Reagan Dunn launches bid for Congress, challenging Kim Schrier in Washington’s 8th

Rea­gan Dunn is a mama’s boy and a child of the Repub­li­can right.

He was named after then-Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Ronald Rea­gan. He first came into the pub­lic eye at age nine, pic­tured canoe­ing with his moth­er, Repub­li­can State Chair­man Jen­nifer Dunn (Repub­li­cans use the title “Chair­man” even when the posi­tion is held by some­one with a dif­fer­ent gen­der iden­ti­ty), on the eve of the 1980 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion that nom­i­nat­ed The Gip­per for President.

Four decades lat­er, a mid­dle-aged Dunn is run­ning for the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict seat that was held by Jen­nifer Dunn from 1993 to 2005.

“We’re going to take mom’s seat back,” he said in announc­ing on Monday.

He is chal­leng­ing two-term Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schri­er, an Issaquah pedi­a­tri­cian who in 2018 broke a thir­ty-six year Repub­li­can hold on the dis­trict. She took the seat of sev­en-term Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Reichert, who retired after see­ing more than sev­en hun­dred anti-Trump demon­stra­tors march on his Issaquah office.

Reichert is chair­ing the Dunn campaign.

Under cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, the 8th is the first U.S. House dis­trict in Wash­ing­ton to cross the “Cas­cade Cur­tain.” It cur­rent­ly con­tains Chelan, Kit­ti­tas and a sliv­er of Dou­glas Coun­ty, along with exur­ban King Coun­ty and south­east Pierce County.

Schri­er has cap­tured and held the seat by pil­ing up a sub­stan­tial mar­gin in King Coun­ty while stay­ing rea­son­ably close in Chelan and Kittitas.

The 8th is any­thing but a safe seat. Schri­er held it by a mar­gin of just under 15,000 votes in 2020 against an under­fi­nanced Repub­li­can challenger.

The con­gres­sion­al map pro­posed by the state’s Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion would add east­ern Sno­homish Coun­ty to the dis­trict, but the Supreme Court could go in anoth­er direc­tion. (The Supreme Court was hand­ed the respon­si­bil­i­ty of draw­ing the state’s next maps when the Com­mis­sion failed to get its work done on time.)

Schri­er works hard at the job. She has held mul­ti­ple town meet­ings. She brings assets as one of Con­gress’ few physi­cians, and as a per­son deal­ing with diabetes.

She has cham­pi­oned the Yaki­ma Basin Inte­grat­ed Plan, a fed­er­al-state-trib­al effort designed to address cli­mate change and pro­vide water man­age­ment that would both enhance irri­ga­tion and restore once-abun­dant Yaki­ma Riv­er salmon runs.

Dunn is enter­ing the con­test as a kind of cook­ie cut­ter con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can. He blames the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion for infla­tion. He preach­es lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment. He does a bit of bash­ing of the state’s largest city, pledg­ing to fight “failed poli­cies spread­ing from Seat­tle to our sub­ur­ban neighborhoods.”

There’s the claim that he is “lead­ing the fight to refund the police.”

He is tout­ing a sur­vey by Port­land-based Moore Infor­ma­tion – which has polled for Repub­li­can can­di­dates since the 1980s – show­ing him ahead of oth­er Repub­li­cans and Schri­er, although not in the dis­trict he will be actu­al­ly be run­ning in, since nobody knows where the new 8th will be yet.

A Repub­li­can-allied front group has already aired anti-Schri­er TV spots on Seat­tle sta­tions, a clear sig­nal that a very expen­sive cam­paign is in the works.

Dunn was elect­ed to the King Coun­ty Coun­cil in 2005, and just won anoth­er term with 63.6% of the vote. He rep­re­sents a coun­ty dis­trict that over­laps the 8th in south­east King Coun­ty. He is not quit­ting the Coun­cil to cam­paign for Congress.

Dunn has faced per­son­al issues. He is a recov­er­ing alco­holic, telling the Seat­tle Times that he sought help for an alco­hol prob­lem as ear­ly as 2011.

He plead­ed guilty to a DUI in Kit­ti­tas Coun­ty in 2014.

Dunn ran statewide for Attor­ney Gen­er­al in 2012, cap­tur­ing the endorse­ment of almost every dai­ly news­pa­per in the state.

A nation­al cam­paign orga­ni­za­tion of Repub­li­can attor­neys gen­er­al spent lav­ish­ly on tele­vi­sion spots decry­ing his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent, fel­low King Coun­ty Coun­cil mem­ber Bob Fer­gu­son. But the TV ads were clum­sy. Fer­gu­son kept his pow­der dry, coun­ter­at­tacked effec­tive­ly over the air­waves and out­worked Dunn.

(Nobody out­works Bob Ferguson.)

Fer­gu­son defeat­ed statewide Dunn by a mar­gin of 203,000 votes, beat­ing him in King Coun­ty by 272,000 votes. No Repub­li­can chal­lenged Fer­gu­son in 2016.

The Dunns have done just a bit to put dis­tance between them­selves and knuck­le drag­gers in the Repub­li­can Party.

Jen­nifer Dunn was pro-choice, won her first pri­ma­ry by beat­ing far-right State Sen­a­tor Pam Roach. She held a junior post in the House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship. She once even cast a vote against oil drilling in the Arc­tic Nation­al Wildlife Refuge.

Rea­gan Dunn has attempt­ed sim­i­lar foot­work, telling The Seat­tle Times that he accepts that Joe Biden was the legit­i­mate­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent, but say­ing he would have vot­ed against impeach­ing Don­ald Trump last Jan­u­ary. (Two of the state’s three Repub­li­can U.S. House mem­bers, Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler and Dan New­house, were among the ten Repub­li­cans vot­ing to impeach.)

Rea­gan Dunn sup­port­ed adding land in east­ern King Coun­ty to the Alpine Lakes Wilder­ness Area, giv­ing des­ig­na­tion to the Mid­dle Fork-Sno­qualmie Riv­er under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and deliv­er­ing a Nation­al Her­itage Des­ig­na­tion to the Moun­tains-to-Sound Green­way. The Alpine Lakes addi­tion was pro­posed by Reichert and car­ried across the fin­ish line by Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Murray.

The Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee has Schri­er in its sights. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee was quick to deliv­er a boil­er­plate press release denounc­ing “Dunn’s doomed bid for WA-08.” These are clear signs that a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar slugfest for the seat is in the offing.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in Seat­tle and King Coun­ty have late­ly been focused on local races, with leg­isla­tive dis­trict par­ty orga­ni­za­tions at times endors­ing Democ­rats over oth­er Democ­rats in local races that don’t have par­ty labels list­ed on the bal­lot. The 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict offers the par­ty a major chal­lenge. Dunn’s can­di­da­cy is far from “doomed.” He is a famil­iar name on the ballot.

It is worth remem­ber­ing that Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Rod Chan­dler, Jen­nifer Dunn and Dave Reichert won eigh­teen straight elec­tions before Reichert packed it in and Kim Schri­er cap­tured the seat. The 8th CD race in 2022 will be, to bor­row Joe Biden’s most famous line, a big (exple­tive) deal.