Several Washington state legislative races still too close to call

Days after the election, several  legislative contests in Washington state have yet to be called.

Democrats hoped to pick up a seat or two in the Yakima Valley thanks to recent redistricting, but as previously reported by The Center Square, it doesn’t look like that will happen.

As Republicans saw it, redistricting was done in an effort to ensure Democrats in the 14th Legislative District secured a supermajority, but there were a dozen other districts impacted by the redraw as well.

As of Friday midday, the 14th Legislative District remains firmly in Republican control with Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, holding a lead of about 2,000 votes over Democratic challenger Maria Beltran. Republicans are firmly in the lead for the two House in the 14th positions up for grabs.

“We cannot deny the impact of the horrible racist and sexist assaults on text messages that came in from the Washington state Republicans,” said Democratic Party Chair Shasti Conrad in a Friday interview with The Center Square, in reference to the Yakima Valley races.

“There were horrible mailers, but the text messages were full of lies saying that our candidates supported castration in schools and that we were against God and truth and it was just absolutely disgusting messages,” said Conrad, who noted the party is filing a Public Disclosure Commission complaint contending the Washington State Republican Party did not have disclaimer language in their campaign messaging, as required by law.

“We are pursuing all of our legal options to hold the Republican party accountable,” said Conrad, suggesting the state GOP sent messaging to Latino voters that they didn’t have time to respond to.

Republican State Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, told The Center Square in a Friday phone interview the text messages did not come from anyone in the Republican caucus, but rather party leaders.

“It did use some language that I would not have used but no one in the Democratic Party has denied the accuracy, they just took issue with the tone of the message which I agreed with them on,” Braun said. “That was a single text which went to a very limited number of people.”

Braun suggested focusing on the single text message deflects from the real reason voters did not support Democratic candidates in the Yakima Valley.

“To claim that somehow one message that went out very late in the campaign swung the campaign is nonsense,” he said. “We’re just going to keep working on the key things that make a difference to people’s lives in that region, and it’s public safety and affordability and education and a future for their children and it matters to people regardless of their race or gender and that’s what we’re going to work on.”

Washington State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh told The Center Square via text message late Friday, "It's understandable that Conrad & Co. are upset and emotional about their losses in the 14th Legislative District. They were assured by their 'experts' that their gerrymandering scheme would work. Not being used to winning competitive races in blue-collar districts, they believed the false promises. Yakima isn't Seattle. Different values, different voters. WA Dems can talk all they want about 'legal options.' They're just being sore losers. If they want to win in Yakima, they need to get out of their echo chamber and understand Yakima."

Did national move toward Trump impact Latino voters in Washington?

“We certainly are going to have to dig into the data and I still want to see where we actually end up landing on all this, but we do have to acknowledge that years ago there was talk of the browning of America and all these different rules for persons of color and assuming they would vote for Democrats and that’s an incorrect analysis now,” Conrad said.

Democrats tried to flip the Yakima and Sunnyside city councils last year, she said.

“In my work out there what I learned is that while we’d done a lot of work in registering voters there was a real lack of understanding of the civic engagement pieces of when to vote and how to vote and who to vote for,” Conrad noted.

“I do think some of it is long term cultural connections to whiteness being right and able to lead and a strong man argument and sort of thinking of Trump as a businessman and entrepreneur,” she said. “He tells you what you need to do and there is some sort of cultural connection to that seeming like what a leader should be like.”

“I think it's going to just take some time in building trust in that community and with constituents in that district because in many other places in Washington state we have years of data and we just didn’t have that in the 14th, so it’s going to take another cycle or two before we’re going to get there,” Conrad said.

Several other close legislative races are yet to be determined and it will likely be Monday or beyond at the earliest for any final result.

As of midday Friday, Legislative District 10, which includes Island County, Republican State Sen. Ron Muzzall was leading Democratic challenger Janet St. Clair by just 574 votes, with St. Clair getting far more support in Skagit County and Muzzall far ahead in Snohomish County.

In southwest Washington’s 17th Legislative District, incumbent Republican Sen. Paul Harris is leading Democratic contender Marla Keethler by 1,149 votes.

In the race for the Position 2 seat for state representative, Republican mayor of Washougal David Stuebel had a razor-thin lead of 147 votes over Democrat Terri Niles.

In the 18th Legislative District in Southwest Washington, where Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center, has stepped down, Democrat Adrian Cortes is leading Republican Brad Benton by 354 votes, with ballots trending in his direction since election night.