Republican Jinyoung Englund goes negative again, one week after agreeing 45th LD Senate contest should be more positive

In a pathet­i­cal­ly des­per­ate attempt to resus­ci­tate its prospects, the cam­paign of Repub­li­can Jiny­oung Lee Englund has launched a fresh tor­rent of false attack ads against her Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent Man­ka Dhin­gra — just days after Englund agreed with Dhin­gra in a debate host­ed by the League of Women Vot­ers that the con­test between the two of them need­ed less negativity.

The ads, which drew the atten­tion of KCPQ’s Jon Hum­bert, are appear­ing on social media and across the web.

Not only are they laden with false claims and innu­en­dos, they con­tain mechan­i­cal errors, as Hum­bert wry­ly not­ed in this tweet.

Englund’s neg­a­tive offen­sive actu­al­ly began before the debate, as is evi­denced by the upload date of this attack video — part of the “Stop Man­ka” offen­sive. It went up on YouTube as an unlist­ed video on Sep­tem­ber 14th, four days pri­or to when the can­di­dates appeared onstage togeth­er at the Old Red­mond School­house Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter at the invi­ta­tion of the League.

Dur­ing the debate, the can­di­dates were mem­o­rably asked this question:

MODERATOR NATALIE BRAND: This is anoth­er audi­ence ques­tion, which says: “So far, this race has been very neg­a­tive, with hit ads against both can­di­dates. Do you think it’s impor­tant to make a more pos­i­tive and sub­stan­tive cam­paign?” And we’ll start with Ms. Dhingra.

Here’s how they each responded.

DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE MANKA DHINGRA: Absolute­ly. I think it is cru­cial that cam­paigns do real­ly talk about hon­esty and integri­ty. And there are a lot of spe­cial inter­ests out there, but what’s com­ing out of my cam­paign [is pos­i­tive]. I am being very clear with every­one that’s that’s affil­i­at­ed with my cam­paign to make sure that we are run­ning pos­i­tive mes­sages. Because it is about my mes­sage, what I stand for, my work back­ground, and what I want to do for the peo­ple of the 45th Dis­trict. I obvi­ous­ly can­not con­trol the spe­cial inter­ests, but every­thing com­ing out of my cam­paign is going to be about my work back­ground, my expe­ri­ence, my qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and what I will do to rep­re­sent each and every one of you.

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: So I agree. You know, I think that every can­di­date and every cam­paign should real­ly focus on what they intend to do for their dis­trict. And that’s why I’ve been very clear about my pri­or­i­ties. It’s to pro­tect peo­ple in our dis­trict from new or more tax­es that aren’t nec­es­sary, to work on real, imme­di­ate trans­porta­tion solu­tions, and to ensure that we con­tin­ue to pri­or­i­tize edu­ca­tion fund­ing in our state.

You know, it was actu­al­ly Ms. Dhin­gra’s sup­port­ers that went neg­a­tive first, dur­ing the pri­ma­ry… they spent half a mil­lion dol­lars. And threw the first punch. And I thought that we, just being a new kind of can­di­date, you know, both being women and first time, that we could have a dif­fer­ent cam­paign. And I was actu­al­ly very shocked to see that hap­pen, and quite dis­ap­point­ed in that.

You know, I think mov­ing for­ward, you know, I would love to make sure that what­ev­er pieces come out of our cam­paigns or sup­port­ers… that it does real­ly focus on… on issues. And that we’re real­ly very clear on, you know, what do we stand for, for our districts.

Short­er Jiny­oung Englund: Do as I say, not as I do.

Con­sid­er­ing that Englund has been involved in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics for years as a par­ty oper­a­tive, I don’t buy her claim that she was “very shocked” to see neg­a­tive ads appear­ing online, in the mail, or in anoth­er medi­um con­cern­ing her cam­paign back in the spring. Her own sup­port­ers have poured a small for­tune into a shell PAC laugh­ably called “Work­ing Fam­i­lies”, which has been the vehi­cle for mul­ti­ple waves of attack ads intend­ed to tar­nish Man­ka Dhin­gra’s reputation.

And now Jiny­oung Englund’s cam­paign is run­ning high­ly neg­a­tive “Stop Man­ka” ads of their own. Attack ads that attempt to make vot­ers feel uneasy about Man­ka by invok­ing what Englund and the Repub­li­can Par­ty think are scary bogey­men (Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Kshama Sawant, for­mer Seat­tle May­or Ed Mur­ray) or rais­ing the specter of an income tax or safe con­sump­tion sites.

Attacks like these did not work in the Top Two elec­tion… in fact, con­sid­er­ing the elec­tion results, which were dis­as­trous for Englund, it’s rea­son­able to con­clude the pre­vi­ous set of attacks back­fired, and actu­al­ly helped pro­pel Dhin­gra to victory.

Repub­li­cans have had weeks to come up with a new strat­e­gy for the autumn to revive Englund’s prospects. Appar­ent­ly, all they could think of to do was essen­tial­ly to run the same play that did­n’t work for them in the last round: going neg­a­tive with poor­ly writ­ten, poor­ly designed ads that reek of des­per­a­tion. How pathetic.

And how para­dox­i­cal. Remem­ber, this is the same par­ty whose can­di­dates often like to say on the cam­paign trail that sim­ply throw­ing more mon­ey at a prob­lem won’t solve that prob­lem. How many times have we heard that par­ty talk­ing point?

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty has no big­ger prob­lem right now than Englund’s flail­ing cam­paign. If she los­es, the Repub­li­cans lose their Sen­ate major­i­ty by the end of Novem­ber. They cer­tain­ly know they’re in a pre­car­i­ous posi­tion, but they can’t seem to think of any way to lift their can­di­date up.

So they’ve instruct­ed Englund to join them in the gut­ter, throw as much mud at Man­ka Dhin­gra as pos­si­ble, and hope that some of it starts sticking.

And that’s what Englund is doing, despite hav­ing said in a pub­lic debate that she agreed with Man­ka Dhin­gra that cam­paigns like hers should be run hon­est­ly and with integri­ty, and should focus on pos­i­tive mes­sages. Shameful.