MAGA Makes Strides in Legislature; Gov. Ferguson Imports Staff

The Washington Legislature’s Democratic caucuses may have tilted further left this fall, but the House GOP minority added members from the party’s rightmost edge. This happened despite caucus leaders spending heavily to prevent it.

The first is Matt Marshall, who beat former Thurston County Sheriff John Snaza by a five-point margin for a House seat in the 2nd Legislative District, which sprawls across rural Pierce and Thurston counties. Marshall, whose resume includes establishing the Washington chapter of the Three Percenters, a right-wing group, and a stint on the Eatonville School Board, has made headlines for rubbing elbows with other far-right extremist groups. Since then, Marshall and his backers have tried shedding the extremist label while protesting vaccine mandates and drag queen story hours. The seat is open because former Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox, R-Yelm, didn’t seek reelection. 

Marshall won despite being massively overspent. Snaza’s campaign spent more than $150,000 on the campaign, including more than $90,000 dumped in by the House Republican Organizing Committee, a PAC controlled by House Majority Leader Drew Stokesbary. Marshall, meanwhile, spent only about $30,000.

The other MAGA Republican in this picture is former state representative Rob Chase, who beat Washington State Labor Council Vice President Ted Cummings handily in the 4th LD by 13 points. A retired realtor and previous Spokane County Treasurer, Chase got bounced from office in 2022 by state Rep. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley. Chase notably won a thumbs-up from former Republican state representative Matt Shea in 2020. 

Christian’s departure to the state senate left an empty seat in the House, which Chase filled. The far-right Republican was endorsed by now-retired Spokane Republican state Sen. Mike Padden and former state Rep. Bob McCaslin Jr., a secessionist and like-minded QAnon conspiracy theorist. Despite Chase’s association with fringe groups, voters in the 4th LD advanced him from the primary over three other Republicans and chose him over Cummings, who ran a bombastic anti-fascist campaign that flopped with voters in the conservative district.

With Donald Trump en route to the White House, culture wars are bound to suck up considerable oxygen in Olympia. More MAGA energy in the statehouse is bound to pour gasoline on that fire, which might impair the minority’s already limited ability to check the majority.

On one hand, Marshall and Chase’s ascent comes at the worst possible time for the state Republican party. The party struck out in every statewide race this fall, saw three of its biggest ballot initiatives go up in flames, and failed to gain new ground in the statehouse. 

As of Wednesday, it’s still unclear how many House Republicans will be seated in January. In the 18th LD, Camas Republican John Ley, also an arch-conservative, has a narrow lead over Vancouver Democrat John Zingale in the race for an open seat currently held by a Republican. Ley was also not the initial choice of the House Republican caucus. HROC put $25,000 behind another GOP hopeful who ran third in the August primary. 

Ley is facing charges for allegedly registering to vote with a friend’s Battle Ground address during the 2022 campaign so he could run in the 18th. (Tim Gruver)

Big Timber’s Bad Bet

For players who saw the worst bang for their buck this election cycle, look no further than Big Timber, which came up short twice this year betting on the next Commissioner of Public Lands. The cadre of lumber barons and their allies figured to be kingmakers in the contest for Public Lands, considering this was a crowded down-ballot race. More than half a million dollars in PAC money should have pushed any horse in their stable past the finish line.

Big Timber had two horses in this race. The first was state Sen. Kevin Van De Wege, who won a $736,000 thumbs-up from the lumber magnates but went on to finish sixth as four Democrats split the vote and nearly advanced two Republicans to the general election.

On paper, VDW looked like a sure shot for the job as the Chair of the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks Committee, a rural Washingtonian, and reliably moderate Democrat. He certainly tried to look the part. Weyerhaeuser took note too, given the chunk of change it put down on the VDW-aligned PAC, Firefighters For Protecting Public Lands.

When VDW finished well out of the money, Big Timber placed a $255,000 bet on former U.S. GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in the general. Her pro-business forest management style seemed comparable to VDW’s. But JHB dashed into the race with partisan baggage, having ticked off the right with her anti-Trump stance after Jan. 6 and also the environmental left with her history of dicey votes in The Other Washington.

King County Democrats jazzed up about the White House could be counted on to fill the bubble for King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove, whose door-to-door game probably helped save his bacon this summer in that squeaker of a primary. In the end, that Seattle-area advantage and $411,000 from rich conservationists carried the day. (Tim Gruver)

Jamie Pedersen elected Senate majority leader

Current Senate Floor Leader Jamie Pedersen, who represents arguably the most progressive district in the state in the heart of Seattle, has been elected Senate Majority Leader. Pedersen succeeds Sen. Andy Billing, D-Spokane, who did not seek reelection this year. 

Pedersen, known to TVW viewers for his procedural precision during Senate floor debate, will lead a Democratic caucus that figures to be slightly larger and perhaps substantially more progressive than the current version. Democrats look poised to flip the Senate seat in Clark County’s 18th District, which would give them a 30-19 edge and the lesser of two forms of supermajority. 

While Pedersen isn’t the first openly gay lawmaker to lead a Democratic caucus, his ascent to the top job in the Senate is part of the rising clout of LGBTQ lawmakers, which played out in an interesting way earlier this year in the passage of the strippers’ rights bill. His Seattle district includes Capitol Hill, the city’s traditional “gayborhood.” 

While Billig’s tenure as majority leader featured a caucus that moved incrementally to the left from 2017 through the 2022 election, Pedersen will start with a caucus heavily stocked with progressive lawmakers. 

The 2025 Legislature will also be without centrist Sens. Mark Mullet, D-Issaquah, and Kevin Van De Wege, D-Port Angeles, who both sought higher office and lost in the primary. VDW will be replaced by the ideologically similar Rep. Mike Chapman, but Mullet’s slot goes to Issaquah Rep. Bill Ramos, a much more conventional Democrat. There will also be at least three other new faces in the caucus via upcoming appointments. Sen. Patty Kuderer, D-Bellevue, was elected Insurance Commissioner, Sen. Emily Randall, D-Bremerton, is headed for Congress, and Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, is retiring.

As noted, that shift is likely to lead to an eventful session, particularly on issues of taxation. Pedersen is a vocal champion of reforming Washington’s tax system, which falls heavily on the poor and lightly on the rich, to create new sources of revenue. The caucus plans to announce committee chairs and other leadership positions on Nov. 21. (Paul Queary)

Ferguson imports AG leadership team into governor’s office 

Governor-elect Bob Ferguson is bringing virtually his entire leadership team with him from the attorney general’s office. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Ferguson has been governor-in-waiting for at least four years and arguably as many as eight. So it’s not a shocker that his inner team was already effectively in place. 

But the mass move across the capitol campus is an outlier compared to past new governors. When Gov. Chris Gregoire made the same move from the AG’s office back in 2004, she kept Gov. Gary Locke’s chief of staff and didn’t bring a crowd of people with her. Gov. Jay Inslee, who moved into the governor’s mansion from a seat in the U.S. House, built out nearly all of this team without importing them from the other Washington. 

In a somewhat unusual move, there won’t be a single chief of staff. Instead, both Chief of Strategy Mike Webb and Chief of Operations Shane Esquivel will report directly to Ferguson. Webb, Ferguson’s longtime chief of staff at the AG’s office, was heavily involved in the boss’s campaign. He will run policy, legislative, and communications work, while Esquivel will oversee agencies represented in the cabinet.

Also staying in Ferguson’s inner circle will be Chief Counsel Kristin Beneski, Policy Director Sahar Fathi, Legislative Director Joyce Bruce, Deputy Chief Operations Officer Franklin Plaistowe, and Communications Director Brionna Aho, who was a sister in news for The World in Aberdeen. 

External Relations Director Jaime Martin joins the team from the Snoqualmie Tribe. Native American tribes are major players in politics in Washington, so that makes sense. What’s notable here is the lack of representation of other major forces in Democratic politics, including organized labor and the environmental movement. 

Policy wonks and folks with interest in the upcoming legislative session will be particularly interested in Fathi and Bruce. Those two jobs sit atop the governor’s policy shop, where most of an administration’s priority legislation gets initially crafted. Fathi formerly worked for the King County Council as a policy analyst and in two different roles at the city of Seattle.

Ferguson’s election ushered in the first change of administration since 2013, so expect many moves to and within Olympia to come. (Paul Queary)

These articles first appeared in the political website, The Washington Observer.