Incumbents winning easily in 7th, 31st, 37th, and 48th special legislative elections

Five appoint­ed leg­is­la­tors run­ning to keep their seats this year in a set of spe­cial leg­isla­tive elec­tions are hav­ing an easy go of it thus far, sug­gest­ing that they could all be retained by vot­ers in their respec­tive dis­tricts as of November.

In the deep red 7th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, span­ning the rur­al coun­ties in north­east­ern Wash­ing­ton, Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Shelly Short has gar­nered 67% of the vote and holds a two-to-one mar­gin over Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Karen Hardy, who’s at 32.74%. Mean­while, Repub­li­can Jacquelin May­cum­ber, who has tak­en over Short­’s old House seat, enjoys a sim­i­lar­ly com­fort­able lead of more than twen­ty points over her Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent Susan Swanson.

In the 31st Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict (a wedge of the rur­al South Sound not far from Mount Rainier), Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Phil For­tu­na­to has a big lead over Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Michelle Rylands, with 58.55% of the vote.

In the con­test for the accom­pa­ny­ing House seat vacat­ed by For­tu­na­to when he took over the Sen­ate seat from Pam Roach, Repub­li­can Mor­gan Irwin is well ahead with 56.88% of the vote. Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Nate Lowry has 43.12%.

Repub­li­cans were quick to point out these appar­ent lop­sided vic­to­ries on social media, anx­ious for some­thing to crow about giv­en the incred­i­bly lack­lus­ter per­for­mance of Jiny­oung Lee Englund in the 45th LD. But Repub­li­cans have been expect­ed to win all four of these races from the get-go.

Democ­rats expressed sat­is­fac­tion at hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly recruit­ed can­di­dates who will advance to the gen­er­al elec­tion in each of the four con­tests. Democ­rats have been most­ly shut out in the 7th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict in recent cycles, fail­ing to advance any can­di­dates to the gen­er­al elec­tion. That’s not the case this year.

“Democ­rats are com­pet­ing in races across the state,” said State Par­ty Chair Tina Pod­lodows­ki. “Michelle Rylands, Karen Hardy, Nate Lowry, and Susan Swan­son are beat­ing expec­ta­tions in tough leg­isla­tive dis­tricts for Democ­rats. We’re build­ing our par­ty across Wash­ing­ton to fight back against the Repub­li­cans and the tox­ic agen­da of Don­ald Trump, and tonight’s results make it clear that the peo­ple are fired up to resist as well. There’s still a lot of work to do, but with results like these, I’m very excit­ed for Novem­ber and the gen­er­al election.”

Repub­li­can oper­a­tives made a point of stress­ing that their incum­bents could­n’t raise mon­ey due to the ses­sion freeze while their Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers could. But the same is true of Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bents Pat­ty Kud­er­er and Van­dana Slat­ter in the 48th LD: they were sub­ject to the freeze, but are also cruis­ing along comfortably.

Kud­er­er was elect­ed to the state House last year after hav­ing been appoint­ed to suc­ceed State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ross Hunter. She moved over to the Sen­ate this year and her House seat was tak­en by Van­dana Slat­ter, for­mer­ly of the Belle­vue City Coun­cil. Kud­er­er is mus­ter­ing 60.36% of the vote against two oppo­nents, includ­ing a fake Demo­c­rat recruit­ed by the Repub­li­cans, Richard Knierim.

Knier­im is in third place with 15.98%, well behind Lib­er­tar­i­an Michelle Dar­nell, who has 23.66%, so he will not advance to the Novem­ber gen­er­al election.

Slat­ter, mean­while, has a whop­ping 76.6% in the vote in her House race against her sole Lib­er­tar­i­an oppo­nent Cia­ran Dougherty.

It was­n’t that long ago that the 48th was an East­side swing dis­trict that was fierce­ly fought over. But Repub­li­cans appear to have giv­en up on it com­plete­ly, not even both­er­ing to recruit can­di­dates to run there as Repub­li­cans. Noto­ri­ous par­ty switch­er Rod­ney Tom is the last Repub­li­can to have been elect­ed in the dis­trict; it has been enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly embrac­ing pro­gres­sive Democ­rats for sev­er­al years now.

Last­ly, we’ll note that Democ­rats have already locked up the 37th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, where incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Rebec­ca Sal­daña is unop­posed. Sal­daña is on the bal­lot despite not hav­ing any oppo­nent, as state law requires that leg­isla­tive races appear on the bal­lot regard­less of how many can­di­dates have filed.

What all these results por­tend is a 2018 state Leg­is­la­ture with a fifty mem­ber House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus, a forty-eight mem­ber House Repub­li­can cau­cus, a twen­ty-five mem­ber Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus (con­sid­er­ing the result in the 45th), and a twen­ty-four mem­ber Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus. Democ­rats could end 2017 in con­trol of both cham­bers for the first time in five years.

Here’s the pro­jec­tion from Pacif­ic NW Por­tal’s Bal­ance of Pow­er projector: