Filing Week surprise: Fundamentalist Mark Miloscia jumps into Secretary of State contest

Ex-leg­is­la­tor Mark Milos­cia, who has spent the years fol­low­ing his loss to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son run­ning the Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Insti­tute of Wash­ing­ton, has decid­ed to jump back into the elec­toral are­na as a Repub­li­can can­di­date for Sec­re­tary of State, FPIW announced in an email to its list today.

Here’s FPI­W’s email:

The Board of Direc­tors at the Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Insti­tute of Wash­ing­ton (FPIW) announced today that Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Mark Milos­cia will resign from his posi­tion at the orga­ni­za­tion as he pre­pares a bid to serve as Wash­ing­ton State’s next Sec­re­tary of State.

“The FPIW Board is thrilled to see Mr. Milos­cia step into the race for Sec­re­tary of State here in Wash­ing­ton,” said Board Chair­man Lar­ry Sundquist. “This is the year for us to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo, push back on an over­reach­ing exec­u­tive branch, and return an expe­ri­enced, prin­ci­pled fight­er to Olympia to serve as Sec­re­tary of State.”

Mr. Milos­cia has served as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of FPIW since 2019, after serv­ing six­teen years as a mem­ber of the Wash­ing­ton Sen­ate and House of Representatives.

“I’m so proud, and blessed, to have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead this orga­ni­za­tion dur­ing such con­se­quen­tial times,” said Mark Miloscia.

“With an enor­mous vic­to­ry for life on the hori­zon, I’m con­fi­dent that FPIW will con­tin­ue to do the crit­i­cal work of chang­ing hearts and minds on issues impor­tant to Chris­tians and fam­i­lies here in Wash­ing­ton. For now, I feel that God is lead­ing me in a new direc­tion, where I hope to car­ry that momen­tum for­ward bold­ly in deal­ing with issues of integri­ty and truth, which is why I’ve cho­sen to run to serve as the next Sec­re­tary of State.”

FPIW’s sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion, FPIW Action, will release endorse­ments for statewide and dis­trict-lev­el races this summer.

FPIW Board Chair­man Lar­ry Sundquist also assured sup­port­ers that FPIW’s goals will remain the same and that the orga­ni­za­tion will remain ful­ly staffed dur­ing the search for a new leader. “FPIW will con­tin­ue to be a steady, bold voice for truth in Wash­ing­ton State,” he added. “Our mis­sion has not changed, our vision remains the same, and the ener­gy lev­el has nev­er been higher.”

Milos­ci­a’s sud­den entrance into this race is an odd devel­op­ment. If his heart was set on run­ning for office again, why did­n’t he declare six months ago and start lay­ing the ground­work? Only two months remain until bal­lots show up in vot­ers’ mail­box­es. That isn’t much time in which to build a statewide campaign.

Milos­cia will be vying with sev­er­al oth­er con­tenders to take on incum­bent Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs, the first Demo­c­rat to hold the office in over half a cen­tu­ry. Hobbs was appoint­ed to the exec­u­tive depart­ment by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee last Novem­ber fol­low­ing the depar­ture of Repub­li­can Kim Wyman for an impor­tant posi­tion with CISA in the Biden administration.

There are already sev­er­al Repub­li­cans run­ning for Sec­re­tary of State, includ­ing two who have filed dec­la­ra­tions of can­di­da­cy this week: State Sen­a­tor Kei­th Wag­oner (R‑39th Dis­trict) and Bob Hag­glu­nd. Wag­oner has been in the race since Novem­ber 27th, while Hag­glu­nd has been in the race since Decem­ber 10th. (Those are the dates of their respec­tive PDC filings.)

Also run­ning is Pierce Coun­ty Audi­tor Julie Ander­son. Unlike Hobbs, Wag­oner, Hag­glu­nd, and now Milos­cia, Ander­son is not affil­i­at­ed with a polit­i­cal party.

Milos­cia has not yet filed his own dec­la­ra­tion of can­di­da­cy (he has until Fri­day after­noon to do so), but did reg­is­ter with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion this morning.

He also put up a cam­paign web­site that empha­sizes he’s a Repub­li­can and has a love of minutiae.

“When it comes to the office of Sec­re­tary of State, Wash­ing­ton trusts Repub­li­cans,” the site says.

“It’s time to send a check on sin­gle-par­ty pow­er back to Olympia; and who bet­ter than a name Wash­ing­to­ni­ans know and trust, Mark Miloscia.”

Yeah, so, about that: It’s doubt­ful that many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans know or trust Mark Milos­cia, and it’s even more doubt­ful that many vot­ers out­side of the far right will want to know or trust him after they hear what he’s been up to dur­ing his time at the Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Insti­tute of Wash­ing­ton. The list of hate­ful, big­ot­ed, and non­sen­si­cal com­ments that Milosi­ca has made as FPI­W’s top fig­ure is extensive.

For exam­ple, Milos­cia is on record as hav­ing said: “Oh, I will get push­back from some folks on this, but real­ly, can any­one real­ly deny that the Democ­rats’ full sup­port of human sac­ri­fice (abor­tion, sui­cide, child muti­la­tion and sac­ri­fice) is any dif­fer­ent than the geno­ci­dal human sac­ri­fice prac­ticed by Hitler, Stal­in, Pol Pot, or the Aztecs?”

Milos­cia has also said he regrets “silent­ly” vot­ing for Trump in 2016 and not being out­spo­ken about his approval of the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s trans­for­ma­tion into a neo­fas­cist cult.

“I silent­ly, and some­what cow­ard­ly, just filled in the cir­cle for Trump for Pres­i­dent, and the rest was his­to­ry. I lost my Sen­ate seat, Don­ald Trump won the Pres­i­den­cy over Hillary Clin­ton, and then half the nation formed the ‘resis­tance’ and seem­ing­ly lost its mind in regard to Trump and Chris­t­ian values!”

“Today, I regret remain­ing silent.”

Milos­cia is com­plete­ly and total­ly opposed to repro­duc­tive rights, LBGTQ+ rights, death with dig­ni­ty, and com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion, to name a few pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy posi­tions that are pop­u­lar with Washingtonians.

Though he used to be a Demo­c­rat, Milos­cia is more extreme and mil­i­tant on many issues than sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of peo­ple who have been involved in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics for decades. Fun­da­men­tal­ist rhetoric may not impair Milos­ci­a’s stand­ing with the far right and the Trump base, but to get elect­ed statewide in Wash­ing­ton State, you have to earn the sup­port of vot­ers who lean Democratic.

Kim Wyman, Sam Reed, and Ralph Munro came across to vot­ers as rea­son­able Repub­li­cans who had elec­tions expe­ri­ence as coun­ty audi­tors. They attract­ed bipar­ti­san sup­port for their cam­paigns. Milos­cia will not be able to do like­wise. His extreme beliefs are incred­i­bly out of sync with most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ values.

The Trump base may ral­ly to him, and it’s pos­si­ble he gets through to the gen­er­al elec­tion in a crowd­ed Top Two envi­ron­ment that has weird elec­toral dynamics.

But even sup­pos­ing he man­ages to pull off that feat, he’s not well posi­tioned to build the kind of coali­tion that Kim Wyman assem­bled to win three con­sec­u­tive cam­paigns against cred­i­ble Demo­c­ra­t­ic rivals dur­ing the Oba­ma and Trump years.