Erin Frasier vs. Jim Walsh: The closest contest of 2018 could be in Washington’s 19th District

Top Two elec­tion results in Wash­ing­ton State rolled in last month, leav­ing many  Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates across the state feel­ing hope­ful about their chances of win­ning in Novem­ber. One of those can­di­dates is Erin Frasi­er, who is try­ing to unseat fiery (and Trump-lov­ing) Repub­li­can Jim Walsh in the coastal 19th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, which encom­pass­es Pacif­ic Coun­ty and Wahki­akum Coun­ty plus parts of Grays Har­bor, Cowlitz, and Lewis counties.

Frasi­er and Walsh fin­ished the Top Two in a near tie, with Walsh slight­ly ahead of Frasi­er. She received 17,469 votes, or 49.81%; Walsh end­ed with 17,605 votes, or 50.19%. That’s a dif­fer­ence of just one hun­dred and thir­ty six votes.

As men­tioned, the 19th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict is geo­graph­i­cal­ly large and most­ly rur­al, with only a cou­ple of urban cen­ters. It is locat­ed in West­ern Wash­ing­ton, south of the Olympic Moun­tains, and runs from Aberdeen to Longview.

Besides Walsh, it is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ed by State Sen­a­tor Dean Takko and State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bri­an Blake, both of whom are Democrats.

As rur­al elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Takko’s and Blake’s posi­tions on the issues some­times dif­fer from the posi­tions tak­en by their Demo­c­ra­t­ic colleagues.

For exam­ple, Sen­a­tor Takko vot­ed against Sen­ate Bill 6620 in the last leg­isla­tive ses­sion. The bill sought to expand back­ground checks on the pur­chase of semi­au­to­mat­ic rifles and raise the legal age to pur­chase from 18 to 21.

Sen­a­tor Takko argued that the Sec­ond Amend­ment “seems to res­onate more” with vot­ers in the 19th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, giv­en how rur­al it is.

Takko did, how­ev­er, vote in sup­port of ban­ning bump stocks, as well as a bill restrict­ing domes­tic abusers from pos­sess­ing firearms.

Erin Frasi­er stress­es that access to edu­ca­tion and afford­able health­care should be a pri­or­i­ty for the 19th Dis­tric­t’s del­e­ga­tion to Olympia. She believes that law­mak­ers need to open up the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing edu­ca­tion again as well.

“There’s many that think that we’ve met our K‑12 oblig­a­tions because we ful­filled the McCleary require­ments,” Frasi­er explained, “So, many think we’re done and don’t need to do any­thing else. But we def­i­nite­ly need to address how fund­ing is allo­cat­ed and uti­lized across the state to ensure that we’re sup­port­ing our teach­ers and the work that needs to be done to sup­port students.”

She says the while the dis­trict has seen improve­ments with their K‑12 schools, she believes more focus needs to be giv­en to ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion and post-sec­ondary career options and career path­ways, so that the dis­trict has “a strong and sol­id edu­ca­tion pipeline for youths in the area.”

The oth­er piece is access to health­care, “in a much broad­er def­i­n­i­tion than we usu­al­ly con­sid­er,” said Frasi­er. She says that while cov­er­age is para­mount, the 19th Dis­trict strug­gles with a need for actu­al phys­i­cal access. She argues that there are not enough facil­i­ties and providers to sup­port the dis­persed nature of the district’s pop­u­la­tion. Frasi­er believes Med­ic­aid reim­burse­ment rates need to be addressed to ensure providers and health­care facil­i­ties can thrive in the district.

Lack of pub­lic trans­porta­tion is anoth­er bar­ri­er for those seek­ing med­ical care. As not­ed above, the dis­trict spans five coun­ties: All of Pacif­ic Coun­ty, as well as parts of Grays Har­bor, Wahki­akum, Lewis, and Cowlitz Counties.

Pacif­ic Tran­sit Sys­tem pro­vides bus tran­sit options in Pacif­ic County.

How­ev­er, RiverCi­ties Tran­sit only serves the Kel­so and Longview area in Cowlitz Coun­ty, on the very edge of the 19th, and Wahki­akum Coun­ty offers very lim­it­ed tran­sit options. Twin Tran­sit in Lewis Coun­ty serves Cen­tralia and Chehalis, nei­ther of which are locat­ed in the 19th.

Frasi­er believes the 19th has his­tor­i­cal­ly been treat­ed as an after­thought, giv­en how rur­al and far away it is from Wash­ing­ton state’s cap­i­tal and urban hub. She says she’s adamant about bring­ing her district’s voic­es and needs to the forefront.

“I’ve seen a lot of appli­ca­tions for resources or funds where many areas in this dis­trict, their demo­graph­ics are used to make the pool big­ger, but then the resources don’t actu­al­ly get out there,” says Frasier.

“Their poten­tial impact as far as num­bers is not as high as oth­er areas so a lot of the time they’re not even eli­gi­ble for resources.”

Frasi­er believes that if the Leg­is­la­ture wants to improve lives in dis­tricts like hers, the qual­i­ty of the impact should hold more weight than the quan­ti­ty of the impact.

The con­test between Frasi­er and Walsh could go down to the wire this Novem­ber as one of the state’s clos­est races. The out­come like­ly won’t be known until the end of Novem­ber, when the elec­tion is actu­al­ly certified.

In the inter­ven­ing three weeks, there’s like­ly to be plen­ty of bal­lot chas­ing activ­i­ty, as Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can activists reach out to vot­ers to cure bal­lots that have a prob­lem — like a sig­na­ture mismatch.

Bal­lots for over­seas and mil­i­tary vot­ers have gone into the mail for the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion. Vot­ers resid­ing at home in Wash­ing­ton State will get their bal­lots in the mail in about a month, about three weeks before Novem­ber 6th.