Secretary of State Kim Wyman is thinking of quitting the Republican Party. Great idea!

I think every Repub­li­can elect­ed offi­cial right now in the coun­try is real­ly hav­ing to do some soul search­ing about why they’re Repub­li­can, and what it means to them, and why they are a part of the the par­ty. I know I have been doing that.

Before a bal­lot was print­ed, before any elec­tion offi­cial even knew who was going to be on the bal­lot, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States was talk­ing about rigged elec­tions, and that it was the only expla­na­tion that was plau­si­ble for him losing.

Reflect­ing on the attack on the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6th, Wyman added:

If that’s what my par­ty stands for now, I don’t know that I can con­tin­ue being a Repub­li­can, because that’s not what repub­li­can­ism is about.

Last autumn, we pub­lished a lengthy and care­ful­ly researched report detail­ing Wyman’s involve­ment in the Repub­li­can Par­ty, includ­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty at the nation­al lev­el. We put that post togeth­er because we felt that vot­ers deserved access to that infor­ma­tion before the elec­tion concluded.

It end­ed up as one of the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate’s most read posts of 2020.

By that point in the cam­paign, Wyman had spent months telling edi­to­r­i­al boards, civic groups, and vot­ers that the posi­tion she was run­ning for should be “non­par­ti­san” while seek­ing reelec­tion as a Repub­li­can.

I point­ed out that this was disingenuous:

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.

Since that post was writ­ten and pub­lished, Wyman has become more crit­i­cal of Don­ald Trump, and more open about the anguish she feels about the direc­tion of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. These lat­est com­ments are very encouraging.

By open­ly talk­ing about her polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty and reveal­ing that she’s doing some soul search­ing, Wyman is mov­ing clos­er towards being the role mod­el we’d like to see her be. Kudos to her for being will­ing to dis­cuss her feel­ings of pain and dis­ap­point­ment open­ly. It takes courage to go on the record like that.

As men­tioned, Wyman has talked about mak­ing her job non­par­ti­san. If she were to dis­af­fil­i­ate from the Repub­li­can Par­ty and make out­reach to groups across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum a pri­or­i­ty, then she would be prac­tic­ing more of what she preached dur­ing her cam­paign. It would be a well-received move.

We are always inter­est­ed at NPI in work­ing with peo­ple of all polit­i­cal per­sua­sions to find agree­ment and advance wor­thy causes.

We have appre­ci­at­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage with Kim Wyman and her staff on issues like get­ting the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to adopt a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry for del­e­gate allo­ca­tion, mod­ern­iz­ing the Cor­po­ra­tions & Char­i­ties Fil­ing Sys­tem (CCFS), and fix­ing issues with Vote­WA and vote.wa.gov. From 2013 to the present, Wyman’s office has always been approach­able, and we appre­ci­ate that.

It can be hard to leave behind an insti­tu­tion you’ve been part of for a long time and have fond mem­o­ries of. But when an insti­tu­tion has become as bro­ken and destruc­tive as the Repub­li­can Par­ty has, it’s the right thing to do.