Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz announces candidacy for Governor of Washington State

Mak­ing good on her promise last week to “watch this space,” Wash­ing­ton State’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz today entered the 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test with a press release, video, and cam­paign website.

Franz will be com­pet­ing with fel­low statewide office­hold­er Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son to suc­ceed cur­rent Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, who announced last week he’ll leave office when his third term is com­plete in Jan­u­ary 2025.

“I’m run­ning for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State,” said Franz.

“My office has been on the front lines of our chang­ing world. I know what it means to take bold risks to make big progress because there isn’t time to wait. We’re fac­ing many chal­lenges, but we can tack­le them, together.”

“My grand­par­ents were cat­tle ranch­ers in Pierce Coun­ty,” Franz explains on her cam­paign web­site. “My sis­ter and I grew up in Port­land, raised by a sin­gle father. My dad was a do-or-die union guy who took great pride in serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. After school, I would vis­it him at the fire sta­tion where he worked. It was there I learned about ded­i­ca­tion and pur­pose. These heroes taught me that progress comes from work­ing togeth­er and putting peo­ple first.”

In both her launch video and on her web­site, Franz specif­i­cal­ly men­tions the cli­mate cri­sis and the hous­ing cri­sis as top issues she’s focused on mak­ing progress. Franz has won praise and plau­dits from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum in secur­ing invest­ments for fight­ing wild­fires and obtain­ing bet­ter data to under­stand the threat of geo­log­i­cal haz­ards like tsunamis, earth­quakes, and lahars.

The word “edu­ca­tion” does­n’t appear on her “Meet Hilary” page, though Wash­ing­ton’s next gov­er­nor is almost cer­tain­ly going to be con­fronting a school fund­ing cri­sis too, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that the 2023 Leg­is­la­ture and Gov­er­nor Inslee opt­ed not to cre­ate a bien­ni­al bud­get that pro­vides enough resources to pro­tect our school dis­tricts from destruc­tive cuts and aus­ter­i­ty measures.

Unlike Fer­gu­son, Franz did not unveil a lengthy list of ear­ly endorse­ments at the out­set of her cam­paign, though pre­sum­ably she will begin shar­ing endorse­ments down the road. She has an announce­ment event planned for next Monday.

Here’s her launch video, which is cen­tered on her max­im of “do epic”:

Fer­gu­son’s tenure in the exec­u­tive depart­ment (which con­sists of nine statewide elect­ed offi­cials) dates back to 2013, while Franz’s dates back to 2017.

Fer­gu­son pre­vailed over Repub­li­can Rea­gan Dunn to become Attor­ney Gen­er­al in 2012; Franz emerged out of a crowd­ed field for Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands in 2016 to win that posi­tion, defeat­ing Repub­li­can Steve McLaughlin.

Fer­gu­son faced no Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion in 2016, the first time he sought reelec­tion. In 2020, both Fer­gu­son and Franz chose to run for reelec­tion to their cur­rent posi­tions rather than run for gov­er­nor, after Jay Inslee switched from run­ning for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States to seek­ing a third term as the state’s chief exec­u­tive. Against Repub­li­can Matt Larkin, Fer­gu­son earned 56.43% of the vote. Against Repub­li­can Sue Kuehl Ped­er­son, Franz earned 56.69% of the vote.

Also in the 2024 race are Repub­li­cans Semi Bird and Raul Gar­cia, who have lit­tle name recog­ni­tion and face steep odds. Wash­ing­ton has­n’t elect­ed a Repub­li­can to the gov­er­nor’s office since 1980, an epoch ago in state and nation­al politics.

Gar­cia, a Yaki­ma doc­tor and 2020 guber­na­to­r­i­al con­tender who was eclipsed by Loren Culp, just filed cam­paign paper­work with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission.

Not run­ning in 2024 are Coun­ty Exec­u­tives Bruce Dammeier and Dow Con­stan­tine. Dammeier, a Repub­li­can, is the cur­rent Exec­u­tive of Pierce Coun­ty, while Con­stan­tine, a Demo­c­rat, is the cur­rent Exec­u­tive of King County.

Dammeier and Con­stan­tine were part of a hypo­thet­i­cal guber­na­to­r­i­al field we polled on about two months ago in our win­ter statewide sur­vey. Dammeier was the only Repub­li­can in the poll and received 35%, which is the same as what Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler got in a the­o­ret­i­cal matchup against Maria Cantwell and what we believe in any Repub­li­can could get in a head-to-head contest.

Con­stan­tine got 7%, tying with Hilary Franz and trail­ing Fer­gu­son, who got 21%.

In a few weeks, our next statewide sea­son­al poll will go into the field, and we’ll be able to ask about an actu­al field of can­di­dates rather than a hypo­thet­i­cal one, which is excit­ing. The results of that sur­vey will be released right here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. So, like Hilary Franz said last week… watch this space!