Jaime Herrera Beutler lost because WA-03 is becoming a more normal, nationalized district

When the final results showed incum­bent Repub­li­can Con­gress­woman Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler nar­row­ly com­ing in third place in the Top Two elec­tion behind Trump-endorsed Repub­li­can chal­lenger Joe Kent, it may have marked the end of an era for WA-03. At the very least, it was a notable point in the district’s con­tin­u­al shift towards being a less unique, more nation­al­ized dis­trict, the same direc­tion that so many dis­tricts across the coun­try have shifted.

The his­toric unique­ness of WA-03 is root­ed in the fact that both par­ties have a large amal­ga­ma­tion of dif­fer­ent coali­tions in the district.

The dis­trict cov­ers areas that have long been Repub­li­can, like Lewis Coun­ty. It stretch­es out to the coast, con­tain­ing Pacif­ic Coun­ty and vot­ers who are reliant on the fish­ing and oys­ter indus­tries. It includes many ances­tral­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic rur­al vot­ers that now often vote Repub­li­can and, when they vot­ed blue, tend­ed to be more con­ser­v­a­tive than urban and sub­ur­ban Democrats.

The dis­trict extends to cen­tral Wash­ing­ton, going as far east as Klick­i­tat Coun­ty in the pre­vi­ous dis­trict lines, though it now only extends as far east as Ska­ma­nia Coun­ty. WA-03 is anchored in and by Clark Coun­ty, which nor­mal­ly encom­pass­es over six­ty per­cent of the district’s voters.

Clark Coun­ty includes many Van­cou­ver vot­ers that more and more vote like res­i­dents of oth­er big city sub­urbs, but the coun­ty also has more con­ser­v­a­tive exur­ban vot­ers in its out­er parts, in towns such as Bat­tle Ground. There are towns his­tor­i­cal­ly reliant on the tim­ber indus­try through­out the dis­trict. The dis­trict is most­ly white, but does have sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of Asian and Lati­no voters.

WA-03 is also notable for its tax sen­si­tiv­i­ty, because many towns in the dis­trict are par­tic­u­lar­ly reliant on small busi­ness­es and because many vot­ers move to the area to take advan­tage of Washington’s lack of income tax and Oregon’s lack of sales tax.

Before Her­rera Beut­ler rep­re­sent­ed South­west Wash­ing­ton in Con­gress, WA-03 was held by Demo­c­rat Bri­an Baird, who — like Her­rera Beut­ler — was known for his will­ing­ness to break ranks in Con­gress. He spoke out against Demo­c­ra­t­ic House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi and was crit­i­cal of the Oba­ma-Biden administration’s fis­cal agen­da. Like Her­rera Beut­ler, he alien­at­ed mem­bers of both his own par­ty and of the oth­er par­ty, only to win reelec­tion comfortably.

Baird won his last elec­tion in 2008 by a colos­sal twen­ty-eight-point mar­gin in what was a great night for Democ­rats. Oba­ma-Biden won WA-03 in that same elec­tion as well, but trailed Baird’s mar­gin by around twen­ty points.

Her­rera Beut­ler was first elect­ed to Con­gress in 2010 in an elec­tion that saw Democ­rats lose dozens of seats across the country.

Pow­ered by a coali­tion of vot­ers that would be unimag­in­able today, she beat Den­ny Heck by six points, with an eleven-point mar­gin in Clark Coun­ty and a thir­ty-four-point romp­ing in Lewis Coun­ty to more than off­set Heck’s large vic­to­ries in Pacif­ic Coun­ty and in the more pro­gres­sive Olympia-Lacy-Tumwa­ter area. The Con­gress­woman was elect­ed on a mes­sage of low­er­ing tax­es for busi­ness­es and res­i­dents, low­er­ing the nation­al debt and oppos­ing health­care reform. This rep­u­ta­tion would stick with her in Con­gress for years to come.

Redis­trict­ing gift­ed Her­rera Beut­ler a more Repub­li­can dis­trict begin­ning in the 2012 cycle, with most of the Olympia-Lacy-Tumwa­ter core giv­en to the new­ly formed 10th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict (WA-10).

Her­rera Beut­ler won by over twen­ty points in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

She defeat­ed Demo­c­rat Jon Hau­gen in 2012 by near­ly twen­ty-one points while Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney car­ried her dis­trict by just two points. She then cruised to a twen­ty-three-point vic­to­ry in 2014 over Demo­c­rat Bob Dingethal.

The 2016 elec­tion was a water­shed elec­tion in many dis­tricts, and WA-03 was no excep­tion. Her­rera Beut­ler refused to endorse Trump in 2016, but this evi­dent­ly did not hurt her in the gen­er­al elec­tion that year, as she rolled to a twen­ty-four ‑point vic­to­ry over Demo­c­rat Jim Moeller.

That same elec­tion, Trump won the dis­trict by sev­en points.

In a trend that was observ­able across Amer­i­ca in 2016, the rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in WA-03 exhib­it­ed gar­gan­tu­an shifts towards Trump com­pared to Romney’s 2012 mar­gins. For exam­ple, Cowlitz Coun­ty vot­ed for a Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date (by four­teen points!) for the first time since 1980.

Pacif­ic Coun­ty vot­ed for the Repub­li­can for the first time since 1950.

All in all, while Clark Coun­ty bare­ly budged (and made up over 60% of the dis­trict that elec­tion), the parts of the dis­trict out­side of Clark Coun­ty went from sup­port­ing Rom­ney by a five-point mar­gin to sup­port­ing Trump by over 20 points.

Her­rera Beut­ler out­per­formed Trump in every coun­ty in 2016, and in most by dou­ble dig­its. But many WA-03 vot­ers showed their will­ing­ness to split their tick­et not only by vot­ing for Her­rera Beut­ler and Clin­ton, but also by vot­ing for both the Con­gress­woman and Demo­c­rat Pat­ty Mur­ray in the Sen­ate elec­tion, who lost WA-03 by only around one point.

Mur­ray won Clark Coun­ty 51% to 49%, nar­row­ly out­per­form­ing Clin­ton there, but also won many ances­tral­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic Trump vot­ers in the dis­trict — or at least vast­ly out­per­formed Clin­ton among them — even win­ning Pacif­ic Coun­ty 55% to 45%. Mur­ray out­per­formed Clin­ton by thir­teen points in the non-Clark Coun­ty parts of WA-03.

2018 was a Demo­c­ra­t­ic wave year, and Her­rera Beut­ler — rep­re­sent­ing a dis­trict Trump only won by sin­gle dig­its — was a tar­get for the Democ­rats. The Con­gress­woman was able to fend off well-fund­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Car­olyn Long by argu­ing that she had pro­vid­ed tax cuts for con­stituents, sup­port­ed small busi­ness­es, stopped tolls on the Colum­bia Riv­er and some­times coop­er­at­ed with Democ­rats to get leg­is­la­tion passed.

She was not as vul­ner­a­ble to attacks on health­care that many oth­er Repub­li­cans suf­fered from because she vot­ed against repeal­ing the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act in 2017. Still, Long attacked Her­rera Beut­ler for vot­ing numer­ous times to take away health­care from Americans.

Her­rera Beut­ler won by just over five points, but it came at a cost.

The incum­bent won the dis­trict the same way a Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date would. She lost Clark Coun­ty by two points, but ran up the score else­where in the dis­trict, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ruby red Lewis County.

Her­rera Beutler’s vic­to­ry in Lewis Coun­ty was so large that she net­ted over 7,000 more votes over Long in Lewis Coun­ty than Long net­ted over Her­rera Beut­ler in Clark Coun­ty, even though Clark Coun­ty made up 63% of the elec­torate and Lewis Coun­ty made up just eleven per­cent of it that election.

Lewis Coun­ty makes it very dif­fi­cult for Democ­rats to win WA-03, and this dynam­ic will be a prob­lem for Democ­rats in the dis­trict for years to come.

Her­rera Beut­ler vot­ed against both arti­cles to impeach Trump dur­ing his first impeach­ment in 2019 and vot­ed for him in 2020.

Car­olyn Long ran against her again, but could not muster the same sup­port she did two years ear­li­er, los­ing to the Con­gress­woman by thir­teen points.

Mean­while, Biden-Har­ris lost the dis­trict, but by just four points.

Once again, Biden-Har­ris won Clark Coun­ty, but could not keep up with gar­gan­tu­an Repub­li­can mar­gins elsewhere.

Her­rera Beut­ler out­per­formed Trump across the dis­trict, and did so the most in the Port­land sub­urbs, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Ridge­field and Camas.

It was always going to be dif­fi­cult for Her­rera Beut­ler to main­tain her bipar­ti­san sup­port and inde­pen­dent appeal while not mak­ing her pro-Trump base vot­ers angry. Numer­ous Repub­li­cans have had this prob­lem across the country.

After the events of Jan­u­ary 6th, Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler loud­ly crit­i­cized Don­ald Trump, argu­ing that he played a major role in the event.

She was one of ten House Repub­li­cans to vote to impeach Trump.

It drew the ire of many Repub­li­can vot­ers and Trump him­self. Repub­li­cans lined up to chal­lenge her, and Trump endorsed Repub­li­can Joe Kent.

Her­rera Beutler’s record and pol­i­cy posi­tions did not shield her from anger over her anti-Trump stance. In the end, five Repub­li­cans — includ­ing the Con­gress­woman her­self — were on the bal­lot, along with two Democrats.

The Democ­rats coa­lesced around Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, who won first place with 31%. The anti-Her­rera Beut­ler vote was divid­ed, but not enough to save the incum­bent. When all of the votes were count­ed, Kent took 22.8% while Her­rera Beut­ler took 22.3%, putting Kent over the incum­bent by just over one thou­sand votes. Hei­di St. John, anoth­er pro-Trump Repub­li­can, took 16%.

Many peo­ple have com­pared Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler to Liz Cheney for their crit­i­cism of Trump. But they also have in com­mon that they both lost their seats with coali­tions of sup­port that looked like those of a Democrat.

The only two coun­ties Liz Cheney won in her pri­ma­ry were the same two that Biden-Har­ris won in Wyoming in the 2020 Gen­er­al Election.

In fact, in many recent Repub­li­can pri­maries, the can­di­date who is con­sid­ered more rea­son­able has per­formed bet­ter than the Trump-endorsed can­di­date in more Demo­c­ra­t­ic areas.

In WA-03, Democ­rats could eas­i­ly vote for the Repub­li­can anti-Trump cru­sad­er in a Top Two elec­tion, which almost cer­tain­ly com­pound­ed this phe­nom­e­non.

Her­rera Beut­ler beat Kent in ances­tral­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pacif­ic Coun­ty by three points and beat him by one point in Clark County.

But, like Her­rera Beut­ler did in the 2018 gen­er­al elec­tion, Kent ran up the score in Lewis Coun­ty. Her­rera Beut­ler net­ted 1,498 votes over Kent in Clark County.

He net­ted 1,458 over her in Lewis Coun­ty, effec­tive­ly can­cel­ing out her Clark Coun­ty mar­gin, despite the fact that Lewis Coun­ty made up just 11% of the dis­trict and Clark Coun­ty made up 64%.

Kent also per­formed extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well in Thurston Coun­ty, tak­ing 33%, com­pared to 19% for Her­rera Beut­ler, net­ting 1,269 votes over the incum­bent, despite the fact it made up just 4% of the district.

Pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty was a big indi­ca­tor of sup­port for Her­rera Beut­ler. Although Kent out­per­formed Her­rera Beut­ler in Bat­tle­ground and Washou­gal, Her­rera Beut­ler tend­ed to do best in the towns, par­tic­u­lar­ly on I‑5.

Her­rera Beut­ler received more votes than Kent in Van­cou­ver, Camas, Ridge­field, Kala­ma, Kel­so, Longview and Long Beach. Even while get­ting destroyed in Lewis Coun­ty, Her­rera Beut­ler edged out Kent in both Cen­tralia and Chehalis.

Her­rera Beut­ler is a vic­tim of the fact that the Repub­li­can coali­tion in her dis­trict became increas­ing­ly rur­al. She became reliant on pro-Trump vot­ers who saved her in 2018, and as a result, when she broke with and then con­tin­ued to crit­i­cize Trump, she scared them away and no longer had enough votes to win.

This is a coun­try­wide trend and is a symp­tom of the fact that WA-03 is becom­ing a more nor­mal and nation­al­ized dis­trict, which now has the stan­dard Amer­i­can polit­i­cal divide based on pop­u­la­tion density.

But still, many vot­ers could see Repub­li­can Joe Kent as too extreme and too pro-Trump in the forth­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion. Anoth­er WA-03 twist — thanks to Marie Glue­senkamp Perez’s can­di­da­cy — may well be in the cards.

Edi­tor’s Note: McCauley Pugh is an Asso­ciate Ana­lyst at Lake Research Part­ners. He is orig­i­nal­ly from Fed­er­al Way. He stud­ied Pol­i­tics and Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions and Ital­ian Stud­ies at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin and has an MSc in Com­par­a­tive Pol­i­tics with a spe­cial­ism in Nation­al­ism and Eth­nic Pol­i­tics from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence. Pri­or to work­ing at LRP, McCauley worked for The Mell­man Group and was an intern for U.S. Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell.