Hill family, Bill Bryant lend their email lists to help Senate candidate Jinyoung Lee Englund

Repub­li­can Jiny­oung Lee Englund, who is com­pet­ing in the spe­cial state Sen­ate elec­tion in Wash­ing­ton’s 45th Dis­trict this year with the full back­ing of the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment, announced today that she has raised a total of $225,000 since launch­ing her cam­paign a few weeks ago.

“I’m hum­bled and ener­gized by the sup­port of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans across our home state,” said Englund in a pre­pared state­ment sent to NPI. “This may only be a state sen­ate seat, but it is an elec­tion that impacts all Washingtonians.”

Englund, who moved into the dis­trict about a week pri­or to announc­ing her can­di­da­cy, is a young Repub­li­can with an inter­est­ing resume that includes stints with the Bit­coin Foun­da­tion, Coin­Desk, and Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy Council.

Englund has had a lot of help with her fundrais­ing. The Hill fam­i­ly gave Englund for­mer Sen­a­tor Andy Hill’s email list, which she has sent out mul­ti­ple appeals to, and defeat­ed Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Bill Bryant also sent out an end-of-the-month blast ask­ing his sup­port­ers to give mon­ey to her campaign.

This was Bryan­t’s message:

It’s the end of the month, and that means you will often hear from peo­ple telling you about their favorite cause, or ask­ing for money.

Yet, today I am ask­ing for your attention.

When I was run­ning for gov­er­nor last year, I heard from peo­ple across our state who want­ed gov­ern­ment to care of our most vul­ner­a­ble and spend tax­pay­er mon­ey wise­ly. If you agree with those val­ues, then I ask you to sup­port Jiny­oung Lee Englund, today!

I have attached below an email that Jiny­oung sent to sup­port­ers. It explains why her race mat­ters. But the sim­ple truth is this, if Jiny­oung wins her race to suc­ceed the late Sen­a­tor Andy Hill in the 45th Dis­trict, we will con­tin­ue to have a State Sen­ate that works for us.

If she does not win, we will have one-par­ty con­trol in Olympia – that will mean high­er tax­es, out-of-con­trol spend­ing, and less focus on fix­ing the prob­lems we face.

Time is short. Jiny­oung needs your help today. Wash­ing­ton needs her in the State Senate.

Please con­tribute today what you can – the indi­vid­ual max­i­mum of $2,000, $500, or even $100.

It mat­ters.

Repub­li­cans obvi­ous­ly have a vest­ed inter­est in sav­ing their frag­ile state Sen­ate major­i­ty — if they lose it, they’ll no longer have the pow­er to obstruct leg­is­la­tion that House Democ­rats and Gov­er­nor Inslee support.

It is worth not­ing that dur­ing the past four years, with Repub­li­cans in charge of the Sen­ate, tax­es have gone up (at least to fund trans­porta­tion projects — pave­ment-obsessed Repub­li­cans are will­ing to raise rev­enue for roads, but not schools) and there has been lit­tle focus on fix­ing prob­lems. The Leg­is­la­ture has strug­gled just to reach agree­ment on how to spend the mon­ey the state is already raising.

Repub­li­cans like Bryant are essen­tial­ly argu­ing that divid­ed gov­ern­ment is good for Wash­ing­ton State, but we’ve had that arrange­ment now for four years, and with the excep­tion of the Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton pack­age that Sen­ate Repub­li­cans want to part­ly undo, it’s pro­duced most­ly grid­lock and dys­func­tion. The Leg­is­la­ture is in con­tempt of court for fail­ing to fund our pub­lic schools, but Repub­li­cans don’t care. They are more inter­est­ed in under­min­ing the Court than fol­low­ing its orders.

Should Repub­li­cans hold the 45th this year, it would result in the con­tin­u­a­tion of the sta­tus quo in Olympia. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans and their finan­cial back­ers would cer­tain­ly like that. But is that what any­body else wants? Vot­ers in the 45th Dis­trict will be in the envi­able posi­tion of being able to decide the tra­jec­to­ry of the entire state this sum­mer and autumn, which is why huge sums of mon­ey will be raised and spent by both sides in an attempt to influ­ence their decision.

Sev­er­al oth­er can­di­dates have also filed to run for the Sen­ate in the 45th; they include Repub­li­can Ken Smith, inde­pen­dent Park­er Har­ris, and Democ­rats Ian Strat­ton and Man­ka Dhin­gra. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has coa­lesced around Dhin­gra, a senior deputy pros­e­cu­tor who has the sup­port of the 45th Dis­trict Democ­rats, the King Coun­ty Democ­rats, Gov­er­nor Inslee, Pat­ty Mur­ray, and Suzan DelBene.

As of last month, Dhin­gra had raised $199,815.10 in con­tri­bu­tions, and is due to report con­tri­bu­tions for April in a few days, as is Englund.