”

“Light rail’s arrival to Red­mond is mon­u­men­tal, as our region is under­go­ing rapid trans­for­ma­tion,” said Red­mond May­or Angela Bir­ney, who recent­ly joined the Sound Tran­sit Board along with King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Gir­may Zahi­lay. “We are grate­ful for our fed­er­al, state and local part­ners who have been with us for decades to get to this point, as well as to our vot­ers who made this path a real­i­ty. I look for­ward to see­ing our com­mu­ni­ty cel­e­brate on open­ing day and take a ride on this easy, traf­fic-free con­nec­tion between Red­mond and Bellevue.”

“The 2 Line is the prod­uct of the sus­tained com­mit­ment of project part­ners and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, and years of hard work by Sound Tran­sit staff and con­trac­tors,” said Sound Tran­sit Inter­im CEO Goran Sparrman.

“Hav­ing worked on the East Link project with the City of Belle­vue in the plan­ning phase, I’m excit­ed to see the project mov­ing toward opening.”

When it opens, the 2 Line won’t serve its two west­ern­most sta­tions (Jud­kins Park, Mer­cer Island) or con­nect to the 1 Line, because con­trac­tors are fix­ing defects on the align­ment between Mer­cer Island and Seat­tle. Because Sound Tran­sit built a train yard in Belle­vue (the Oper­a­tions & Main­te­nance Facil­i­ty East), it does­n’t need work­ing tracks across the lake to start up ser­vice in Red­mond and Bellevue.

Sound Tran­sit hopes to add the west­ern­most sta­tions to the sys­tem in 2025. And by that time, two new east­ern sta­tions should also be ready to make their debut — Mary­moor and down­town Red­mond. Those four sta­tions will com­plete the 2 Line, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to trav­el by foot and train from NPI head­quar­ters into down­town Seat­tle and many oth­er des­ti­na­tions, like SeaT­ac Air­port or the UW.

The agency has been sim­u­lat­ing rev­enue ser­vice between Red­mond Tech­nol­o­gy Sta­tion and South Belle­vue for sev­er­al weeks now, and to our knowl­edge, there have been no major issues. There are many cool van­tage points where you can see trains glid­ing along through the East­side at reg­u­lar inter­vals, and you can also see them from parts of Inter­state 405 and State Route 520, because the align­ment either cross­es or runs next to those highways.

If you’re as excit­ed as we are about East Link’s debut, you may be inter­est­ed in our bird’s eye tour of the East Link sta­tions and our Trainspot­ting series, show­ing Link trains in action in Belle­vue and Redmond.

Wednesday, February 14th, 2024

Mid-Atlantic momentum: Democrats win big in a pair of February 13th special elections

The vot­ers of New York and Penn­syl­va­nia deliv­ered Democ­rats two pre-Valen­tine’s Day wins on Tues­day, with both elec­tions hav­ing nation­al consequences.

The vic­to­ries were built with a swing of sub­ur­ban votes, in Long Island’s Nas­sau Coun­ty and in the Philadel­phia sub­urb of Bucks County.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive-elect Tom Suozzi flipped the con­gres­sion­al seat vacat­ed when the House vot­ed to expel indict­ed Repub­li­can George Santos.

Suozzi won by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin, say­ing on Elec­tion Night: “This race was fought amidst a close­ly divid­ed elec­torate, much like the whole country.”

Suozzi con­front­ed Repub­li­cans with their flip-flop on bor­der secu­ri­ty, in which Don­ald Trump ordered the House Repub­li­cans to reject a bipar­ti­san Sen­ate-craft­ed com­pro­mise on immi­gra­tion policy.

“It’s time to find com­mon ground and start deliv­er­ing for the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” he said, speak­ing to the dys­func­tion of the “people’s house.”

His win leaves the House line­up at 219 Repub­li­cans and 213 Democ­rats: House Speak­er Mike John­son can lose only two votes when the yeas and nays are called on the House floor. Giv­en the bit­ter infight­ing in the Repub­li­can cau­cus, the Suozzi win boosts chances that Democ­rats will retake House con­trol in November.

In a spe­cial elec­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia, the vic­to­ry of Jim Prokopi­ak secures Democ­rats’ 102–100 edge in the low­er house of the state Leg­is­la­ture. A major bat­tle for con­trol of the Penn­syl­va­nia Sen­ate is shap­ing up this fall. A long­time Repub­li­can ger­ry­man­der in the Key­stone State has only recent­ly been broken.

The impli­ca­tions of Suozzi’s win can be felt in both Washingtons.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene chairs the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, which invest­ed an esti­mat­ed $10 mil­lion in the race.

She grace­ful­ly gave trib­ute to the can­di­date, say­ing in a state­ment: “Tom Suozzi ran a for­mi­da­ble cam­paign that pri­or­i­tized issues that mat­ter most to fam­i­lies across Queens and Nas­sau Coun­ty, pro­tect­ing repro­duc­tive free­dom, bipar­ti­san solu­tions to pro­tect bor­der secu­ri­ty and low­er­ing costs. In Tom, vot­ers will once again have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive they can trust.”

As is his cus­tom, Trump blamed some­body else for his party’s lat­est loss. He described Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Mazi Fil­ip as a “very fool­ish woman” while declar­ing on social media: “MAGA, which is most of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, stayed home – and it always will, unless it is treat­ed with the respect that it deserves.” (Mean­while, ultra MAGA House Speak­er John­son of Louisiana blamed Moth­er Nature for dump­ing snow on Long Island.)

Wash­ing­ton law­mak­ers will be big win­ners if Democ­rats recap­ture con­trol of the House this fall. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith will again chair the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee. Smith teamed with mil­i­tary brass in 2020 to thwart the Trump administration’s efforts to politi­cize the Pentagon.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rick Larsen, a twen­ty-year House vet­er­an, is in line to chair the House Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee, a post pre­vi­ous­ly held by Peter DeFazio.

And, as DCCC chair, Del­Bene is part of the Democ­rats’ House lead­er­ship. She and Rep. Mar­i­lyn Strick­land, D‑Wash., are also mem­ber­ships of the lead­er­ship team for the lead­er­ship of the cen­ter-left New Demo­c­rat Coalition.

Elec­tions have con­se­quences. With Democ­rats in the major­i­ty, Del­Bene can push for her long­time goal of extend­ing the child tax credit.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schri­er, a pedi­a­tri­cian, can press to put a cap on insulin costs for all dia­betes patients, not just senior citizens.

A Demo­c­rat-run House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives would also be far more like­ly to pass the Wild Olympics bill and pro­tect an addi­tion­al 126,000 acres of wilder­ness in the Ever­green State — a cher­ished goal of retir­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Derek Kilmer’s.

As well, it helps to have a good vil­lain. Julie Chavez, man­ag­er of the Biden-Har­ris reelec­tion cam­paign, said of the Tues­day wins: “When Repub­li­cans run on Trump’s extreme agen­da – even in a Repub­li­can-held seat – the vot­ers reject them. Don­ald Trump con­tin­ues to be a huge weight against Repub­li­can candidates.”

Wednesday, February 14th, 2024

VICTORY! Washington House backs language access bill to make elections more inclusive

Just before the cham­ber of ori­gin cut­off yes­ter­day after­noon, the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed 84 to 13 to pass bill that mean­ing­ful­ly facil­i­tates par­tic­i­pa­tion in elec­tions: HB 2023, which con­cerns lan­guage access.

Refugees and immi­grants are very ded­i­cat­ed to becom­ing part of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Many have passed sev­er­al cit­i­zen­ship tests, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, it can still be incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for them to par­tic­i­pate in our elec­tions. Often­times, vot­er infor­ma­tion pack­ets are only avail­able in Eng­lish and a select few high-resource lan­guages, and when these cit­i­zens can’t access the infor­ma­tion to vote, they don’t feel like they’re part of our soci­ety even though they’re pay­ing tax­es, send­ing their kids to our schools, and attend­ing PTA meetings!

Accord­ing to non­par­ti­san staff, HB 2023 would:

  • Require coun­ties to pro­vide lan­guage assis­tance dur­ing elec­tions when
    more than 2.5 per­cent of vot­ing-age cit­i­zens in cer­tain lan­guage minority
    groups in the coun­ty do not speak or under­stand Eng­lish adequately
    enough to par­tic­i­pate in the elec­toral process and have not com­plet­ed the
    fifth grade at a rate high­er than the nation­al average.
  • Require the Sec­re­tary of State to deter­mine which coun­ties are subject
    to these lan­guage assis­tance provisions.

The bill is expect­ed to cost $3.7 mil­lion to imple­ment through the 2027–2029 bien­ni­um, accord­ing to the fis­cal note pre­pared by the Office of Finan­cial Man­age­ment. Only a frac­tion of that sum would be expend­ed in the near term.

“The poten­tial costs for imple­ment­ing this bill, includ­ing devel­op­ing bilin­gual vot­er instruc­tions and mate­ri­als, is esti­mat­ed to be $714,810 for Fis­cal Year 2025,” OFM explains. “These costs would be incurred by three coun­ties based upon an analy­sis pre­pared by the Wash­ing­ton State Asso­ci­a­tion of Coun­ty Audi­tors (WSACA). These three coun­ties are Chelan, Dou­glas and Grant. The costs for suc­ceed­ing years will like­ly increase by an inde­ter­mi­nate amount, due to infla­tion, but are esti­mat­ed at the Fis­cal Year 2025 amount for the pur­pos­es of this analysis.”

Prime spon­sor Clyde Shavers (D‑10th Dis­trict: Sno­homish and Island Coun­ties) said in floor remarks urg­ing his col­leagues to vote yea: “Our democ­ra­cy is stronger with every­body par­tic­i­pat­ing. It’s stronger when all our cit­i­zens can vote com­fort­ably and knowl­edge­ably. There is con­crete evi­dence that shows that lan­guage assis­tant require­ments have tan­gi­ble pos­i­tive effects in the rate of par­tic­i­pa­tion in our elec­tions and gov­er­nance. This bill dri­ves an increase in faith and trust in gov­ern­ment and to deep­en its rela­tion with cit­i­zens and the pub­lic offi­cials and break bar­ri­ers lead­ing to today’s polarization.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Greg Cheney (R‑18th Dis­trict: Clark Coun­ty) con­curred and said: “Those who don’t speak Eng­lish as their pri­ma­ry lan­guage, they too can par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tion process.” He reit­er­at­ed: “This is not an unfund­ed man­date to the coun­ties, but rather paid for by the state government.”

NPI con­grat­u­lates the House on its pas­sage of HB 2023. I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tes­ti­fy on this bill in its com­mit­tee of ori­gin and am glad that House lead­er­ship decid­ed to select it for floor action. It’s a very wor­thy proposal.

Democ­ra­cy func­tions best when many voic­es are heard. This bill rep­re­sents a strong step toward mak­ing our sys­tem of elec­tions more inclu­sive. Improved trans­la­tion of bal­lots and pam­phlets would final­ly allow Wash­ing­to­ni­ans not pro­fi­cient in Eng­lish to exer­cise their civic rights inde­pen­dent­ly and confidently.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
HB 2023
Elections/language assist.
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
2/13/2024

Yeas: 84; Nays: 13; Excused: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Alvara­do, Barkis, Barnard, Bate­man, Berg, Bergquist, Berry, Bronoske, Caldier, Callan, Cham­bers, Chap­man, Cheney, Chopp, Con­nors, Cor­ry, Cortes, Davis, Dent, Doglio, Don­aghy, Duerr, Enten­man, Eslick, Fari­var, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Fos­se, Goehn­er, Good­man, Gregerson, Hack­ney, Har­ris, Hutchins, Klick­er, Klo­ba, Kretz, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Low, Macri, May­cum­ber, McClin­tock, Mena, Mor­gan, Mos­bruck­er, Nance, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Peter­son, Pol­let, Ramel, Ramos, Reed, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Robert­son, Rude, Rule, Ryu, San­dlin, San­tos, Senn, Shavers, Sim­mons, Slat­ter, Springer, Stearns, Steele, Stokes­bary, Stonier, Street, Tay­lor, Thai, Tharinger, Tim­mons, Walen, Waters, Wilcox, Wylie, Ybar­ra, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Abbarno, Chris­t­ian, Cou­ture, Dye, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Jacob­sen, McEn­tire, Orcutt, Schmick, Schmidt, Volz, Walsh

Excused: Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chandler

All thir­teen nay votes came from Repub­li­cans. Ultra MAGA Repub­li­can State Par­ty Chair Jim Walsh was not sur­pris­ing­ly one of those thirteen.

HB 2023 now moves to the Sen­ate for fur­ther consideration.

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