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, May 12th, 2020

WA Filing Week 2020: A look at who’s filed in key races as of Tuesday afternoon

Wel­come to our con­tin­u­ing cov­er­age of Fil­ing Week 2020!

Until this Fri­day, the Sec­re­tary of State and coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials will be accept­ing for­mal dec­la­ra­tions of can­di­da­cy from Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who have decid­ed they want to run for office at fed­er­al, state, and local levels.

This is a pres­i­den­tial year, which means we’ll be elect­ing all ten of our U.S. House posi­tions, all nine of our statewide exec­u­tive posi­tions, most of our state leg­isla­tive posi­tions, and sev­er­al of our State Supreme Court posi­tions, not to men­tion a large num­ber of local posi­tions, espe­cial­ly in Pierce County.

This post is the fourth in a series of Fil­ing Week reports we’ll be bring­ing you at reg­u­lar inter­vals until the close of fil­ing at 5 PM on the final day of the workweek.

U.S. House

The Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is the larg­er of the two cham­bers of Con­gress estab­lished by the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion. Mem­bers of the House serve two year terms and must face the vot­ers each elec­tion cycle. Since the 2010–2011 redis­trict­ing process, Wash­ing­ton has had ten seats in the House.

Can­di­dates who have filed since this morning:

2nd Con­gres­sion­al District

  • Repub­li­can Cody Hart

5th Con­gres­sion­al District

  • Demo­c­rat Chris Armitage

6th Con­gres­sion­al District

  • Repub­li­can Eliz­a­beth Kreiselmaier

8th Con­gres­sion­al District

  • Repub­li­can James Mitchell

10th Con­gres­sion­al District

  • Demo­c­rat Eric LeMay
  • Demo­c­rat Kris­tine Reeves

Executive Department

Wash­ing­ton State’s exec­u­tive depart­ment con­sists of nine statewide direct­ly elect­ed posi­tions head­ed by a gov­er­nor. All posi­tions are for four-year terms, filled in pres­i­den­tial years. Each posi­tion is inde­pen­dent­ly elect­ed and thus has its own port­fo­lio of respon­si­bil­i­ties. Key man­age­ment posi­tions with­in the exec­u­tive branch that are not direct­ly elect­ed are filled by guber­na­to­r­i­al appointment.

Can­di­dates who have filed since this morning:

Gov­er­nor

  • Trump Repub­li­can Goodspaceguy
  • Social­ist Work­ers Hen­ry Clay Dennison
  • Fifth Repub­lic David W. Blomstrom

State Supreme Court

The most impor­tant judi­cial body in Wash­ing­ton State is its State Supreme Court, which, like its fed­er­al equiv­a­lent, has nine mem­bers. How­ev­er, unlike the Unit­ed States Supreme Court, some­times referred to as SCOTUS for short, mem­bers of the State Supreme Court are direct­ly elect­ed by the vot­ers for six-year terms.

No new can­di­dates have filed since this morning.

Key legislative races

The Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture, like the Unit­ed States Con­gress, is a bicam­er­al body with a House and Sen­ate. Mem­bers of the state House serve two year terms, just like their fed­er­al coun­ter­parts, while mem­bers of the state Sen­ate serve four year terms. Present­ly, Wash­ing­ton has forty-nine leg­isla­tive dis­tricts, with each dis­trict elect­ing two rep­re­sen­ta­tives and one senator.

Can­di­dates who have filed since this morning:

5th Leg­isla­tive District

  • State Sen­a­tor
    • Demo­c­rat Ingrid Anderson

30th Leg­isla­tive District

  • State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive — Posi­tion #1
    • Inde­pen­dent Repub­li­can Mar­tin A. Moore

Pierce County positions

Pierce is Wash­ing­ton’s sec­ond largest coun­ty by pop­u­la­tion. Unlike its north­ern neigh­bor King and oth­er home rule coun­ties in Wash­ing­ton State with char­ters, Pierce elects its coun­ty-lev­el posi­tions in even-num­bered years (when turnout is high­er), as opposed to odd-num­bered years (when turnout is typ­i­cal­ly lower).

No new can­di­dates have filed since this morning.

See the complete list of everyone who has filed

Want to see a com­pre­hen­sive list of all can­di­date fil­ings at the state lev­el? You can do so at the Sec­re­tary of State’s web­site. You may also browse our archive of Fil­ing Week reports to see who filed for office at oth­er inter­vals.

Adjacent posts

  • Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation


    Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

    Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than fif­teen years. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t run ads or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

    Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy journalism.

    Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

    Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

2 Comments

  1. Could the 5th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict Sen­ate race have two Democ­rats in the general?

    # by Mike Barer :: May 13th, 2020 at 6:51 AM
    • Yes, because Wash­ing­ton uses a two part gen­er­al elec­tion sys­tem where­in fields of can­di­dates are win­nowed down to two each, with the top two vote get­ters advanc­ing onwards to the runoff (gen­er­al elec­tion) regard­less of party.

      # by Andrew Villeneuve :: May 13th, 2020 at 2:03 PM
  • NPI’s essential research and advocacy is sponsored by: