NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2019

Thanks, but no thanks: Dave Reichert takes a pass on challenging Jay Inslee for Governor

Dave Reichert is out. Again.

The for­mer King Coun­ty Sher­iff and Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive declared today that he will not be a can­di­date for Gov­er­nor of the State of Wash­ing­ton in 2020, say­ing that he enjoys his cur­rent work and deeply val­ues his time with his family.

Reichert’s state­ment appears to be a refresh­ing­ly sin­cere and can­did state­ment of his pri­or­i­ties. I think he’s find­ing retire­ment to be very pleas­ant, and, at Gor­don Thomas Hon­ey­well, he is work­ing on a noble issue he cares a lot about.

Why walk away from that? There’s just no upside.

Here’s Reichert’s full statement.

I am hon­ored and hum­bled to have recent­ly been asked to con­sid­er run­ning for Gov­er­nor in 2020. After much thought­ful prayer and dis­cus­sion with fam­i­ly and friends, I have decid­ed not to run.

I am enjoy­ing my cur­rent role at Gor­don Thomas Hon­ey­well Gov­ern­men­tal Affairs help­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries cre­ate miss­ing per­son data­bas­es (through DNA) that will help to iden­ti­fy miss­ing per­sons and pre­vent chil­dren from being abduct­ed in the dead­ly world of human traf­fick­ing. I am eager to con­tin­ue that work and save lives. My wife, kids and grand­kids have made great sac­ri­fices over my near­ly five decades of pub­lic ser­vant­hood and we are now able to enjoy much qual­i­ty time with each other.

I’m con­fi­dent a qual­i­ty Repub­li­can can­di­date will enter the race and I look for­ward to the first Repub­li­can serv­ing as Gov­er­nor of this great state since Gov­er­nor John Spell­man in 1985.

Notice that Reichert did not offer an endorse­ment of any of the Repub­li­cans cur­rent­ly run­ning for gov­er­nor. It would seem he’s hold­ing out for a more cred­i­ble can­di­date. So is State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Caleb Heim­lich, the per­son respon­si­ble for float­ing the Reichert for Gov­er­nor tri­al bal­loon a few days ago.

Heim­lich had thought Reichert might be his man.

But now that Reichert has tak­en a pass, it’s back to the short­list, which I imag­ine is a very short list con­sid­er­ing how thin the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s bench is.

Reichert pre­vi­ous­ly opt­ed against run­ning for Gov­er­nor in 2015, so this is actu­al­ly the sec­ond time he’s decid­ed not to take on incum­bent Jay Inslee.

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One Comment

  1. Dave Reichert is one Repub­li­can who could get sup­port from vot­ers from both par­ties. He prob­a­bly would have giv­en Inslee a tough run.

    # by Mike Barer :: September 3rd, 2019 at 10:50 PM
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