Paul Queary

It's not easy to follow this last-minute money. The money behind Conservatives for a Stronger America is still anonymous, hidden behind the same Massachusetts-based consultant, Charles Gantt.

This is essentially an expensive live-fire test of whether this kind of moderate-on-progressive challenge can work, and of the premise that progressives.

The pot industry argues that the state’s already high tax on cannabis makes it difficult to compete with the illegal market.

Real estate developers frequently create a new LLC for each project for entirely solid business reasons. But in a political context, the practice has the effect of allowing them to become super-donors.

Note that the pollsters include the incumbents’ race in the description. The district is nearly 65 percent white and less than 3 percent black. They also included voting-record messaging designed to fire up tax-averse voters and folks on the rightward half of the broad argument over law enforcement policy. 

The teachers' union and its PAC spent $3.75 million on campaigns in the 2020 cycle. With a haul of more than half a billion dollars from the Legislature this year alone, that looks like money well spent.

With no need to court Republican votes, Democratic transportation leaders wrote a spending plan much more focused on transit and non-driving forms of transportation than previous plans.

There was some talk that Carlyle might face a challenge from the Left in 2022, but given the progressive victories in the Legislature, which Carlyle voted for, it's not clear a challenger would have much to run on.

Is Inslee thinking about his next act, and do those thoughts extend to a possible bid for president in 2024?

The incumbent, Steve Hobbs, is not beloved by the progressive wing of the Democratic party and hasn’t shown much firepower as a statewide candidate, finishing fourth in the 2016 primary for lieutenant governor.