Bob Ferguson drops the “exploratory” label from his 2024 gubernatorial campaign

At a series of events today in Spokane, the Tri-Cities, and Seat­tle, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son affirmed that’s he run­ning for gov­er­nor after a thir­ty-nine coun­ty tour and detailed his vision for Wash­ing­ton State’s future.

The third of those events, held at Wash­ing­ton Hall on 14th Avenue in the Emer­ald City, fea­tured a star-stud­ded line­up of endorsers: Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal, Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene, for­mer Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire, Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Gir­may Zahi­lay (who served as the kick­of­f’s host), King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, and Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee.

Watch the event:

It was a kick­off the likes of which our team has rarely seen dur­ing NPI’s twen­ty year his­to­ry. It had the feel of a GOTV cam­paign ral­ly, even though the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is more than a year away. Gre­goire, in par­tic­u­lar, was in top form. She received a stand­ing ova­tion from the crowd as she was intro­duced and seemed very touched. Gre­goire deliv­ered remarks that mixed amus­ing anec­dotes, a tes­ti­mo­ni­al, and even a call and response with the crowd.

“I’ve had the chance to see a num­ber of my col­league attor­neys gen­er­al become gov­er­nors. And I’ve got­ta tell ya, real­ly good attor­neys gen­er­al make real­ly great gov­er­nors,” said Gre­goire to laugh­ter and applause. “It is a job that pre­pares you the day you get sworn in to make a dif­fer­ence and get going that first day.”

“So, let me just say, when I think about Bob and what Bob has done, he has stood up for the prin­ci­ples that all good attor­neys gen­er­al stand for. Lib­er­ty. Free­dom. Jus­tice. Bob has been there every sin­gle day like my col­leagues have said.”

Inslee fol­lowed Gre­goire and wast­ed no time in men­tion­ing to the assem­bled crowd that he had been uncom­mit­ted to a can­di­date until very recently.

“I want to say that I don’t do this light­ly,” Inslee began.

“To endorse [for] a posi­tion that I have been able to hold with this hon­or for the last decade, and to have the right per­son to con­tin­ue our upward climb as a state, is a big deal to me and my grand­chil­dren, to get the right per­son for this posi­tion. So I don’t do it — I don’t do it out of hap­pen­stance or polit­i­cal convenience.”

Inslee cit­ed three rea­sons why he’s endors­ing Ferguson:

• Fer­gu­son runs a great AG’s office that per­forms at a very high level
• Inslee trusts Fer­gu­son to build on his lega­cy of fight­ing cli­mate damage
• Fer­gu­son is a win­ner, and WA need some­body who gets results consistently

Fer­gu­son then took the stage after Inslee’s introduction.

“I real­ly believe that elect­ed offi­cials gov­ern the way that they cam­paign,” Fer­gu­son told his sup­port­ers after thank­ing all of his endorsers.

“I think you can dis­cern a lot from the way some­one runs their cam­paign. Today alone, we’ve been East­ern Wash­ing­ton, Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton, West­ern Wash­ing­ton. All sum­mer, we’ve trav­eled every cor­ner of the state.”

“Here’s the bot­tom line: I’m going to be gov­er­nor for every sin­gle Wash­ing­ton­ian in every cor­ner of this great state,” Fer­gu­son vowed.

“Now, thanks to Gov­er­nor Inslee and Gov­er­nor Gre­goire, Wash­ing­ton’s a top ten state to live and a top ten state to do busi­ness. We have a great state. And as I’ve trav­eled the state, I hear that from the peo­ple I meet with.”

“But, we have major chal­lenges fac­ing us as a state.”

“You know that, I know that, Gov­er­nor Inslee and Gov­er­nor Gre­goire know that.”

Those chal­lenges, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al said, include a lack of afford­able and attain­able hous­ing, a pub­lic safe­ty cri­sis exac­er­bat­ed by a lack of well trained law enforce­ment offi­cers, the grow­ing scourge of cli­mate dam­age, and assaults on our demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic by bad actors such as Don­ald Trump and his entourage.

“There is a chance that Don­ald Trump can be returned to the White House and if that hap­pens, we need anoth­er gov­er­nor like our cur­rent gov­er­nor who knows how to stand up to an admin­is­tra­tion that is hell bent on strip­ping away your rights and your free­doms and your pro­tec­tions in our envi­ron­ment,” said Fer­gu­son. “And the good news in all that is I have some expe­ri­ence in that work.”

Pre­view­ing his next year of cam­paign­ing, Fer­gu­son declared that nei­ther he nor his team (or any of his sup­port­ers) can afford to be com­pla­cent, and must­n’t be.

“It has been said that we are the front run­ner in this cam­paign, and I under­stand why peo­ple say that,” Fer­gu­son said. “After all, we have the most donors. We have the most mon­ey. We have the most endorse­ments, and we have the best orga­ni­za­tion. By far. But my team knows, and I tell them this all the time: we are going to run like we are twen­ty points behind every sin­gle day.”

After con­clud­ing his remarks, Fer­gu­son shook hands and posed for pho­tos with sup­port­ers while the hall was cleaned up, as is his cus­tom. Gov­er­nor Inslee and First Lady Tru­di Inslee also stuck around for a while to greet supporters.

Fer­gu­son, fifty-eight, announced that he would be a can­di­date last spring after Inslee revealed he had decid­ed not to seek an unprece­dent­ed fourth term.

Pri­or to today, he has char­ac­ter­ized his cam­paign as “explorato­ry,” even though legal­ly, there’s no such thing as an “explorato­ry” cam­paign at the state lev­el, some­thing reporters have delight­ed in point­ing out on social platforms.

(The FEC allows fed­er­al can­di­dates to orga­nize “explorato­ry” cam­paigns, which must com­ply with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Cam­paign Act but don’t have to reg­is­ter.)

NPI’s most recent statewide pub­lic opin­ion sur­vey, which vet­er­an local poll­ster Stu­art Elway char­ac­ter­ized as “the only cred­i­ble pub­lic poll thus far” of the 2024 guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test, found Fer­gu­son out in front of Demo­c­ra­t­ic rivals Hilary Franz and Mark Mul­let and Repub­li­can rivals Raul Gar­cia and Semi Bird back in June. Gar­cia exit­ed the con­test in favor of Dave Reichert after the sur­vey fielded.

Fer­gu­son earned the sup­port of 25% of respon­dents in the sur­vey, with Repub­li­can Gar­cia the run­ner-up at 17%. “If the elec­tion were today – as poll­sters like to pre­tend — his­tor­i­cal trends and cur­rent polling data would have Reichert and Fer­gu­son fin­ish­ing a close 1 and 2 in the [Top Two] elec­tion, set­ting up anoth­er high­ly par­ti­san race for gov­er­nor,” Elway wrote in a July 12th memo.

Our team agrees with Elway’s analy­sis. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber, though, that the elec­tion is over a year away and the elec­toral land­scape could change. What is prob­a­ble today isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly what will be prob­a­ble next win­ter or next sum­mer or a year from now, as we enter the home stretch of the 2024 cycle.

Fer­gu­son is smart to not be com­pla­cent. Our team fre­quent­ly points out in this space that vot­ers tend to pun­ish com­pla­cen­cy when they are least expect­ed to. Fer­gu­son — a cham­pi­on door­beller who oust­ed not one, but two incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of the King Coun­ty Coun­cil ear­li­er in his polit­i­cal career — gets this and he is vow­ing not to be out­worked by any rival.

Mul­let and Franz both issued state­ments react­ing to Inslee’s endorsement.

“Let me say: I respect Gov­er­nor Inslee,” said Mul­let. “But over the years we’ve had some seri­ous dif­fer­ences in vision for our state. Wash­ing­ton has some of the high­est home & gas prices, and we’ve added a new pay­roll tax. I believe these have led to an afford­abil­i­ty cri­sis and Gov­er­nor Inslee’s endorse­ment of my oppo­nent indi­cates there will be more of the same under his leadership.”

“Any­thing I’ve ever done, whether it was run­ning for city coun­cil or state lands com­mis­sion­er or my law career, I’ve been told to sit qui­et­ly, wait my turn, and let the men ahead of me have theirs. Nev­er stopped me,” Franz said. 

There was no imme­di­ate reac­tion to Fer­gu­son’s kick­off and new endorse­ments from Reichert’s cam­paign, which has been run­ning in what many polit­i­cal observers might call low pow­er mode since it began. The cam­paign has not, for instance, post­ed a new tweet to its Twit­ter account since August 17th.

Fil­ing Week 2024 will begin in two hun­dred and thir­ty nine days, with vot­ing in the August Top Two elec­tion con­clud­ing three months after that.

There are only two avail­able slots on the Novem­ber 2024 gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State, and they will go to the top two vote-get­ting can­di­dates regard­less of par­ty. If most Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers choose to coa­lesce around Fer­gu­son and most Repub­li­can vot­ers embrace Reichert, we could see the matchup Elway spoke of in his July memo. There are oth­er pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios, of course, but whether an alter­na­tive sce­nario becomes more prob­a­ble than that one will depend pri­mar­i­ly on how effec­tive­ly Fer­gu­son and Reichert’s rivals campaign.