Panicking Republicans lash out furiously at Manka Dhingra in desperate bid to defeat her

On Tues­day, Novem­ber 7th, vot­ing will con­clude in what has become the most expen­sive state Sen­ate race in the his­to­ry of the Ever­green State. The out­come of the con­test in the sub­ur­ban 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict will deter­mine who con­trols Wash­ing­ton’s Sen­ate through 2018, and maybe beyond.

If Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Man­ka Dhin­gra wins, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty will regain the major­i­ty it lost when Rod­ney Tom and Tim Shel­don defect­ed to the Repub­li­cans in 2012. If Repub­li­can can­di­date Jiny­oung Lee Englund wins, the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans will remain in pow­er and retain their abil­i­ty to kill pro­gres­sive legislation.

A major­i­ty of vot­ers in the August Top Two elec­tion backed Dhin­gra, who fin­ished with 51.52% of the vote. Trail­ing far behind in sec­ond place was Englund with 41.46%. Inde­pen­dent Park­er Har­ris got 7.02% of the vote and was eliminated.

A month lat­er, the Wash­ing­ton State Wire released the toplines of a poll com­mis­sioned from Myers Research to ascer­tain how the gen­er­al elec­tion might turn out. The poll find­ings mir­rored the results of the Top Two elec­tion, with 51% of respon­dents say­ing they’d vote for Dhin­gra and 41% for Englund.

Repub­li­cans have tried to paint a rosier pic­ture by claim­ing their own inter­nal polling shows Englund gain­ing ground on Dhin­gra. But they haven’t released any num­bers, which sug­gests that even their own research finds that Dhin­gra is winning.

The prospect of a dou­ble dig­it Dhin­gra vic­to­ry isn’t sit­ting well with Repub­li­cans or their fun­ders, who are loathe to give up their stran­gle­hold on the state Sen­ate. With no evi­dence of a shift in their favor, they’ve become increas­ing­ly pan­icky, and are tak­ing out their frus­tra­tion on Dhin­gra and her campaign.

Just look at what they’re say­ing and doing.

Fake Face­book profiles

To impugn Dhin­gra and mis­rep­re­sent her posi­tions on the issues, Repub­li­can oper­a­tives cre­at­ed mul­ti­ple fake Face­book pro­files using Manka’s name, accom­pa­nied by an ugly, yel­low-tinged image of her face.

The pro­files were then used as a launch­ing pad for ads which false­ly scream that Dhin­gra’s “extreme pro-drug agen­da is a threat to our community”.

This is a line of attack Repub­li­cans are push­ing hard. They’ve switched from fear­mon­ger­ing on the basis of high­er tax­es (which did­n’t work in the sum­mer elec­tion) to fear­mon­ger­ing on the basis of safe con­sump­tion sites.

After users com­plained about the fake pro­files, one was tak­en down and the name of the oth­er was changed to “Unof­fi­cial Man­ka Dhin­gra”. But there’s no such thing as an unof­fi­cial per­son — Face­book ought to force the Repub­li­cans to change the name of the page again.

Red Scare style attacks

A “Red Scare” is pro­mo­tion, real and imag­ined, of wide­spread fear by a soci­ety or state about a poten­tial rise of com­mu­nism, anar­chism, or rad­i­cal left­ism. The term is most often used to refer to two peri­ods in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States with this name.

– Wikipedia

Repub­li­can oper­a­tives have also cre­at­ed a video ad which ends with a young per­son stand­ing in front of Emil Venkov’s bronze sculp­ture of Vladimir Lenin in Fre­mont, Seat­tle, wear­ing glass­es, a beanie hat, ban­dan­na, and a pur­ple t‑shirt with Dhin­gra’s cam­paign logo on it (sim­i­lar to the kind her staff and vol­un­teers wear) plus sport­ing three but­tons: one depict­ing a ham­mer and sick­le, one that says “Sawant!” and one that says “Raise Tax­es!” It’s cap­tioned “Seat­tle Lib­er­als ♥ Man­ka Dhingra”.

“I am tru­ly offend­ed and shocked at how low and how decep­tive the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty has got­ten with this ad!,” Dhin­gra said in response.

“They went so far as to make a fake T‑shirt with my cam­paign logo to trick vot­ers into think­ing this ad is from my cam­paign. If you are as out­raged as I am, make sure you vote and tell all your friends to vote. We need hon­esty and integri­ty in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate. Not lies and false information.”

Jiny­oung Lee Englund’s cam­paign has pro­duced its own sim­i­lar ads.

Mail­ers that mim­ic the design and word­ing of the oppo­si­tion’s mailers

Evi­dent­ly envi­ous of the work of their coun­ter­parts on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side, Repub­li­can oper­a­tives have also recent­ly cre­at­ed mail­ers that close­ly mim­ic the design and word­ing of the ads that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and its allies have been pay­ing for in oppo­si­tion to Englund since the spring­time. (Charles Caleb Colton said imi­ta­tion is the sin­cer­est form of flat­tery… but is it really?)

Here’s an exam­ple of a mail­er the Democ­rats have sent to vot­ers oppos­ing Englund:

And here’s an exam­ple of a recent mail­er the Repub­li­cans cre­at­ed against Dhin­gra, which employs the same design, col­or scheme, and wording:

But two can play at that game. The Democ­rats decid­ed a few months back to cre­ate a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee to spear­head their anti-Englund cam­paigns called the East­side Lead­er­ship Coun­cil, riff­ing on the name of the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ long-estab­lished PAC, which is bland­ly called The Lead­er­ship Council.

Dis­miss­ing Man­ka Dhin­gra’s expe­ri­ence as a prosecutor

Repub­li­cans say they are all about fam­i­ly val­ues, but to bor­row a phrase from Jiny­oung Lee Englund, that’s just a par­ty talk­ing point. Time and again, Repub­li­cans have demon­strat­ed that real fam­i­ly val­ues mean noth­ing to them.

The lat­est proof of this is Repub­li­cans’ cringe-wor­thy attempts to dis­cred­it Man­ka Dhin­gra’s work expe­ri­ence, which is one of her strengths as a candidate.

Dhin­gra does­n’t work full time for King Count Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Dan Sat­ter­berg, the only Repub­li­can present­ly serv­ing in a coun­ty­wide posi­tion, because she has two chil­dren and a hus­band she wants to spend as much time with as possible.

That devo­tion to her fam­i­ly got her this:

Repub­li­cans and inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal groups have turned her résumé against her, not­ing that Dhin­gra hasn’t worked full-time as a pros­e­cu­tor since 2003. Instead, she’s worked part-time to help raise her fam­i­ly. She’s paid for six­teen hours a week, but [Mark Lar­son, chief deputy of the office’s crim­i­nal divi­sion and Dhingra’s boss] said Dhin­gra works more than that. Still, [Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Susan] Hutchi­son argues that her lim­it­ed work sched­ule means she’s “not a career prosecutor.”

Empha­sis is mine. Seri­ous­ly, what an insult to every work­ing moth­er in the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict and the State of Washington.

You might think Repub­li­can Par­ty brass would show more respect to some­one who is employed by the only Repub­li­can still hold­ing office in the state’s largest coun­ty. But on that score, you’d be wrong. In Man­ka Dhin­gra, Susan Hutchi­son and the peo­ple who work for her don’t see an accom­plished woman wor­thy of their respect. They see only an obsta­cle to their con­tin­ued grip on the Senate.

This kind of cam­paign­ing may strike Wash­ing­to­ni­ans as repug­nant, but it worked in oth­er states for Don­ald Trump, just as it has worked in the past here for Tim Eyman before this orga­ni­za­tion began tak­ing him on with a mind­set of Per­ma­nent Defense. The par­ty of Dan Evans, John Spell­man, and even Slade Gor­ton has become the par­ty of Don­ald Trump and Tim Eyman. And East­side vot­ers have tak­en notice.

The nas­ti­er and more craven Repub­li­cans get in their attacks, the more at risk they are of destroy­ing what’s left of their cred­i­bil­i­ty with sub­ur­ban voters.

But it seems they’re so des­per­ate to avoid los­ing on Novem­ber 7th in the 45th that they’re not think­ing through the con­se­quences of their self-defeat­ing behavior.