These purple WA districts are trending blue. What changed?

This is the story of how Democrats came to win over (most of) Washington’s suburbs.

Over the past decade, Democrats have amassed power in Olympia through areas further and further from their urban bases. 

These are places like east King County suburbs where Republican Dino Rossi’s tenure as a state senator nearly carried him to the governor’s office; northern Whatcom County, not long ago a redder shade of purple; part of the Kitsap Peninsula that has been a rare split district but may soon be represented by three Democrats; and Island County, where Democrats are gaining strength.

The shifts allow Democrats to continue expanding and strengthening a foundation for a supermajority in the Legislature, which could lead to transformational changes to state law. 

However, these new Democratic lawmakers also tend to be among the most moderate in their party, willing to buck the progressive wing of their caucuses on some of their biggest policy priorities, like this year’s income tax on high earners.

Two main factors have driven the trend. One is Donald Trump. As moderate Republicans and independent voters have soured on the president’s brash rhetoric, Democrats have provided refuge. Other Republican candidates have followed the president’s lead to some extent.

“The nonstop degrading of our neighbor, I think, is really irritating people,” said Ray Shjerven, chair of the 26th Legislative District Democrats. 

Alex Hays, a Republican campaign consultant, put it differently: “Democrats have convinced voters not to pay attention to their job performance and to instead focus on Donald Trump’s performance.”

The second reason is the suburban districts have been the recipients of new Democrat-leaning voters, driven further from urban cores by the high cost of living and the promise of hybrid or remote work. Think of Seattleites moving across the water to Port Orchard, or Tacoma residents going across the Narrows into more suburban communities for the 26th District. Urbanites have similarly been seeking refuge on Whidbey Island in the 10th District. Bellingham residents are heading north and east into the 42nd. 

“COVID really drove the crazies out of the city, and they’re bringing crazy with them where they go,”  said Tim Hazelo, a Republican candidate for state House in the 10th District.

This has helped Democrats overcome the fact that fewer voters than ever are persuadable amid intense polarization.

Republicans have also struggled to recruit strong candidates, sometimes turning to hopefuls who align more with the national party but may not be as electable in suburbia, according to Democrats and some Republicans.

“The type of person that Trump motivates to be more involved is also just not the person that is as close a fit to swing voters as a lot of people would like,” said Hays, the Republican consultant.

Dean Nielsen, a veteran Democratic consultant, said Trump “essentially traded the suburbs for a greater share of rural America.” The problem for Republicans is that rural Washington is a small piece of the state, and Latino voters are keeping some of those areas at least somewhat competitive, he added.

If Nielsen were a Republican strategist, he’d try to find business-oriented candidates who were vocally supportive of abortion and LGTBQ+ rights.

State Rep. Jim Walsh, who chairs the state Republican Party, disagrees with the premise that his allies are sputtering in these areas. He believes these are still swing districts, and politicos will be able to properly assess voting patterns in 2028. The Senate race in the 42nd and a House race in the 26th are the two most expensive campaigns for state Legislature this year.

“Trump Derangement Syndrome is intense but it has a short halflife,” Walsh wrote in a text message. “Normal people are tired of the lies and bad-faith rhetoric coming out of Olympia.”

Eastside swing

All of these examples were preceded by the 5th Legislative District in east King County. Fifteen years ago, Republicans ruled this combination of rural exurbs and affluent suburbs. Now, it’s not all that competitive as Democrats have swept all three seats, along with flipping the congressional seat that represents the area in 2018. 

Republican Dino Rossi served alongside two Republican state representatives, and even served in the Senate when Republicans had a majority. He helped write the state budget. Minority Republicans are now largely shut out of those negotiations. Rossi also came oh-so-close to the governor’s mansion.

But after rounds of redistricting, a presidential term and a half for Donald Trump and housing growth in these areas, the 5th is reliably blue. Democrats have been sailing to reelection. Rep. Zach Hall, who was appointed to the role, faces a strong challenger in longtime police leader Michelle Bennett, but she has little chance to beat him this year due to the district’s tilt.

The 5th might qualify as the first shoe to drop for Republican power in these areas, as Democratic reign has now spread far and wide.

Island breeze

The year 2022 portended a good future for Democrats in the 10th District. They’d already wrested one state House seat out of Republican hands four years earlier and took another in 2022. 

And they did so despite a damaged Democratic candidate. In the final days of the campaign, Clyde Shavers faced blockbuster allegations from his father that he’d inflated his military record. Shavers still won, unseating the Republican incumbent, but by only a couple hundred votes.

Winning in such headwinds indicated a turn toward Democrats in a district that covers Island County and parts of Skagit and Snohomish, local politicos say.  Republicans had held both House seats since the early 2000s.

In two years, all eyes will be on the state Senate race, where Republican Sen. Ron Muzzall, faces a fight for another four-year term, if he runs again, given the Democratic momentum there. 

Muzzall’s 2024 run was the most expensive legislative race in the state that year, with over $1.5 million contributed to the campaigns and $2 million more spent on independent efforts to sway voters. Muzzall won by 2 percentage points, while his Democratic colleagues in the state House were reelected more comfortably. 

“We’ll do everything we can to make sure that we flip it,” said state Democratic Party Chair Shasti Conrad.

Northern expedition

To the north, Sharon Shewmake broke the ice, first by defeating a Republican incumbent to win a seat in the state House in 2018 and then four years later narrowly winning a race for state Senate after Doug Ericksen, the incumbent Republican, died. 

That solidified the Democrats’ flipping of all three legislative positions in the 42nd District, which covers the north side of Bellingham all the way to the Canadian border and the more rural east side of Whatcom County. The margins of victory for Democrats have only grown in recent years.

Republicans held the Senate seat in the 42nd for nearly 20 years before Shewmake’s victory in 2022.

The shift coincided with a buildout of housing on open land on the north side of Bellingham, said Jamie Douglass, chair of the district Democratic Party.

Shewmake isn’t running for reelection this year, but her chosen replacement, Michael Shepard, is poised to take her place after a strong primary for Democrats. Flipping the seat is among Republicans’ top priorities statewide.

The other side of the water

One year ago, 26th District Democratic state Sen. Deb Krishnadasan faced a tough race to retain her state Senate seat against longtime Republican state Rep. Michelle Valdez in an off-year election. 

Krishnadasan won by about 5 percentage points. This year, she won her primary over a lesser-known Republican by 12. 

Renee Hernandez Greenfield is now seeking to replace Valdez, who isn’t running for reelection, and deliver a Democratic triumvirate there, erasing one of the few remaining districts with split representation. Like the 42nd just a decade ago, all three seats in the 26th were held by Republicans.

Hernandez Greenfield faces Katy Cornell, a Republican pastor. Cornell may serve as a recent example of GOP troubles recruiting candidates. She recently found herself in hot water over resurfaced videos of sermons in which she equates abortion to murder and implies religions other than Christianity are akin to witchcraft.

The 26th covers parts of Kitsap and Pierce counties, including Port Orchard, Purdy, Gig Harbor and parts of Bremerton. Like the development in Whatcom County in recent years, the district has seen a big boost in housing since the newest Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened in 2007. 

Looking forward

Despite their successes, Democrats in these areas aren’t getting too confident.

“When I moved here, they were all Republican,” said Douglass, chair of the 42nd Legislative District Democrats. “Now all three are Democrats, and I still think, though, that it takes an incredible amount of hard work and diligence for it to stay that way.”

Next week’s elections will indicate how far Democrats have come in these areas, and how close they’ll be to supermajority power in the Legislature. 

These same factors are at play in southwest Washington, where four Democratic challengers in the August primary led Republican state House incumbents handily in areas near Vancouver and Portland. A sweep for Democrats next week would leave just Sen. Paul Harris, of the 17th, as the lone Republican remaining across those two neighboring districts. Two years ago, the GOP held all six. 

In 2022, Harris won a state House reelection bid by nearly 10 percentage points. Two years later, when he ran for Senate, that was down to just over 2 percentage points.

This creep could continue to extend, with Democrats showing electoral strength in central Washington’s 12th District, which now crosses the Cascades into exurbs like North Bend and Monroe, and the 35th District in Mason County. Rising costs in Gig Harbor and Bremerton in the 26th could force people to move into the cheaper 35th.

But looking that far ahead is hard to predict in a world where Trump is no longer the Republican standard-bearer.

“Until Trump is retired, it is very difficult to model or describe or plan what the next steps for the Washington Republican Party is,” Hays said. “That’s like an event horizon.”