The upcom­ing gen­er­al elec­tion in Novem­ber will decide whether Democ­rats keep their Wash­ing­ton leg­isla­tive majori­ties in the House and Sen­ate, allow­ing them to advance pro­gres­sive caus­es beyond what they accom­plished ear­li­er this year.

The par­ty cur­rent­ly holds slim, one vote majori­ties in both cham­bers, but has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change that in just a few weeks.

For the first time in many elec­tion cycles, the par­ty is almost exclu­sive­ly focused on pick­ing up seats thanks to a favor­able elec­toral land­scape. No Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bents are con­sid­ered to be in dan­ger this year, while many Repub­li­can-held seats are up for grabs, includ­ing some due to retirements.

The 6th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict is an exam­ple of a dis­trict with two open seats this year (one in the House, one in the Senate).

The 6th is locat­ed in East­ern Wash­ing­ton; it encom­pass­es a large slice of west­ern Spokane Coun­ty, includ­ing neigh­bor­hoods in the City of Spokane as well as the com­mu­ni­ties of Air­way Heights, Med­ical Lake, and Cheney.

The 6th is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ed by Repub­li­cans Michael Baum­gart­ner, Mike Volz, and Jeff Holy. In Feb­ru­ary this year, Baum­gart­ner announced he would not seek reelec­tion to the Sen­ate. Holy is vacat­ing his House seat in the hopes of mov­ing up.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic activist Jes­sa Lewis is Holy’s oppo­nent. The two fin­ished less than a thou­sand votes apart in the Top Two elec­tion; Holy end­ed up with 52.22%, while Lewis cap­tured 47.78%. A for­mer evan­gel­i­cal Repub­li­can her­self, Lewis explained she hopes this com­mon ground and her abil­i­ty to con­verse with those right-lean­ing vot­ers, many of whom have nev­er vot­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic in their life, will be the deter­min­ing fac­tor in which can­di­date comes out on top in November.

“My back­ground isn’t tra­di­tion­al,” said Lewis. “But because of it, I under­stand a broad­er range of the human expe­ri­ence and I’m able to talk to people.”

Jes­sa Lewis speak­ing at the autumn meet­ing of the Wash­ing­ton State Democ­rats (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Lewis described her frus­tra­tion as a con­stituent when she says she could not get a meet­ing with eiither Sen­a­tor Baum­gart­ner and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Holy to dis­cuss the district’s lack of afford­able health­care and her work to pass health­care reform as East­ern Wash­ing­ton Direc­tor of Health­care for All Wash­ing­ton.

“As a con­stituent, I couldn’t get a meet­ing,” Lewis recounted.

“We need to get away from this par­ti­san­ship and actu­al­ly rep­re­sent the peo­ple [we] are sup­posed to rep­re­sent, and that means meet­ing with every­one. That’s not only the peo­ple who can cut you big checks.”

Should she win in Novem­ber, Lewis said she’ll seek to improve health­care in Wash­ing­ton State by advanc­ing leg­is­la­tion to cre­ate a uni­ver­sal, sin­gle-pay­er health­care sys­tem and enact coun­ter­mea­sures to shore up the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act, which Repub­li­cans have been try­ing to sab­o­tage at the fed­er­al level.

Mean­while, on the House side, Demo­c­rat Kay Mura­no is chal­leng­ing Repub­li­can incum­bent Mike Volz. The can­di­date said one of the pri­ma­ry issues that inspired her to run was the hous­ing cri­sis fac­ing the 6th Dis­trict, spurred on by the deci­sion by Ama­zon to open a ful­fill­ment cen­ter near Spokane Inter­na­tion­al Airport.

Spokane-area hous­ing prices have been on a steady increase and the rental vacan­cy rate is around 1%. Ama­zon plans to employ local res­i­dents to work at the new ful­fill­ment cen­ter, but it will still be most­ly min­i­mum-wage jobs. Mura­no explained that it’s still caus­ing prop­er­ty man­agers to dras­ti­cal­ly raise rents. The dis­trict also does not have Just Cause Evic­tion pro­tec­tions for renters, so prop­er­ty own­ers can evict ten­ants with a twen­ty-day notice at any time for any reason.

“Obvi­ous­ly we need to build more low-income hous­ing, so we need to increase the amount of mon­ey that would go into the hous­ing trust fund,” said Murano,

“But we also need to have some ten­ant pro­tec­tions, because you should­n’t be allowed to raise rent three times in six months.”

Mura­no not­ed that the dis­trict is diverse, encom­pass­ing afflu­ent neigh­bor­hoods in Spokane, as well as rur­al, sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas.

From hav­ing been out talk­ing with vot­ers, she said afford­abil­i­ty (or the lack there­of) is an issue every­one is grap­pling with. “When we start talk­ing about the cost of things like hous­ing and how it’s increased, the cost of health­care and how it’s increased, the cost of edu­ca­tion with high­er edu­ca­tion and preschool and every­thing in-between. Every­one says: ‘Yeah, I can’t afford it,’” said Murano.

Mura­no and Volz had the clos­est results of the district’s three races; Volz man­aged only 50.26% of the vote, with Mura­no net­ting 49.74%.

In the oth­er House race, for the posi­tion Holy is giv­ing up, Demo­c­rat Dave Wil­son secured the top spot in the Top Two elec­tion, with 40.05% of the vote. Repub­li­can Jen­ny Gra­ham came in sec­ond with 33.35%.

Both Mura­no and Lewis described their deter­mi­na­tion to make sure East­ern Wash­ing­ton does not get for­got­ten should Democ­rats increase their leg­isla­tive majori­ties, as they are wide­ly expect­ed to do.

“I think the main thing is we’re putting peo­ple first,” said Lewis, “[Peo­ple in the 6th] are tired of the fight­ing, and they’re tired of being for­got­ten. And they’re tired of it being so hard to get by. That’s the thing, they’re not afraid of work. I’m not afraid of the work either. We just want a chance to be heard.”