Washington State Republican Party claims it’s “thriving,” but that’s not what the data shows

This morn­ing, the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty sent out an email blast tak­ing issue with a recent col­umn by The Seat­tle Times’ Dan­ny West­neat, in which West­neat opined that cir­cum­stances just keep get­ting worse for the Ever­green State’s Grand Old Par­ty, or GOP, as the Repub­li­cans often call themselves.

This col­umn left the WSRP cen­tral office pret­ty steamed.

“The Seat­tle Times has no prob­lem run­ning arti­cles about how Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton State don’t stand a chance in 2020,” the email, signed by Chair Caleb Heim­lich, begins. It goes on to whine: “Now they’re deny­ing us an equal voice in the con­ver­sa­tion. The lat­est hit piece from Dan­ny West­neat is an egre­gious mis­car­riage of jour­nal­ism and a bla­tant lie about our Party.”

News­flash to the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty: Dan­ny West­neat is an opin­ion colum­nist. He writes columns, not arti­cles. That means what appears in the paper under his byline reflects his sub­jec­tive take on what’s hap­pen­ing in our pol­i­tics, not unlike what the NPI team pub­lish­es here on the Cas­ca­dia Advocate.

There’s no “egre­gious mis­car­riage of jour­nal­ism” here.

Real­ly, Repub­li­cans ought to be cel­e­brat­ing what The Seat­tle Times Com­pa­ny has done for them this cen­tu­ry, not attack the news­pa­per because it does­n’t employ a sta­ble filled exclu­sive­ly with right wing voic­es like a right wing rag would.

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty has actu­al­ly got­ten lots of love from the Blethen fam­i­ly over the years for its high pro­file can­di­dates, from Mike McGav­ick and Dave Reichert to Dino Rossi and Rob McKen­na, all of whom the Blethens chose to endorse. The favoritism has even extend­ed to leg­isla­tive races; the Times backed Repub­li­cans Rod­ney Tom and Jiny­oung Englund with­in the past two years.

(And yes, Repub­li­cans, Rod­ney Tom is one of yours, no mat­ter what he calls him­self. Tim Shel­don too. Actions speak loud­er than words.)

The col­umn in ques­tion actu­al­ly ran three weeks ago, and West­neat has writ­ten more columns since. I’m sur­prised it’s tak­en Repub­li­cans this long to put out an email grum­bling about it, since it clear­ly both­ered them, but maybe they were too busy get­ting ready to host failed Gov­er­nor Scott Walk­er at their Annu­al Din­ner.

Their reac­tion to West­neat’s col­umn is more proof of how out of touch they are. They want every­one to believe that their par­ty is “thriv­ing”, but the avail­able data, from pub­lic opin­ion research to elec­tion results, does­n’t sup­port that narrative.

Let’s take a look at some of this data.

Last year’s elec­tion results. In the 2018 midterms, Repub­li­cans got ham­mered. Democ­rats took sev­en state House seats and three state Sen­ate seats from them.  Democ­rats also cap­tured the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict for the first time ever, send­ing pedi­a­tri­cian Kim Schri­er to Con­gress and defeat­ing Dino Rossi. Mean­while, for­mer State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Susan Hutchi­son lost bad­ly to Maria Cantwell after loud­ly declar­ing to a room full of reporters that there would be no blue wave. Well, there was — and it swamped the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Party.

Pre­vi­ous elec­tion results. Repub­li­cans haven’t won a guber­na­to­r­i­al race in Wash­ing­ton State since 1980 and haven’t won a U.S. Sen­ate race here since 1994. That’s a long drought. Repub­li­cans cur­rent­ly hold two just two statewide posi­tions, Sec­re­tary of State and Trea­sur­er. Democ­rats already have a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenger for Trea­sur­er in State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michael Pel­lic­ciot­ti, a ris­ing star who will ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly from the (D) next to his name on the ballot.

Don­ald Trump’s approval rat­ing. Don­ald Trump is the head of the Repub­li­can Par­ty and thus its chief spokesper­son. More than three in five Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sur­veyed on behalf of NPI dis­ap­prove of Trump’s job per­for­mance. About the same num­ber said they would vote for Trump’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent if the elec­tion were being held now, despite not know­ing the name of that opponent.

Par­ti­san pref­er­ences. Respect­ed local poll­ster Stu­art Elway recent­ly found a twen­ty-point gap between Wash­ing­to­ni­ans iden­ti­fy­ing with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and Wash­ing­to­ni­ans iden­ti­fy­ing with the Repub­li­can Par­ty. It’s the biggest gap Elway has ever mea­sured. Elway’s find­ing is actu­al­ly what prompt­ed West­neat’s col­umn. “It could get worse, too,” Elway remarked. “With Trump at the top of the tick­et, I don’t know how they are even going to field a team in the next election.”

Dave Reichert’s refusal to run for Gov­er­nor. Caleb Heim­lich recent­ly float­ed the idea of for­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Reichert run­ning for Gov­er­nor. Reichert was clear­ly at the top of Heim­lich’s list of chal­lengers to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. But it took Reichert only a few days to take a pass on run­ning, say­ing he was enjoy­ing his lob­by­ing gig and spend­ing time with his family.

Bar­bara Bai­ley’s retire­ment. One of the Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tors con­sid­ered most vul­ner­a­ble in 2020 has opt­ed to resign and retire rather than seek reelec­tion or even serve out her term. Bai­ley (R‑10th Dis­trict) will be head­ing for the exits in a week. Her depar­ture comes just a few weeks after Demo­c­ra­t­ic Island Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Helen Price John­son declared her intent to run for the seat.

Wash­ing­ton State is ranked the best state in the coun­try. Repub­li­cans say that under Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance, Wash­ing­ton State is suf­fer­ing. But it was recent­ly named the best state in the coun­try by U.S. News & World Report. And that’s after more than three decades of Demo­c­ra­t­ic governance.

Now, if Repub­li­cans want to argue that Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors had noth­ing to do with Wash­ing­ton becom­ing such a suc­cess sto­ry, they can… but if the state is suc­ceed­ing in spite of hav­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors like Jay Inslee at the helm, then that inher­ent­ly means Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance isn’t hurt­ing it.

The truth is that it is Wash­ing­ton State that is thriv­ing, while the local Repub­li­can Par­ty is falling apart. It’s real­ly not even the Repub­li­can Par­ty any­more, as it does not stand for repub­li­can­ism or any­thing that resem­bles Amer­i­can val­ues. It should just be called the Don­ald Trump Par­ty because that’s what it has turned into.

Trump’s takeover of the par­ty in all fifty states is basi­cal­ly com­plete — any­one who isn’t on board with Trump has been told in no uncer­tain terms to get lost.

Three men are chal­leng­ing Trump for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion in 2020 — William Weld, Joe Walsh, and Mark San­ford — but state par­ties like the WSRP aren’t giv­ing them the time of day. In fact, sev­er­al Repub­li­can state par­ties have decid­ed to can­cel their nom­i­nat­ing events so as to shut out the three chal­lengers.

In fair­ness to the WSRP, they are not try­ing to can­cel or back out of Wash­ing­ton’s 2020 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. Still, Caleb Heim­lich is on the Trump train just like oth­er Repub­li­can state par­ty chairs — he rou­tine­ly sends emails prais­ing Trump.

Heim­lich knows the num­ber one rule in pol­i­tics is don’t alien­ate your base, and he’s fol­low­ing that rule. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Heim­lich, what pleas­es the base dis­gusts pret­ty much the rest of Wash­ing­ton State’s electorate.

Repub­li­cans appear pret­ty nice­ly set up for a bru­tal 2020.

Democ­rats will be work­ing tire­less­ly to cap­ture yet anoth­er con­gres­sion­al seat, this time in WA-03, and add to their leg­isla­tive majori­ties in Olympia while reclaim­ing the office of State Trea­sur­er. Add while the par­ty does­n’t yet have a cred­i­ble chal­lenger to Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman, it prob­a­bly will before long.

Mean­while, as not­ed above, Repub­li­cans could­n’t per­suade Dave Reichert to run for gov­er­nor. Their bench is thin. The kind of Repub­li­cans who Wash­ing­ton vot­ers might grav­i­tate towards in a state lev­el race have no rea­son to want to share a tick­et with Don­ald Trump. So that leaves the Repub­li­can Par­ty with an unabashed­ly pro-Trump tick­et. It’s hard to envi­sion such a tick­et doing well next year.