This year’s con­test for Sec­re­tary of State in Wash­ing­ton fea­tures two women who each won their first state-lev­el elec­tion in 2012 and have been serv­ing in the state­house for eight years straight: Repub­li­can incum­bent Kim Wyman and Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Gael Tar­leton, NPI’s most senior boardmember.

Though they are close to the same age and deeply inter­est­ed in the same issues, Wyman and Tar­leton have sharply diverg­ing views on what the job of Sec­re­tary of State should look like in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. They also have very dif­fer­ent back­grounds. While they’ve both lived and worked in Europe, they took very dif­fer­ent paths to end up as can­di­dates for statewide office in 2020.

Wyman is a for­mer youth sports offi­cial and recre­ation leader who began work­ing for Thurston Coun­ty in 1991, first as Assis­tant Record­ing Man­ag­er, lat­er as Elec­tions Man­ag­er, and final­ly as Audi­tor, a posi­tion she held until becom­ing Sec­re­tary of State in 2013. A native of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Wyman lived abroad in Ger­many with her hus­band for sev­er­al years before mov­ing to the Pacif­ic North­west. She is a proud Wash­ing­ton State Cer­ti­fied Elec­tion Administrator.

Wyman earned her bach­e­lor’s degree from Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Long Beach and her mas­ter’s degree from Troy State University.

Tar­leton is a for­mer senior defense intel­li­gence ana­lyst for the Pen­ta­gon who man­aged busi­ness oper­a­tions for a For­tune 500 com­pa­ny in Rus­sia fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union. After mov­ing to the Pacif­ic North­west and work­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton for sev­er­al years, Gael ran for a posi­tion on the Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion and won. She was reelect­ed in 2011. In 2012, she emerged from a crowd­ed field to become the suc­ces­sor to State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mary Lou Dick­er­son. She has been reelect­ed four con­sec­u­tive times.

Tar­leton has two degrees from George­town Uni­ver­si­ty: a bach­e­lor of sci­ence in for­eign ser­vice and a mas­ter of arts in government.

As men­tioned above, the can­di­dates have sharply diverg­ing views on what the job of Sec­re­tary of State should look like in the twen­ty-first century.

Wyman argues that the job is prin­ci­pal­ly min­is­te­r­i­al and should be held by some­one who has hands-on expe­ri­ence admin­is­ter­ing elections.

As she puts it:

“As your Sec­re­tary of State, it’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty to admin­is­ter an elec­tion and instill con­fi­dence in the process. I have made it a cen­tral theme of my cam­paigns to focus on the integri­ty of elec­tions and not get involved in par­ti­san cam­paign attacks. They come and go, but our elec­tions need to stay secure every sin­gle day.” (From a cam­paign email sent May 28th, 2020.)

Tar­leton argues that the job is about much more than empow­er­ing coun­ty audi­tors to run sat­is­fac­to­ry elec­tions. In her view, Wash­ing­ton sore­ly needs a Sec­re­tary of State who will pro­tect vot­ers from threats to elec­tions — espe­cial­ly for­eign adver­saries — and sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand vot­er out­reach to improve turnout.

As she puts it:

“It’s time we had a Sec­re­tary of State who is not only pre­pared for the cur­rent threats to our elec­tions, both for­eign and domes­tic, but also sup­ports and leads efforts to expand vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion and engage­ment. I’m com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing every vot­er and every vote.” (From her cam­paign website.)

While Wyman has empha­sized qual­i­fi­ca­tions and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in her past cam­paigns, she’s tak­en that theme to a whole new lev­el this year by disin­gen­u­ous­ly advo­cat­ing that the posi­tion should be made nonpartisan.

That’s right — non­par­ti­san.

Wyman’s let’s take the par­ti­san­ship out of this posi­tion pitch — tai­lor made for Wash­ing­ton State’s edi­to­r­i­al boards, which have been eager­ly gob­bling it up — appears to be the com­plete extent of her plat­form for chang­ing the office.

Real­ly and tru­ly. If you look at her web­site, there’s no issues page there.

The clos­est Wyman comes to pre­sent­ing a set of pri­or­i­ties for the future is a sin­gle para­graph on her Accom­plish­ments page, where she says:

I want to con­tin­ue to work with all coun­ty audi­tors to make sure our elec­tions depart­ments across the state have the space, equip­ment, and trained staff to con­tin­ue to deliv­er secure elec­tions to all vot­ers; I want to improve the stor­age and preser­va­tion of our state’s his­to­ry by com­plet­ing our Library/Archives Build­ing; and I will con­tin­ue to make all resources in the Sec­re­tary of State’s office avail­able to those who need it the most by work­ing with groups and indi­vid­u­als to learn where improve­ments can be made.

That’s not actu­al­ly an agen­da for the future, it’s just a promise from Wyman to keep doing the bare min­i­mum of what the job requires. Work­ing with coun­ty audi­tors, over­see­ing the com­ple­tion of ongo­ing projects, and build­ing rela­tion­ships with peo­ple who care about the state’s his­to­ry and arti­facts is some­thing either can­di­date for this job would be doing if they won.

Tar­leton, by con­trast, has a Poli­cies page where she dis­cuss­es her ideas to improve vot­ing access, elec­tion secu­ri­ty, and elec­tion inno­va­tion. It’s not lengthy, but it is sub­stan­tive, with spe­cif­ic ideas pre­sent­ed for each priority.

Wyman has now been our Sec­re­tary of State for near­ly eight years.

After near­ly two terms in office, she ought to have a set of well honed ideas for improv­ing and mod­ern­iz­ing the office. But I have not not heard any.

Instead, the mes­sage Wyman’s cam­paign is putting out is, you should reelect me because I’m a pro­fes­sion­al, where­as my oppo­nent is a high­ly par­ti­san Demo­c­rat backed to the hilt by the state par­ty chair who was my oppo­nent in 2016.

And, when she talks to edi­to­r­i­al boards: This posi­tion should be non­par­ti­san.

What makes Wyman’s rhetoric about non­par­ti­san­ship so disin­gen­u­ous is that she’s pro­mot­ing the idea of elim­i­nat­ing the par­ty label on the bal­lot next to the posi­tion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly run­ning for reelec­tion as a par­ti­san Republican.

Wyman could have mod­eled the very behav­ior she says she wants to see by declar­ing no par­ty pref­er­ence in her bid for a third term and run­ning as an unaf­fil­i­at­ed can­di­date. But she did­n’t. Instead, she filed as a Republican.

And she has been cam­paign­ing, with gus­to, as a Repub­li­can, on the (most­ly vir­tu­al) cam­paign trail. Because she is a Repub­li­can, through and through. Even despite neo­fas­cist Don­ald Trump’s takeover of the Repub­li­can Party.

Occa­sion­al­ly, Wyman has put out a pub­lic state­ment soft­ly dis­agree­ing with some­thing that Trump has said, but that has pret­ty much been the extent of her diver­gence from Trump. I don’t doubt Wyman’s sin­cer­i­ty when she says she isn’t vot­ing for Trump. But she has not joined the oppo­si­tion to Trump, or done any­thing to hold her own par­ty account­able for the incred­i­ble dam­age that it has inflict­ed upon our coun­try’s demo­c­ra­t­ic institutions.

Wyman could have cho­sen a dif­fer­ent path.

She could have left the Repub­li­can Par­ty alto­geth­er, like oth­ers have, and demon­strat­ed that she tru­ly believes in “non­par­ti­san­ship”.

Or she could have remained a Repub­li­can, but fol­lowed the exam­ple of the late Slade Gor­ton, who joined Repub­li­cans for the Rule of Law and took action to hold Don­ald Trump account­able for his dis­gust­ing abus­es of power.

Sad­ly, she did­n’t do either of those things.

Since our state’s edi­to­r­i­al boards can­not be both­ered to exam­ine Wyman’s record under a micro­scope and com­pare her rhetoric to her actions as a can­di­date and a pub­lic offi­cial, I’m going to lay it out in detail, so that any­one can see and weigh the evi­dence for them­selves. Vot­ers deserve to have access to this information.

Speak­ing of trans­paren­cy, since Gael Tar­leton is a North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute board­mem­ber and donor — a rela­tion­ship that we have dis­closed in every sin­gle arti­cle we’ve pub­lished about this race — read­ers should know that nei­ther Gael nor her cam­paign staff or her con­sul­tants were involved in the writ­ing of this post.

I relied prin­ci­pal­ly on mate­r­i­al from the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate archives and the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion for the dis­cus­sion below. Some mate­r­i­al is from Gael’s cam­paign, but it’s mate­r­i­al the cam­paign pre­vi­ous­ly made public.

Some­thing else that read­ers should know is that although I’m sup­port­ing Gael’s cam­paign as an indi­vid­ual (NPI does­n’t endorse can­di­dates for office), I have con­sis­tent­ly tried to keep a dia­logue going with Kim Wyman and her staff. I like Kim as a per­son; she has always been friend­ly and cor­dial in every con­ver­sa­tion I’ve had with her, and I am glad she has been suc­cess­ful in bat­tling colon cancer.

I fre­quent­ly vis­it her office when I’m in Olympia, chiefly to talk to her staff about areas of mutu­al con­cern between NPI and them, and I have been doing so since the posi­tion was held by her pre­de­ces­sor Sam Reed (who I con­sid­er to be one of our most dis­tin­guished retired polit­i­cal lead­ers) because I believe in build­ing bridges and gov­ern­ing in a bipar­ti­san fash­ion when­ev­er possible.

Coop­er­a­tion is a pro­gres­sive val­ue. NPI is always glad to work on issues with peo­ple from across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum wher­ev­er we can find agreement.

There are many points on which we as an orga­ni­za­tion are in agree­ment with Kim Wyman. For exam­ple, we agree that Wash­ing­ton’s major polit­i­cal par­ties should use a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to allo­cate all of their nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates, some­thing that final­ly hap­pened for the first time this year.

We also agree that the Nation­al Archives’ facil­i­ty in Seat­tle should not be closed.

We’re each enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of the Wash­ing­ton Wildlife & Recre­ation Coali­tion, a bipar­ti­san effort orig­i­nal­ly formed by Mike Lowry and Dan Evans.

And we agree that only hand­writ­ten sig­na­tures made with pen and paper should be accept­able for qual­i­fy­ing mea­sures to the bal­lot in Wash­ing­ton.

I could go on, but I think these exam­ples nice­ly illus­trate my point.

Let’s now take a look at Wyman’s record and exam­ine the evi­dence, which defin­i­tive­ly shows that she is a par­ti­san Repub­li­can who is active in par­ty pol­i­tics despite claim­ing not to play in par­ty pol­i­tics at the state and local level.

Exhibit A: Wyman’s role in electing Republican Secretaries of State in other states elsewhere in the country

At an event this week host­ed by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness, Wyman admit­ted that she has been at the fore­front of efforts to elect Repub­li­cans to posi­tions sim­i­lar to the one that she holds in oth­er states.

Said Wyman:

“I do play — and I guess play is the right word — in nation­al elec­tions because I’m not over­see­ing those elec­tions, so yes, I did par­tic­i­pate with my col­leagues who are Repub­li­can Sec­re­taries of State to elect some of the oth­er Secretaries.”

Audio:

Gael Tar­leton’s cam­paign wast­ed no time in issu­ing a press release in which the cam­paign list­ed off some of the peo­ple who Wyman has helped to elect.

• Geor­gia SOS Brad Raf­fensperg­er, who wrong­ful­ly removed 200,000 vot­ers from the rolls, many of them vot­ers of color;
• Iowa SOS Paul Pate, who reject­ed over 64,000 absen­tee bal­lot appli­ca­tions just because they were pre-filled with infor­ma­tion from the vot­er database;
• Kansas SOS Scott Schwab, who sup­port­ed aggres­sive vot­er ID laws that fed­er­al courts lat­er struck down; and
• Ohio SOS Frank LaRose, who defied a court rul­ing to pre­vent local offi­cials from adding more bal­lot drop box­es in the face of wide­spread postal delays.

Addi­tion­al­ly, ProP­ub­li­ca report­ed last week that a Trump-sup­port­ing right wing attor­ney (the the Her­itage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky) held secret meet­ings with Repub­li­can state elec­tion offi­cials like Wyman to dis­cuss how to advance bogus nar­ra­tives about “vot­er fraud”.

Wyman’s cal­en­dar shows that she was a par­tic­i­pant in one of the meet­ings.

In addi­tion, Wyman has repeat­ed­ly billed her cam­paign for air­fare con­nect­ed with Repub­li­can Par­ty meet­ings and pre­sen­ta­tions. (There are no sim­i­lar expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty meet­ings; Wyman isn’t into bipar­ti­san outreach.)

Air­fare expens­es billed to the cam­paign dur­ing the 2020 cycle (Data: Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission)

In 2019, Wyman trav­eled to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. to tes­ti­fy against H.R. 1, the For the Peo­ple Act intro­duced by House Democ­rats. Though H.R. 1 sen­si­bly pro­posed to bring bal­lot access reforms pio­neered in the Pacif­ic North­west to all states in the coun­try, Wyman non­sen­si­cal­ly spoke against the leg­is­la­tion.

You’d nev­er catch a “non­par­ti­san” elec­tions pro­fes­sion­al “play­ing” in elec­tions at the nation­al lev­el, work­ing to elect peo­ple who favor purg­ing vot­er rolls and erect­ing bar­ri­ers to vot­ing. That is the behav­ior of a Repub­li­can partisan.

Exhibit B: Wyman’s involvement in local Republican Party events and her comments to attendees of those events

There is per­haps no bet­ter evi­dence demon­strat­ing that Kim Wyman is a par­ti­san Repub­li­can than her reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pa­tion in Repub­li­can Par­ty events.

Though Wyman has only admit­ted to “play­ing” in nation­al elec­tions, the truth is, she is extreme­ly active in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics at the state and local level.

Here are some exam­ples from back in the spring.

On April 5th, Wyman spoke to a meet­ing of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty Cen­tral Com­mit­tee. She spoke for about five min­utes and took ques­tions for six min­utes. On April 30th, she appeared at Steve O’Ban’s e‑kickoff. On May 12th, 2020, she spoke to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Young Repub­li­cans. On May 21st, she was the fea­tured speak­er of the Colum­bia Basin Repub­li­can Women.

Wyman’s cam­paign itself has been hold­ing events for Repub­li­can audiences.

E‑poster adver­tis­ing Kim Wyman’s Repub­li­can Women in gov­ern­ment event

For instance, on August 27th, Wyman’s cam­paign held a vir­tu­al event called “Repub­li­can Women in Gov­ern­ment” with Lyn­da Wil­son and Jacquelin Maycumber.

Nat­u­ral­ly, no Demo­c­ra­t­ic office­hold­ers were on the pro­gram… because the event was by Repub­li­cans, for Republicans.

In addi­tion to appear­ing at par­ty func­tions, Wyman has also attend­ed and spo­ken at the Roanoke Con­fer­ence, an annu­al strate­gic gath­er­ing in Ocean Shores that works on the advance­ment of right wing caus­es. Roanoke attracts Repub­li­can elect­ed offi­cials, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of right wing think tanks, talk radio hosts, new­ly recruit­ed can­di­dates, and activists. also reg­u­lar­ly speaks at events for oth­er Repub­li­can candidates.

Last year, at Repub­li­can J.T. Wilcox’s annu­al salmon bake (anoth­er exam­ple of Wyman’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics), Wyman absurd­ly pitched her reelec­tion cam­paign to a friend­ly audi­ence by claim­ing that the work her office has been doing would pre­vent peo­ple from going up and down I‑5, reg­is­ter­ing to vote in every sin­gle coun­ty, and com­mit­ting vot­er fraud.

Ril­ing up the Repub­li­can base about “vot­er fraud” is of course some­thing Don­ald Trump and his kids do all the time. Below, by press­ing play, you can hear Kim Wyman tepid­ly try her hand at it her­self at the tail end of a speech.

Is it any won­der that Wyman gen­er­al­ly refrains from con­demn­ing Don­ald Trump by name? She’s Dr. Jekyll when she’s speak­ing to nation­al reporters about Wash­ing­ton State’s expe­ri­ence with vote at home, and Mr. Hyde when in front of Repub­li­can audi­ences. Pulling off that bal­anc­ing act would­n’t be pos­si­ble if she were to cross Don­ald Trump, Ron­na McDaniel, and nation­al Republicans.

Exhibit C: Wyman’s history of going on Trump-supporting right wing talk radio shows

Kim Wyman reg­u­lar­ly appears on shows host­ed by right wing talk radio hosts in Wash­ing­ton State, includ­ing Jason Rantz and Todd Her­man, who are Repub­li­can pro­pa­gan­dists. A true “non­par­ti­san” elec­tions pro­fes­sion­al who attempts to stay above pol­i­tics would not go on such shows and then fail to rebut base­less attacks on Wash­ing­ton State’s sys­tem of elec­tions by right wing con­spir­a­cy theorists.

Here is one of Todd Her­man’s seg­ments fea­tur­ing Wyman. This was record­ed back in August. It’s unmis­tak­ably a con­ver­sa­tion between two Republicans.

Yes­ter­day, Wyman was on Jason Rantz’s show yet again.

If Kim Wyman had a pol­i­cy of reach­ing out to local media across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum, her appear­ances on right wing talk radio might not be so prob­lem­at­ic, but she has no such pol­i­cy. We know from our own expe­ri­ence. In eight years, Wyman has nev­er reached out to NPI about any­thing. All of the afore­men­tioned dia­logue between NPI and her office has been ini­ti­at­ed from our end.

Exhibit D: Kim Wyman is part of the state Republican Party’s money matrix — as both a contributor and recipient

If you run an advanced search of the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion’s data­base, you’ll find dozens upon dozens of instances where Kim Wyman’s cam­paigns (for Audi­tor and Sec­re­tary of State) either gave mon­ey to Repub­li­can Par­ty orga­ni­za­tions or accept­ed mon­ey from Repub­li­can Par­ty organizations.

You can see the raw data for your­self here.

Wyman’s cam­paigns (“typ­i­cal­ly bear­ing the name Cit­i­zens for Kim Wyman”) have giv­en mon­ey to many Repub­li­can coun­ty par­ty orga­ni­za­tions as well as the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty. I found $1,162.50 worth of con­tri­bu­tions from her cam­paigns to Repub­li­can com­mit­tees by doing a quick search.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Wyman has been giv­ing mon­ey to Repub­li­can can­di­dates for office every sin­gle cycle since becom­ing Sec­re­tary of State.

Here are some examples:

• Kel­ly Cham­bers for State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive ($75 on 08/02/2018)
• Chris Gildon for State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive ($75 on 07/31/2018)
• Bruce Dammi­er for Pierce Coun­ty Exec­u­tive ($100 on 12/08/2015)
• Greg Kim­sey for Audi­tor ($75 on 04/03/2018, $100 on 03/10/2016)
• Andy Hill for State Sen­ate ($75 on 05/30/2014)
• Steve O’Ban for State Sen­ate ($50 on 06/10/2014, $33.00 on 06/17/2014)
• Sharon Brown for State Sen­ate ($50 on 10/28/2014)
• Lin­da Kochmar for State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive ($50 on 04/27/2014)

As Sec­re­tary of State, Wyman has also per­son­al­ly giv­en mon­ey to the Main­stream Repub­li­cans of Wash­ing­ton, the What­com Coun­ty Repub­li­cans, the Kit­sap Coun­ty Repub­li­cans, and the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict Republicans.

The Repub­li­can Par­ty, in turn, has pro­vid­ed Wyman with lots of mon­ey for her cam­paigns. The Ben­ton Coun­ty Repub­li­cans so far are Wyman’s sin­gle largest 2020 con­trib­u­tor, hav­ing giv­en $5,000. (Par­ty orga­ni­za­tions can give more to can­di­dates than indi­vid­ual donors can.) The Repub­li­can State Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee, a nation­al arm of the Repub­li­can Par­ty based in D.C., has giv­en $2,000.

In 2016, the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty gave Wyman $130,000 and anoth­er $37,434.22 in in-kind con­tri­bu­tions; the Ben­ton Coun­ty Repub­li­cans gave $6,500. The Thurston Coun­ty Repub­li­cans donat­ed $2,000.

If this “should be a non-par­ti­san race,” as Wyman stat­ed in a May 28th, 2020 email, then why is she run­ning as a Repub­li­can and rais­ing mon­ey from Repub­li­can Par­ty orga­ni­za­tions for her can­di­da­cy? And why does Wyman give mon­ey almost exclu­sive­ly to Repub­li­cans and right lean­ing can­di­dates on a reg­u­lar basis when she claims not to “play” in Wash­ing­ton State elections?

Exhibit E: Wyman’s efforts to coerce the Democratic Party into adopting a presidential primary for the 2016 cycle

In 2015, Kim Wyman request­ed leg­is­la­tion that she false­ly claimed would “require” the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to uti­lize a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry for del­e­gate allo­ca­tion in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, rather than work­ing con­struc­tive­ly with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to achieve her goal of a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry used by both major polit­i­cal par­ties (a goal shared by NPI).

You can watch the press con­fer­ence where she unveiled this leg­is­la­tion on TVW. I was there, and I asked one of the ques­tions dur­ing the sub­se­quent Q&A.

A tru­ly non­par­ti­san Sec­re­tary of State would nev­er have attempt­ed to use the leg­isla­tive process to uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly infringe upon the First Amend­ment rights of any polit­i­cal par­ty. But Kim Wyman fig­ured she could use the pow­er of her office to com­pel the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to adopt a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, rather than invest­ing any time in out­reach and relationship-building.

(The leg­is­la­tion she request­ed would­n’t have had an impact on the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, which was then already com­mit­ted to the primary.)

Wyman’s gam­bit did­n’t work. In fact, her actions helped spur advo­cates of a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry with­in the state Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s Cen­tral Com­mit­tee (myself includ­ed) to vote for a del­e­gate selec­tion plan that exclu­sive­ly uti­lized caucuses.

A foot­note: In 2019, the Leg­is­la­ture’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties passed leg­is­la­tion to reform the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry request­ed and sup­port­ed by the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, with Wyman reduced to being a bystander. Pas­sage of that leg­is­la­tion set the stage for the par­ty’s adop­tion of the pri­ma­ry for 2020.

I would have much more respect for Kim Wyman if she was seek­ing reelec­tion as either an inde­pen­dent, non-affil­i­at­ed can­di­date in accor­dance with her cho­sen 2020 theme of “non­par­ti­san­ship”, or as a Repub­li­can vocal­ly speak­ing out against Don­ald Trump’s attacks on our democracy.

But instead of choos­ing one of those prin­ci­pled paths, Wyman is try­ing to have it both ways so she can max­i­mize her chances of get­ting reelected.

She is doing her best not to alien­ate Don­ald Trump’s base, because that’s a bloc she’s count­ing on hav­ing the sup­port of in her campaign.

Com­pared to oth­er Repub­li­can can­di­dates and office­hold­ers, Wyman might look and sound pret­ty rea­son­able. That’s how bad things are! But we in Wash­ing­ton State have always had high expec­ta­tions and stan­dards of can­di­dates who run for office. This is a time for tough ques­tions and for accountability.

We know that our coun­try is slid­ing towards autoc­ra­cy right now.

What’s Kim Wyman’s response? Tip­toe around Don­ald Trump and claim to be “non­par­ti­san” while zeal­ous­ly prac­tic­ing par­ti­san pol­i­tics as qui­et­ly as possible.

Just as there’s a dif­fer­ence between not being a racist and being antiracist, there’s a dif­fer­ence between not open­ly sup­port­ing Trump and oppos­ing Trump.

This is a time when great courage is need­ed. I rec­og­nize that it’s hard­er for peo­ple like Kim Wyman who hold con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues to speak out against Don­ald Trump, because so many peo­ple who hold con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues are part of his cult.

But it should­n’t just be Democ­rats who are work­ing to save Amer­i­ca from Trump. The oppo­si­tion to Trump ought to be bipar­ti­san. And cross-ideological.

Because Don­ald Trump is a poison.

The Lin­coln Project rec­og­nizes this. Repub­li­cans for the Rule of Law and Repub­li­can Vot­ers Against Trump (projects of Defend­ing Democ­ra­cy Togeth­er) rec­og­nize this. So do John Kasich, Cindy McCain, and Col­in Powell.

Why can’t Kim Wyman?

If we don’t drain the poi­son out of our body politic, it will destroy the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. If Trump and his goons aren’t stopped, there will be noth­ing left for any­one who con­sid­ers them­selves a con­ser­v­a­tive to con­serve. Includ­ing and espe­cial­ly our tra­di­tion of free, fair, and com­pe­tent­ly admin­is­tered elections.