With Wash­ing­ton’s 2017 Top Two elec­tion set to con­clude in less than ten days, the fight for con­trol of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate has been heat­ing up.

Vot­ers across the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict (Kirk­land, Red­mond, Wood­inville, Sam­m­mish) — who will decide which par­ty con­trols the Sen­ate in 2018 — are now receiv­ing mail­ers for and against both major par­ty can­di­dates on a near dai­ly basis.

Repub­li­cans are pre­dictably try­ing to use tax­es as a bogey­man, using the specter of an income tax against Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Man­ka Dhingra.

Democ­rats, mean­while, have seized on Repub­li­can Jiny­oung Lee Englund’s past tweets (which they saved from obliv­ion) as fod­der for their own attack mailers.

Englund’s cam­paign has now respond­ed to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic ads with a spe­cial mail­er denounc­ing “the same spe­cial inter­est groups that attacked Sen­a­tor Andy Hill”. Englund’s cam­paign says the Democ­rats are “false­ly accus­ing” her of hold­ing posi­tions she does­n’t actu­al­ly hold. The mail­er states:

Jiny­oung Englund believes in a wom­an’s right to choose her own health care and will not vote to change the state’s cur­rent laws that were adopt­ed by a vote of the people.

Jiny­oung Englund believes in man-made cli­mate change, and in the sci­ence that sup­ports it. She worked for a non­prof­it in Africa over 10 years ago after she grad­u­at­ed from UW. Jiny­oung wit­nessed first­hand the impor­tance of pro­tect­ing and being good stew­ards of our environment.

Jiny­oung Englund shares our East­side val­ues and will fight to pro­tect them, ensur­ing we con­tin­ue to have world-class schools and an out­stand­ing qual­i­ty of life.

Jiny­oung Englund sup­ports the paid fam­i­ly leave leg­is­la­tion adopt­ed this year with strong bipar­ti­san sup­port. That’s the kind of prag­mat­ic prob­lem solv­ing she will bring to the Senate.

After see­ing this mail­er, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty wast­ed no time in putting togeth­er a graph­ic show­cas­ing a num­ber of Englund’s past tweets, in which she:

• Harsh­ly attacks Planned Par­ent­hood, the nation’s most high pro­file provider of repro­duc­tive health services;
• Crit­i­cizes Barack Oba­ma for sup­port­ing a wom­an’s right to make her own repro­duc­tive health deci­sions, includ­ing ter­mi­nat­ing a pregnancy;
• States that the address­ing cli­mate cri­sis is not as impor­tant as com­bat­ing ter­ror­ism, the Islam­ic State group, or reduc­ing the fed­er­al deficit.

Here’s the graphic:

Englund’s cam­paign says vot­ers need to “lis­ten to the facts”.

Well, the fact is, Englund did pre­vi­ous­ly espouse the posi­tions that Democ­rats are accus­ing her of hold­ing, and we know that because of these tweets. We have evi­dence of what Englund believed before she was recruit­ed to be a can­di­date in the 45th. (Evi­dence is very use­ful for estab­lish­ing facts!)

Englund now claims to have a very dif­fer­ent set of posi­tions on the issues.

It’s almost as if she is say­ing, Please, please believe me, I’m not an extrem­ist like the Democ­rats claim I am… Hon­est! I’m a social­ly lib­er­al East­sider just like you.

We won­der: When, exact­ly, did Jiny­oung become the social­ly lib­er­al Repub­li­can she now claims to be? She only reg­is­tered to vote in the 45th Dis­trict in April. As of this sum­mer, she’s being mar­ket­ed as a Repub­li­can in the mold of Dan Evans.

Or so we’re all sup­posed to believe.

We know Jiny­oung did­n’t hold these posi­tions before she moved into the 45th Dis­trict a week pri­or to announc­ing her can­di­da­cy — she was tweet­ing the Repub­li­can par­ty line through­out 2015. But today she’s the par­ty’s only hope for keep­ing its grip on the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate, and she’s run­ning in a dis­trict that Hillary Clin­ton won. So she has rein­vent­ed her polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty in the hopes of insu­lat­ing her­self from Demo­c­ra­t­ic attacks. Quite the self-serv­ing move.

Peo­ple can and do change their minds on the issues, but it’s hard to believe Jiny­oung’s sin­cer­i­ty here giv­en the cir­cum­stances. Repub­li­cans are des­per­ate to remain in pow­er, and in her they have some­one who will say what­ev­er they need her to say — and do what­ev­er they need her to do — in order to win.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­ers point out that if Englund wins, the Repub­li­cans stay in pow­er in the Sen­ate. Regard­less of what Jiny­oung says her views are today or tomor­row, she is slat­ed to become Mark Schoesler’s twen­ty-fifth vote should she win. She would be an enabler of con­tin­ued Repub­li­can extrem­ism and obstruction.

“Jiny­oung Englund is tak­ing the ‘alter­na­tive facts’ of the GOP to a new lev­el in Wash­ing­ton State,” said Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair Tina Podlowski.

“Jiny­oung is sim­ply lying about her posi­tions — and her own words prove it. She has tout­ed her ‘tech cre­den­tials’, but she should know that she can’t erase her con­ser­v­a­tive anti-choice and cli­mate-deny­ing stances by delet­ing a few tweets — the Inter­net is for­ev­er. Face it, Jiny­oung is lying about her posi­tions now — how can any­one in the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict trust what she says?

“Repub­li­cans must be get­ting des­per­ate to resort to this kind of decep­tion. For Jiny­oung to say that she’s pro-choice or she cares about the envi­ron­ment when her own words in the past con­tra­dict that is astonishing.”

“Up and down the tick­et, from Don­ald Trump to Jiny­oung Englund, Repub­li­cans are count­ing on mis­lead­ing vot­ers in a des­per­ate attempt to win pow­er. The fact of the mat­ter is, Jiny­oung Englund is a liar whose con­ser­v­a­tive stances on count­less issues make her the absolute wrong choice to rep­re­sent the 45th District.”