Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman might be joining the Biden administration

Wash­ing­ton’s lone remain­ing statewide elect­ed Repub­li­can is under con­sid­er­a­tion for a job in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and could soon be leav­ing the state exec­u­tive depart­ment to serve as DHS’ chief elec­tion secu­ri­ty liai­son to the states, CNN report­ed this evening, cit­ing mul­ti­ple sources “famil­iar with the matter.”

Kim Wyman, fifty-nine, has served as Wash­ing­ton’s Sec­re­tary of State since 2013. She has won three con­sec­u­tive elec­tions for the posi­tion, defeat­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nents Kath­leen Drew, Tina Pod­lodows­ki (who is now the Chair of the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty) and Gael Tar­leton, NPI’s board dean.

But now it appears that Wyman may be on the verge of step­ping down from that role and step­ping up into a key posi­tion at the fed­er­al level.

“Fed­er­al offi­cials have for weeks been in talks with Wyman, who is Wash­ing­ton state’s sec­re­tary of state, to serve as the elec­tion secu­ri­ty lead for DHS’ Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and Infra­struc­ture Secu­ri­ty Agency, said the peo­ple, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty,” CNN’s report said. “The sources said Wyman’s selec­tion would not be offi­cial until all admin­is­tra­tive paper­work is cleared with the White House and the admin­is­tra­tion announces her appointment.”

The news instant­ly set Wash­ing­ton State polit­i­cal cir­cles abuzz.

Reporters quick­ly reached out to Wyman’s office for com­ment and were told by Wyman’s staff that they could­n’t con­firm the CNN report. Well, of course not. If the report is what we think it is — a tri­al bal­loon — then con­firm­ing CNN’s report­ing would have defeat­ed the pur­pose of arrang­ing the sto­ry’s pub­li­ca­tion. Impor­tant­ly, Wyman’s office did not deny the rumor. If CNN was total­ly off base, sure­ly Wyman’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions folks would have said so. But they didn’t.

It did not take long for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press to inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm the rumor. The AP char­ac­ter­ized its knowl­edge of the nego­ti­a­tions this way:

She is in talks to serve as the elec­tion secu­ri­ty leader for the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and Infra­struc­ture Secu­ri­ty Agency, the agency respon­si­ble for safe­guard­ing U.S. elec­tions, the peo­ple told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. The peo­ple had knowl­edge of the dis­cus­sions but weren’t autho­rized to speak pub­licly and spoke to AP on con­di­tion of anonymity.

Bring­ing Wyman to DHS could enable the admin­is­tra­tion to make more head­way in its efforts to pre­pare the coun­try for the 2022 midterms. Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy is cur­rent­ly under assault from both for­eign adver­saries as well as domes­tic ene­mies. Wyman could be an ide­al fed­er­al emis­sary to local Repub­li­can elec­tions offi­cials who are under tremen­dous pres­sure to do Trump’s bid­ding and betray the Con­sti­tu­tion they swore or affirmed an oath to uphold.

If Wyman does jump to the fed­er­al lev­el, she’ll have to resign her posi­tion with­in Wash­ing­ton State’s exec­u­tive depart­ment, which means Wash­ing­ton would get a new Sec­re­tary of State for the first time in almost ten years. Vacan­cies in the exec­u­tive depart­ment are filled by guber­na­to­r­i­al appoint­ment in accor­dance with state law, and unlike with leg­isla­tive or coun­ty lev­el vacan­cies, appointees need not be of the same polit­i­cal par­ty as the depart­ing officeholder.

Con­se­quent­ly, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee would have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to appoint a Demo­c­rat to suc­ceed Wyman fol­low­ing her res­ig­na­tion. The office would then be sub­ject to elec­tion in the 2022 midterms, with the win­ner of the spe­cial elec­tion serv­ing out the remain­der of Wyman’s cur­rent term.

The office is respon­si­ble for admin­is­ter­ing elec­tions, cor­po­ra­tions and char­i­ties, the state library and archives, and the apos­tilles and address con­fi­den­tial­i­ty pro­grams. The Sec­re­tary of State is also the cus­to­di­an of the state’s seal.

If the admin­is­tra­tion does indeed offer Wyman a posi­tion and she accepts, we will cov­er the announce­ment here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Stay tuned!