Is Dave Reichert up, or is he down? According to his campaign, the answer is yes 

With the August Top Two elec­tion draw­ing near, Repub­li­can Dave Reichert’s cam­paign is get­ting increas­ing­ly aggres­sive — and des­per­ate — in its chase for dol­lars, hop­ing to win­now Bob Fer­gu­son’s fundrais­ing lead and secure the resources need­ed to wage a cred­i­ble cam­paign that can afford paid adver­tis­ing on tele­vi­sion and oth­er modes. 

We’ve had a front row seat to take it in, because we’ve been get­ting texts and emails from Reichert on an increas­ing­ly fre­quent basis. Though our staff nev­er signed up to receive any com­mu­ni­ca­tions from Reichert, we are nev­er­the­less receiv­ing almost dai­ly fundrais­ing appeals ask­ing us to give mon­ey to his cam­paign, and we’ve been read­ing them all with great inter­est. Who­ev­er is writ­ing the appeals is seem­ing­ly throw­ing every­thing at the wall to see what sticks, Tiffany Smi­ley style. Con­se­quent­ly, Reichert’s back­ers are being sub­ject­ed to some pret­ty con­tra­dic­to­ry messaging. 

Let’s take a look at an exam­ple of what I’m talk­ing about. 

Dave Reichert’s campaign says they’re up

On April 3rd, Repub­li­can-aligned poll­ster Ech­e­lon Insights (work­ing for Steve “Truck­ing Mag­nate” Gor­don’s Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers of Wash­ing­ton) released the results of a skewed sur­vey that pur­ports to show Dave Reichert ahead by nine points. It’s a non­sen­si­cal find­ing that isn’t cor­rob­o­rat­ed by any cred­i­ble research, and I explained why it should­n’t be tak­en seri­ous­ly in a post right here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate.

But Reichert’s cam­paign jumped all over it. In a mes­sage sent on April 5th, 2024 that was deliv­ered at 12:19 PM Pacif­ic Time, his cam­paign crowed about the finding: 

🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨 

The num­bers don’t lie… and I’m up!

+ 9 points in the gen­er­al bal­lot, the largest spread to date of any inde­pen­dent polling released on this race. 

The will of the peo­ple is clear. They’re ready for a gov­er­nor that pro­motes the peo­ples val­ues and fights to pre­serve freedom. 

Chip in to keep this momen­tum going! [Dona­tion link] 

- Dave Reichert

stop2end

Num­bers can, of course, be fab­ri­cat­ed or manip­u­lat­ed to say any­thing, as Dar­rell Huff explained in his 1954 book How To Lie With Sta­tis­tics. (If you haven’t read it, you real­ly should. It’s a clas­sic and def­i­nite­ly worth your time.) 

Dave Reichert’s campaign says they’re down

Last Fri­day after­noon, Reichert back­ers were seem­ing­ly told the oppo­site: that the cam­paign is behind, not ahead, and real­ly needs their help. 

Here’s the mes­sage, received April 12th, 2024 at 2:22 PM Pacif­ic Time: 

Friend, I’ve seen the num­bers. I’m falling behind. 

This is pret­ty seri­ous news in my fight to win this cam­paign. Could you donate to help me build a bet­ter tomor­row for Wash­ing­ton? [Dona­tion link] 

- Dave Reichert 

stop2end

Notice the mes­sage does­n’t spec­i­fy what num­bers the cam­paign is talk­ing about. Fundrais­ing hauls, per­haps? The mes­sage came after cam­paigns filed their March finan­cial reports with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion. I imag­ine some Reichert back­ers may have been left won­der­ing — What num­bers? Did­n’t you just say the oth­er day that you’re nine points up on Fer­gu­son? What’s going on? But per­haps that’s the idea: Tell ’em we’re up, tell ’em we’re down; don’t tell ’em why, just ask for their money! 

The reality: Dave Reichert is running in a very difficult electoral environment for Republicans

Reichert twice took a pass on chal­leng­ing Jay Inslee for gov­er­nor (in 2016 and again in 2020), only to come out of retire­ment and run when the seat came open. But Wash­ing­ton State pol­i­tics has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since he last threw his hat in the ring for high­er office twen­ty years ago, and even since he was last on the bal­lot in the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict in 2016. The polit­i­cal ter­rain has got­ten rough for his party. 

In the last three elec­tion cycles — 2017–2018, 2019–2020, and 2021–2022 — Repub­li­cans have lost a net of two statewide offices, two con­gres­sion­al seats, eight seats in the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and five seats in the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate, along with that cham­ber’s major­i­ty, while Democ­rats have suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed the long list of oth­er offices they already hold, from gov­er­nor on down.

Reichert hopes to be the first Repub­li­can in decades to win a gov­er­nor’s race. The last was the esteemed John Spell­man, all the way back in 1980. Yes, 1980! 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Reichert, he is run­ning in a hyper­par­ti­san era where the old mantra I vote for the per­son, not the par­ty does­n’t ring true any­more. The Repub­li­can brand is tox­ic. Reichert will have to share a bal­lot with wannabe author­i­tar­i­an Don­ald Trump and will be harsh­ly crit­i­cized and scru­ti­nized for his uncom­pro­mis­ing posi­tion oppos­ing repro­duc­tive rights. Even if he runs a stel­lar cam­paign, the odds are against him. 

And before he can even ful­ly turn his atten­tion to duk­ing it out with Bob Fer­gu­son, Reichert will have to con­tend with ultra MAGA rival Semi Bird. The ex-Rich­land School Board mem­ber, recalled by vot­ers last year, remains in the guber­na­to­r­i­al race and has turned into a headache for Reichert. Many Repub­li­can PCOs and activists like Bird, and if enough del­e­gates to this week­end’s Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion in Spokane were to vote for him, he could get the par­ty’s endorse­ment, which would be a major embar­rass­ment for Reichert. 

We found Reichert nar­row­ly ahead of Bob Fer­gu­son last Novem­ber thanks to some inter­est from Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in his can­di­da­cy, but our Feb­ru­ary polling, which found a four point lead for Fer­gu­son, sug­gests Reichert’s crossover sup­port has already evap­o­rat­ed. And not because of any­thing Reichert or Fer­gu­son did, but because of the larg­er dynam­ics at work in this high stakes pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle. 

Tiffany Smi­ley and her back­ers dis­cov­ered in the midterms that hav­ing boat­loads of cash and what they thought was a win­ning mes­sage did­n’t make a dif­fer­ence. Pat­ty Mur­ray eas­i­ly dis­patched Smi­ley in a lop­sided vic­to­ry that was appar­ent as soon as the first Elec­tion Night num­bers were pub­lished, vin­di­cat­ing the cred­i­ble polling (includ­ing ours) and dam­ag­ing the rep­u­ta­tions of the Repub­li­can-aligned firms that had put out garbage data sug­gest­ing Smi­ley was almost tied with Murray. 

This time around, at least some in right wing media are lis­ten­ing to what we’re say­ing and ask­ing whether Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­cans might be fool­ing them­selves again.