Manka Dhingra, Democratic Party winning big in crucial 45th District State Senate contest

Democ­rats are on track to recap­ture con­trol of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate this Novem­ber, if ear­ly results in the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict are any indication.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate hope­ful Man­ka Dhin­gra has an impres­sive eight point lead over Repub­li­can oppo­nent Jiny­oung Lee Englund as of tonight’s ini­tial count, which King Coun­ty Elec­tions released short­ly after 8 PM. Dhin­gra has 50.54% of the vote, while Englund has just 42.59%. Inde­pen­dent can­di­date Park­er Har­ris has 6.86%.

Jubi­lant Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists broke into hearty cheers and applause at Dhin­gra’s Red­mond head­quar­ters when the results were announced. With rep­re­sen­ta­tives of her Teen Cam­paign Com­mit­tee gath­ered around her, Dhin­gra deliv­ered an upbeat twi­light vic­to­ry speech not­ing that much work remains to be done, but that the result demon­strat­ed what could be accom­plished through peo­ple-pow­ered politics.

“Our cam­paign faced unprece­dent­ed attacks from spe­cial inter­ests, but we were focused on speak­ing with vot­ers at their doorsteps and lis­ten­ing to neigh­bors across the 45th Dis­trict,” said Dhin­gra, who is cam­paign­ing on a plat­form of ful­ly fund­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion through pro­gres­sive rev­enue reform.

“With the help of over five hun­dred local vol­un­teers, we have knocked on more than 40,000 doors in the last few months and are ready to car­ry this ener­gy into the gen­er­al elec­tion. Togeth­er we can ensure expe­ri­enced, effec­tive, and local lead­er­ship rep­re­sents 45th Dis­trict fam­i­lies in Olympia.”

Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­er­ship tout­ed Dhin­gra’s victory.

“Democ­rats across the state turned out to vote, and we saw that show up clear­ly in tonight’s results,” said State Par­ty Chair Tina Podlodowski.

“I’m espe­cial­ly thrilled with Man­ka Dhin­gra’s strong per­for­mance in the 45th Dis­trict — we were opti­mistic, but this is even bet­ter than expect­ed. Manka’s results tonight put us in a great posi­tion for Novem­ber’s gen­er­al elec­tion, when turnout will be high­er and even more favor­able for Democrats.”

“These results make it clear — the mil­lions of dol­lars in lies that Repub­li­cans paid to put out did­n’t work, and vot­ers went for Man­ka Dhin­gra, the can­di­date who reflects their com­mu­ni­ty and their values.”

Repub­li­cans seemed speechless.

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty retweet­ed screen cap­tures of results from the 31st and 7th Leg­isla­tive Dis­tricts (which are con­sid­ered fair­ly and safe­ly Repub­li­can, respec­tive­ly), but offered no reac­tion to the result in the 45th. Nei­ther did Jiny­oung Lee Englund’s offi­cial Twit­ter account.

Repub­li­can oper­a­tives were also silent about the out­come in the 45th on social media… though they had plen­ty to say about results elsewhere.

Englund’s cam­paign ulti­mate­ly dis­trib­uted a most­ly boil­er­plate press release unen­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly not­ing that Englund had “advanced” to the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion, com­plete with this “me too” bit at the end:

Englund adds, “On anoth­er note, today we’ve made his­to­ry as two women can­di­dates of Asian her­itage run­ning in the most expen­sive and impor­tant leg­isla­tive race in Wash­ing­ton state. Regard­less of par­ty affil­i­a­tion or per­son­al feel­ings, this is some­thing we can all come togeth­er to celebrate.”

Yes, by all means… let’s come togeth­er to cel­e­brate. Does this state­ment mean vot­ers can expect to see Englund spend­ing qual­i­ty time in the 45th, as opposed to skip­ping neigh­bor­hood can­di­date forums to attend fundrais­ers in a dif­fer­ent coun­ty, or hold­ing major cam­paign events two dis­tricts away?

Repub­li­cans have spent a for­tune try­ing to smear Dhin­gra with false and mis­lead­ing attack ads, blan­ket­ing the dis­trict with mail­ers and dis­trib­ut­ing mul­ti­ple snot­ty robo­calls in addi­tion to financ­ing tele­vi­sion and Inter­net ads.

Tonight, it’s evi­dent those attacks did­n’t work.

Like Lisa Well­man in the 41st Dis­trict last year, Dhin­gra may have actu­al­ly ben­e­fit­ed from a vot­er back­lash to the neg­a­tive ads. Well­man mem­o­rably over­came a bliz­zard of attack mail­ers to score an upset vic­to­ry over entrenched Repub­li­can incum­bent Steve Lit­zow in the Top Two elec­tion, then went on to win a few months lat­er in the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion with the back­ing of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

Well­man’s vic­to­ry reduced the Sen­ate Repub­li­can major­i­ty to twen­ty-five, which set the stage for this year’s deci­sive show­down in the 45th.

If Dhin­gra wins in Novem­ber, the Repub­li­can Par­ty will be out of pow­er in Olympia and the Sen­ate will be back in Demo­c­ra­t­ic hands for the first time since 2012.