Filing Week surprise: Tiffany Smiley jumps into WA-04 race, challenging Dan Newhouse

The most recent Repub­li­can to be van­quished by Demo­c­ra­t­ic Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray reen­tered the elec­toral are­na today, belat­ed­ly declar­ing a can­di­da­cy for the U.S. House in Wash­ing­ton’s solid­ly red 4th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict against incum­bent Dan New­house, who is hop­ing to win anoth­er term despite being dis­liked by the par­ty base.

Tiffany Smi­ley is charis­mat­ic and a proven fundrais­er, as she demon­strat­ed last cycle. She has been talked about as a poten­tial rival to New­house ever since her loss to Mur­ray in the midterms. But the ques­tion on many observers’ minds will sure­ly be, why is she only enter­ing the race now? It’s Fil­ing Week. The Top Two elec­tion is just three months from today. That’s not a lot of time to build a potent cam­paign. And anoth­er New­house chal­lenger has already secured the endorse­ments of both Don­ald Trump and the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty: ultra MAGA extrem­ist Jer­rod Sessler. 

Nev­er­the­less, Smi­ley has decid­ed to run. She’s got a web­site up, an announce­ment video, and she also sat for an inter­view with The Nation­al Review.

Her web­site alludes to her unsuc­cess­ful Sen­ate run only in passing: 

This past elec­tion cycle, draw­ing on her expe­ri­ences as a vet­er­an’s advo­cate, Tiffany sought to serve once again — this time for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton state. Through­out her nine­teen months on the cam­paign trail for the U.S. Sen­ate, Tiffany was a tire­less advo­cate for poli­cies that sought to expand eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty, sup­port Washington’s men and women in law enforce­ment, and address the drug and home­less crises plagu­ing Wash­ing­ton com­mu­ni­ties. And as the moth­er of three school-age boys, Tiffany was out­spo­ken about the impor­tance of parental involve­ment in schools.

Tiffany could have eas­i­ly returned to pri­vate life after a gru­el­ing cam­paign, but that would not be the Smi­ley way. As she and Scot­ty tell their boys, when you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stand up and do what’s right, you do it! Tiffany looks for­ward to con­tin­u­ing her family’s tra­di­tion of ser­vice through the works of Endeav­or PAC, fight­ing for Amer­i­cans’ pri­or­i­ties over the pri­or­i­ties of gov­ern­ment bureau­crats and spe­cial inter­ests to best address the chal­lenges fac­ing our country.

Smi­ley is very much liked by the Repub­li­can Par­ty estab­lish­ment, where­as Jer­rod Sessler isn’t. Con­sid­er this line from a Dai­ly Beast arti­cle pub­lished last month:

“Jer­rod Sessler is not a real con­ser­v­a­tive, and he has no busi­ness rep­re­sent­ing this dis­trict; he’s not a seri­ous per­son,” one GOP oper­a­tive told The Dai­ly Beast.

Unlike most states in the coun­try, Wash­ing­ton does not give vot­ers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to select par­ty nom­i­nees for place­ment on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot in a prop­er pri­ma­ry. Instead, can­di­dates com­pete against each oth­er in a two-part gen­er­al elec­tion. In Round One — the Top Two round — fields of can­di­dates are win­nowed down to two con­tenders using first past the post vot­ing. The top two vote get­ters move on, regard­less of par­ty. That means the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion can be a runoff fea­tur­ing two Repub­li­cans or two Democrats.

Smi­ley has name recog­ni­tion from run­ning for U.S. Sen­ate, while New­house has incum­ben­cy and Sessler has the afore­men­tioned Trump and WSRP endorse­ments. That’s a recipe for vote-split­ting, which is what we saw in the midterms when a num­ber of Repub­li­cans decid­ed to run against New­house, includ­ing failed guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Loren Culp, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Brad Klip­pert, and Sessler. Take a look:

August 2022 results for Congress, WA-04

New­house­’s rivals split the vote so effec­tive­ly that New­house end­ed up going to the gen­er­al elec­tion with a Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent: Doug White. Not hav­ing to face a Repub­li­can in the gen­er­al elec­tion made the New­house camp very, very happy. 

Smi­ley’s late entrance in the are­na sub­stan­tial­ly changes the dynam­ics in this con­test. Now there are three Repub­li­can can­di­dates run­ning who’ll have resources and clout. They can’t all go to the Novem­ber gen­er­al election. 

Who’ll make it and who’ll be eliminated?

With Smi­ley in the mix, the like­li­hood of a New­house-Sessler gen­er­al elec­tion matchup just decreased. It’s still a pos­si­ble out­come, but no longer as like­ly. If Repub­li­can vot­ers turn­ing out in the Top Two are as dis­sat­is­fied with New­house as they were with Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler last cycle, New­house­’s time in Con­gress could be over. But New­house sur­vived the gaunt­let last cycle despite Trump’s enmity. 

There’s mul­ti­ple plau­si­ble sce­nar­ios here.

Smi­ley may or may not care about anoth­er New­house chal­lenger hav­ing Trump’s endorse­ment, but she’s def­i­nite­ly a Trump enabler and made that clear in her con­ver­sa­tion with The Nation­al Review:

“It’s time for fresh lead­er­ship,” Smi­ley told Nation­al Review in an inter­view ahead of her announce­ment. “We have an inva­sion at the bor­der. We have unrest in our own coun­try. We have an econ­o­my where fam­i­lies are strug­gling to keep up with the price increase, and we have unrest around the globe.”

She also crit­i­cized New­house for vot­ing to impeach Trump while rep­re­sent­ing Washington’s deep-red Fourth Dis­trict. “That’s not a vote that rep­re­sents the vot­ers of the Fourth Dis­trict,” Smi­ley said. “Don­ald Trump is our nom­i­nee, and we need Don­ald Trump’s poli­cies in this coun­try to save this coun­try going for­ward. So giv­en Newhouse’s past his­to­ry with Trump, I don’t believe that New­house is the best per­son to leg­is­late with a Trump administration.”

Smi­ley also point­ed out that Sessler could­n’t get the job done in 2022:

Anoth­er split Repub­li­can [Top Two] field in 2024 could play to Newhouse’s favor. This time around, Trump has thrown his sup­port behind vet­er­an and for­mer NASCAR dri­ver Jer­rod Sessler, who came in fourth place in last cycle’s jun­gle [elec­tion] for Newhouse’s seat with just 12 per­cent of the vote.

Smi­ley insists that she’s unde­terred. “At this point, Sessler has been in the race for four years. He’s a peren­ni­al can­di­date, very low name recog­ni­tion and no chance of win­ning,” she said.

Sessler does have Trump’s endorse­ment this time… but Loren Culp had it last time and did­n’t get through. So Smi­ley can cite prece­dent when mak­ing argu­ments about her prospects and elec­tabil­i­ty. And she undoubt­ed­ly will be doing that from now until August. But she may have a tougher time explain­ing why she wait­ed so long to run.