Mike Pellicciotti ahead of Duane Davidson; office of State Treasurer could flip Democratic

Last year, when star Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tor Mike Pel­lic­ciot­ti declared his can­di­da­cy for Wash­ing­ton State Trea­sur­er, Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists rejoiced.

In Pel­lic­ciot­ti, they knew they had a can­di­date with a strong work eth­ic who could uni­fy their par­ty behind the goal of retak­ing the office of State Trea­sur­er, which Democ­rats gave up in 2016 when their field of can­di­dates split the vote so bad­ly that two Repub­li­cans were able to advance to the gen­er­al election.

Pel­lic­ciot­ti has done just that.

In fact, he’s been such a dynam­ic and effec­tive can­di­date that no one else both­ered to file for the posi­tion of State Trea­sur­er except for the incum­bent, Duane David­son, the Repub­li­can who got the most votes four years ago.

Pel­lic­ciot­ti won the August Top Two elec­tion with sur­pris­ing ease, fin­ish­ing well ahead of David­son, who has been large­ly invis­i­ble to Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers dur­ing the past four years, unlike Sec­re­tary of State and fel­low Repub­li­can Kim Wyman, who has a much high­er pro­file and is in a bet­ter posi­tion to win.

Pel­lic­ciot­ti gar­nered 53.22% of the vote in August, win­ning eight coun­ties: King, San Juan, Jef­fer­son, Thurston, What­com, Kit­sap, Island, and Snohomish.

He also came very close to win­ning in Pierce Coun­ty, the sec­ond largest juris­dic­tion in the state. David­son, mean­while, got 46.67% of the vote.

Pel­lic­ciot­ti was already in out­stand­ing shape for a chal­lenger before the home stretch of the cycle, hav­ing pre­vailed over an incum­bent in Round One and cap­tured a major­i­ty of the vote, which just does­n’t hap­pen very often.

How­ev­er, our recent statewide poll found him with an even big­ger lead of ten points with a lit­tle less than three weeks to go until the end of voting.

Down­bal­lot races like State Trea­sur­er tend not to get much cov­er­age or atten­tion, but they cer­tain­ly do mat­ter. The win­ner of this con­test will be in charge of man­ag­ing the state’s mon­ey for the next four years and could play a role in help­ing Wash­ing­ton estab­lish a state invest­ment trust.

Pel­lic­ciot­ti — who has authored suc­cess­ful leg­is­la­tion to strength­en cam­paign finance laws and tough­en penal­ties for cor­po­rate crimes — has assailed David­son for not show­ing up to work (he’s missed a large num­ber of impor­tant board and com­mis­sion meet­ings) and sup­port­ing Don­ald Trump’s reelec­tion campaign.

David­son has belat­ed­ly respond­ed to these crit­i­cisms with an ad that calls Pel­lic­ciot­ti an “activist attor­ney” who is “soft on crime” and “lenient on crim­i­nals”. (The ad is nar­rat­ed by Assis­tant State Trea­sur­er Erhiza Rivera.)

What’s real­ly inter­est­ing about this ad is that it ends with this line: “A news­pa­per said it best: David­son is a CPA and a good one. But he’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly a great politi­cian. Vote Duane David­son because your mon­ey depends on him.”

Admit­ting to not being very good at pol­i­tics is tru­ly a strange thing to say in a cam­paign ad. You can watch David­son’s ad by click­ing Play below.

And here’s Pel­lic­ciot­ti’s ad assail­ing David­son. Click Play below to watch.

Vot­ing in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is cur­rent­ly in progress and is set to con­clude on Novem­ber 3rd, 2020 at 8 PM Pacif­ic in Wash­ing­ton State.