Ultra MAGA Repub­li­can State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Walsh has just been cho­sen as the new Chair of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, accord­ing to reporters present at the site of the par­ty cen­tral com­mit­tee’s sum­mer meet­ing, where a vote was just held to pick a suc­ces­sor to out­go­ing Chair Caleb Heimlich.

Walsh report­ed­ly had the votes locked up for the job and was wide­ly antic­i­pat­ed to win it. He is a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Wash­ing­ton’s 19th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, which used to be one of only a few rur­al dis­tricts that sent Democ­rats to the state­house before Repub­li­cans flipped it over the course of sev­er­al elec­tion cycles.

Wal­sh’s ear­ly years in the Leg­is­la­ture were rocky. He made a bad impres­sion with Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can col­leagues alike and had to be rep­ri­mand­ed for breach­es of deco­rum on the House floor. NPI alum Caitlin Har­ring­ton was one of the few who wrote about Wal­sh’s con­duct; here’s an excerpt from the report she filed for The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate back in March of 2019:

Walsh’s col­leagues have come to expect bom­bast from him when he speaks from the floor. But on sev­er­al recent occa­sions, includ­ing last Fri­day, his angry tirades have become more than a nui­sance. They have brought the House’s work to a halt.

Walsh’s repeat­ed inabil­i­ty to com­ply with the House’s rules has left Speak­er Pro Tem John Lovick (who shares pre­sid­ing duties in the cham­ber with fel­low Speak­er Pro Tem Tina Orwall) with no choice but to gav­el him out of order and then to call the House into recess when Walsh would not stop yelling over the gavel.

House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship sub­se­quent­ly sat down with Walsh and empha­sized the impor­tance of fol­low­ing the rules and respect­ing the deco­rum of the House, and he has since out­ward­ly dis­played less anger when giv­ing speech­es. How­ev­er, he has con­tin­ued to exhib­it extreme­ly poor judg­ment at times, such as when he decid­ed to wear a yel­low Star of David to protest pub­lic health poli­cies:

Walsh had the star — an infa­mous sym­bol Nazis forced Jews to wear dur­ing the Holo­caust — affixed to his shirt dur­ing a speech to a con­ser­v­a­tive group at a church in Lacey, Thurston Coun­ty, on Sat­ur­day. He said it was meant to make a point about vac­cine man­dates that he opposes.

“It’s an echo from his­to­ry,” Walsh wrote on a Face­book page about the sym­bol. “In the cur­rent con­text, we’re all Jews.”

His com­par­i­son of a pub­lic health vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign with the Nazi geno­cide that killed 6 mil­lion Jews dur­ing World War II attract­ed nation­al atten­tion and criticism.

The Anti-Defama­tion League’s Pacif­ic North­west chap­ter called Walsh’s com­par­isons “a gross mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of his­to­ry to advance an igno­rant polit­i­cal point of ‘free­dom.’ It is deeply offen­sive and dis­counts the painful his­to­ry of mar­gin­al­ized communities.”

Wal­sh’s ini­tial response to these crit­i­cisms was dis­mis­sive and defen­sive, but he sub­se­quent­ly back­tracked and went on Jason Rantz’s right wing talk show to apol­o­gize, know­ing he’d be treat­ed sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly there.

“This ges­ture went too far,” Walsh admit­ted, telling Rantz: “It was inap­pro­pri­ate and offen­sive. I’m ter­ri­bly sor­ry that it hap­pened and that I was a part of it.”

Walsh has a keen inter­est in data and strat­e­gy and is inter­est­ed in learn­ing from how the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty con­sis­tent­ly orga­nizes win­ning cam­paigns. Since Walsh was first elect­ed, the Repub­li­can Par­ty has tak­en sev­er­al con­sec­u­tive baths in statewide, fed­er­al, and leg­isla­tive elections.

Dur­ing that stretch of time, the par­ty has lost a total of two statewide posi­tions, two U.S. House seats, and a net of eight state House seats and five state Sen­ate seats. There have also been loss­es for Repub­li­cans at the local lev­el — for instance, Democ­rats flipped the Pierce Coun­ty Coun­cil and increased their major­i­ty on the King Coun­ty Coun­cil to sev­en out of nine seats.

Walsh feels that under his lead­er­ship, Repub­li­cans can end this los­ing streak in 2024. “We can win. We will win. We will improve the lives of peo­ple in this state,” he said dur­ing a speech wit­nessed by The Stan­dard­’s Jer­ry Corn­field. 

In a nod to the real­i­ty that the Repub­li­can brand is tox­ic in Wash­ing­ton State, Walsh has vowed to un-nation­al­ize the 2024 elec­tions for impor­tant offices like gov­er­nor, though he has not pre­sent­ed any plan for cre­at­ing a dis­tinct Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty brand that is any dif­fer­ent from the cult-like iden­ti­ty the nation­al par­ty has enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly cre­at­ed for itself.

Walsh seems to think that if the par­ty just offers a more pol­ished pitch, it can win over vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton. But there is no rea­son to believe that’s going to work.

When NPI does research polling, we often ask vot­ers if there’s any­thing Repub­li­cans could do to earn their votes, and Wash­ing­ton vot­ers con­sis­tent­ly tell us that the par­ty would have to fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­form itself before they would ever con­sid­er vot­ing for any of its can­di­dates. That means it would have to do more than aban­don Trump: the par­ty would have to renounce its extreme beliefs, includ­ing its posi­tions on issues like gun safe­ty, repro­duc­tive rights, and taxation.

That kind of trans­for­ma­tion is def­i­nite­ly not going to hap­pen under Walsh, who is very extreme and sur­round­ed by peo­ple who feel sim­i­lar­ly. Walsh is notably con­sid­ered a dear friend by the likes of for­mer ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman.

If any­thing, by choos­ing him as its next Chair, the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty has just recom­mit­ted itself to the extrem­ist tra­jec­to­ry that it’s been on.